Middlingest. Week. Ever.

To whit:

• Tiny Monkey had our first full practise at Banana Row, with Doug coming across from Glasgow to play drums. It went reasonably well, even though we lost our way a bit towards the end, possibly by racing through the set without paying enough attention to each individual song. I had expected it to go flawlessly, for some reason - probably because Coba Fynn got stuck in to each practise with a fairly businesslike attitude - but I forget that Mart and Dom have never played with drums and huge-ass amps before and there's a bit of a learning curve to getting into the 'rehearsal' mindset. Still, it bodes well for future practises and we'll just have to concentrate a little more on getting things just so before moving on to the next song...
  
• I've only been out once (er, I think only once, anyway) this week and even then it was fairly low key: I suspect my subconscious is taking charge and demanding a sensible week for a change.
  
• Ray gave me a lift across to Fife this morning to help my Dad out with a vintage car rally he runs each year. Turned out there were already enough people there, so we came back after having a bacon roll in a Cold War-era amusement arcade (I played GTI Club for the first time in years) and staring listlessly at the disused power station that towers over the place.
  

And that was that; a week that just idled along without ever deciding to really get going. Conclusion: must try harder.

Update: I did manage to go and see The Cooler on Sunday evening, which upped the weekend's average from uninspired to moderate. Quite a good film; breezy and dark by turns, impressive acting and that good ol' Vegas movie atmosphere. 4/5 on the RF's indie movie scale.

Another breathless weekend?

Yes please.

Alright, I'm being a bit melodramatic. Last year, Josh, Ally and I went through to Glasgow to meet up with Josh's siblings for the art college's degree show party thing and had such a good time we decided to go back again this year. The two other Casswells were there as well, with Josh's brother having flown back from a work placement in Austria just to get in on the action.

This time, Ally dropped out but Luc, Marie and Kate came along instead. Josh and I collected some beers on the way to the station and we settled down to knock a few back during the train journey. Except, of course, that none of us had brought a bottle opener. Skint knuckles and helpless, resigned hilarity ensued. Josh eventually levered one open with a karabiner and a keyring, and there was much rejoicing.

Once we got there, Kate & I headed to Doug's flat to collect him while everyone else went straight to the party. We met up again with them and the junior Casswells around 10 pm, by which time, of course, the street party was winding down and everyone was herding towards the union. A mercifully unguarded side door let us in without too much hassle.

A few beers later, V-twin (one of the bands I managed to see last weekend) played a shortish set and then the music went...a bit mental.

Turns out your correspondent and dancing emphatically do not mix. I suppose that I've always usually had some alternative to (very, very badly) shaking my indie white-boy booty in a given venue, whether it's been to hang about with other Mafia refuseniks, meet up with friends at some alternative venue or just pick a reasonable vantage point to suck back a beer and enjoy the atmosphere. Occasionally, when plastered, I will attempt to dance like a freak. Usually these occasions are the ones where my goldfish memory shields me from the worst of it until someone gleefully recounts my antics the next day...

Anyway, hard house plus an intense aversion to hard house do not play well together and I didn't exactly revel in the latter part of the evening. Doug, Kate and I left around 2 am. A brief bout of self-examination (seriously, try a dance-ectomy and then stand immobile in crowd of people who are really enjoying it, and try to avoid wondering why exactly you don't like dancing) and some late-night bhajis later and I was more or less back on mental track. My weeble-esque mindset usually recovers from this kind of prod with a minimum of fuss.

Which was good, because the next day, Doug and I embarked on a four hour pub crawl/philosophical journey back to the train station. Doug's company always brings out the introspective in me (if that's not a contradiction in terms, and it's certainly a laudable trait on his part!) and we spent the afternoon sifting through, among other things:

• my aforementioned dancing idiocy
  
• the usual 20-something neuroses concerning the opposite sex
  
• which is the best Zeppelin album, and
  
• about five pints
  

In fact, I've come to the conclusion that everyone has an inner Doug, looking something like the goblin in the current Sprite adverts, that provides philosophical guidance (but no straight answers, of course :) in the same way that Disney cartoons assume the existence of an angel and a devil, one on each shoulder, providing moral guidance.

But I digress.

To sum up: something of a voyage of discovery this weekend, mixed in with a dash of rock, a slap of hard house and a considerable amount of amateur psychoanalysis. And now, I'm just fucking knackered.

I was about to cycle back from work this evening

and it was uncharacteristically dark, looking like it might rain. I left my sunglasses off and headed home. When I came to the bridge over the cycle path I use to get home, I slung the bike on my shoulder and went down the stairs to the path. Almost immediately after getting back on and starting off, I thought "What's that on my foot?" and lo, it was a piece of dog shit. Handily smeared all over the pedal by now.

