T minus 50 hours: my phone rings. Well, it vibrates its way across the desk.

"Hey, Davis. How's it going?"
"Hi there."
<cue ten minutes of finest Davis rambling>
"...so cut a long story short, Charlie hasn't managed to get his driver's license sent up yet. I was wondering if..." (here it comes) "...you could maybe..." (the wait is excruciating) "...drive the van to the hotel for us?"

And there we are. Enter your correspondent the roadie.

T minus 37 hours, 10 am: I drag myself out of bed. I sheepishly call the office to ask for the day off, given that 2 hours work is unlikely to constitute the half-day I was hoping to do. I'm picking the van up at 1 pm but before that, I have to lay my hands on a gig bag for my Jazz bass. With a heavy heart, I'd decided that I was going to use it for the gig instead of the mighty T-bird. The T-bird's very mightiness means that it's tiring to play for anything more than a few songs, and given that I wanted to avoid ruining Davis' wedding, I plumped for the weedier but more ergonomic J-bass. I'd borrowed Martin's Bass Pod - a bass effects box, basically - to make the J-bass sound a little better, of which more later.

T minus 34 hours, 1 pm. Arnold Clark Hire: They're giving us a Ford Transit.

"A Transit? Can't we have...I dunno, a Renault or something? I forgot to bring my pies and a copy of the Sun. And my wolf-whistling just isn't up to scratch."
"No. They're fast, you know. 2.4 litres."
"Ooh! Really?"

Turns out it goes like a bat out of hell. Enter your correspondent the crazed White Van Man.

T minus 26 hours, 9 pm. Marine Hotel, North Berwick: After a pleasantly straightforward afternoon (picking up the PA system on time; getting to the final practise session on time; playing our set twice through with reasonable success; setting up the PA without breaking anything, even the hideously expensive and fragile valve amp for Davis' guitar), we finish up our sound check. I'm in a pretty good mood. The bass sounds fine; I've managed to find a setting on the Pod that bulks out the sound a bit and the stage floor shakes in a truly rock fashion on the low notes. We leave the van in the hotel car park and Doug gives me a lift home; our work here is done.

T minus 11 hours, 12 pm. Day of the wedding. RF HQ: Shit shit shit. I've got nothing to wear. What the hell does one wear while playing in the band at a wedding?

T minus 8 hours, 3 pm. Princes Street: Shit shit shit. The Captain is coming to pick me up in an hour's time and I still have nothing to wear. Propelled by a feeling of sartorial doom, I buy A) a chocolate brown shirt (oh yes) and B) the most expensive pair of shoes in the universe.

The Captain arrives with Waxy, Fat Pete (you couldn't make this shit up) and Jacqui. We drive to North Berwick.

T minus 5 hours, 6 pm. North Berwick: I get dressed for the evening. Christ. I aimed for Franz Ferdinand and wound up with 70s ned/pimp. We, the johnny-come-lately evening crowd, wander into the centre of town to get some food. North Berwick is an odd place. It appears to consist solely of expensive looking Victorian-era townhouses. Each and every car is something impressive like a Range Rover or a Porsche. Then you hit the centre of town, and the neds. Slack-jawed, angulated cap-wearing, full-on neds that gape at anyone not wearing a tracksuit. Loads of 'em.

Odd.

We head into a local hotel, eat, have a couple of drinks and go back to the Marine. I'm determined to stay sober as a judge until we play, having discovered last week that three pints are enough to remove all vestiges of bass-playing ability from me.

T minus 2 hours, 9 pm. Marine Hotel: We've arrived at the wedding and said our hellos. The ceilidh is over; the buffet is winding down and Davis has started up some music for a disco type thing. I'm clutching a glass of water and starting to feel a bit nervous.

T minus 0 hours, 11 pm. 15^th May, 2004. North Berwick, Marine Hotel function room: The music stops. Coba Fynn take the stage and incredibly, there is applause. Davis' dad joins us and tells the crowd about the 'Fynn's five year mission to rock and coaxes the attendees onto the dance floor. He helpfully does not say: "And by the way, the copiously sweating bassist has never played live," and leaves the stage.

Doug starts up the drumbeat for Jumpin' Jack Flash. We play.

It hangs together by a thread at times, but it works. Everyone is dancing. Halfway through, playing Stuck In The Middle With You, my arms are knots of uncooperative muscle, and I'm just about holding the bass line together from verse to verse. There's a brief respite as Jenna, Davis' new bride, joins us for Twist And Shout. My forearms have calmed down by the time we're ready to restart and miraculously - for the bass part to this song is about as challenging as I can handle - it goes brilliantly. We finish on Crossroads with Davis hammering out a blinding solo.

T plus 30 minutes: We finish. It's over almost as soon as it began. I take off my bass, lean it up against the amp and realise that it had been on standby the whole time.

Oops.

I'd forgotten to flick the standby switch when we got on stage. Luckily enough, we'd set it up so that the amp was slaved to the Pod and the Pod's main output went straight into the PA, so the crowd at least got the benefit of the RF's patchy live debut.

The bar beckons. We get drunk and bask in a veritable ocean of relief.