Arse.

I wiped my shoe on the grass and then looked back at the shitty pedal. Fuck. I took out my hankie and wiped most of the crap off it and set off up the path, cycling one-handed, with the odorous hankie dangled from my spare hand.

Heading back up the path, looking for a bin, I changed up gear. The gear lever made an ominous 'crack' noise and refused to lock in place, leaving me weaving up the path with a shitty hankie in one hand and the gears making the kind of grinding noise that, when I hear someone else's bike making it, makes me roll my eyes in a kind of "Honestly, can't you use the gears?" type way.

And then it started to rain. Just as I was coming up to a little park I knew had a litter bin in it, I copped a bit of airborne grit in my right eye because of my lack of sunglasses. Because of the bloody rain clouds. Shortly after the first bit of grit, I copped another in my left eye. Eyes streaming with the irritations, I wobbled into the park and flung the hankie into the bin. A woman was walking her dog nearby. I glared (as best I could with eyes closed to watering slits) at the bastarding thing as it happily gambolled away, no doubt planning the optimum place for a covert dump.

Devoid of my feculent hankie, I was at least able to hold the gear lever in place so the gears didn't persist in filing themselves away to nothing. Nearing the end of the cycle path, my nose started to run in sympathy with my eyes. I reached for my hankie only to silently scream when I remembered it was in a bin half a mile away, covered in dog crap.

Once I got to the flat, I locked up my broken, shitty bike, took a near-solid beer out of the freezer and watched the Swiss (my team in the flat Euro 2004 sweepstake) get beaten by the English.

<fx: cradles head in hands>

I woke up at 6.58 this morning, thought "This is too early for Sunday" and turned my alarm off.

Woke up again at 11.01, thought "That's more like it" then said aloud: "Shit." Sleeping patterns one, RF nil.

What a debacle...

after hearing last week about the open-air gig organised by Belle & Sebastian at the Botanic Gardens in Glasgow, I excitedly mass-emailed everyone to see if any of my jockrock-friendly mates wanted to go and see them. A few emails later and I had A) managed to convince a few of them to come along and B) been reminded about a previously organised going away party that night in Edinburgh.

Cue a day of walking, underground-ing and train-ing to and from entirely too many different venues, flats and pubs. I managed to miss B&S, arrive late to the party (although that wasn't wholly my fault, just another random spanner in the works) and spent the final hours of the night hurtling from pub to pub in an effort to see everyone I had promised to meet up with.

<fx: exasperated roll of eyes>

A royally frustrating Saturday.

Paradoxically, this post is entirely about doing bugger all.

Tonight will be the first night in almost two weeks that your correspondent will be able to put his feet up and revel in lassitude. No pub quiz, no band practise, no French lessons and especially no random pub maniacs make the RF a dull and extremely relieved boy. I may have a cup of tea. I might watch some TV, or have a lacklustre bass practise. The possibilities are limited and all very attractively banal.

So, until I do something interesting/dangerous/stupid/embarrassing, adieu.

Hot damn.

I'm typing this while slouching on the Jeff's skanky old couch, currently in my room to add a bit of bohemian style to the place, over our shiny new broadband connection. Through the flat's wireless network, no less. This will no doubt increase the quantity of RF updates at the expense of the signal-to-noise ratio. Thought it was trivial thus far? You ain't seen nothin' yet.

As a side effect of selling our collective souls to Telewest - for this week only - when, at the end of The O.C., the announcer says: "Enjoying The O.C.? Turn over now to catch the next episode on E4," we will, in fact, be able to do so. I am giddy as a schoolgirl with excitement.

Last night

took me to seven nights boozing in a row, which is a little worrying. Even more worrying was the random Botswanan girl that attached herself to us (Ray, Kate & I) in Pivo.

We wandered in around 12 or 1 or so, and Ray (I think) went to get us some drinks. My eyes did the scan-the-pub thing almost as a reflex, and I vaguely registered that a girl on the other side of the bar locked eyes with me briefly. Meh. I was drunk and disinterested and attempting to convince Kate that no, I wouldn't be dancing because I dance like a tool.

Imagine my surprise when said girl popped up beside me and said "Hi there, do you mind if I hang out with you until x?", where x was something reasonable like "until my friend turns up" or "for a while" or something similar.

x should in fact have been one of the following:

1. you realise that I'm a Christian fundamentalist mentalist
   
2. I freak you out so much you'll want to get the fuck away from me
   
3. both of the above
   

At this particular moment I was alone: Ray and Kate were both elsewhere, buying drinks or at the toilet or whatever. I said "Yeah, sure. No problem." When they arrived, I gave them an I-have-no-idea-who-this-person-is look. We all chatted away for a bit. All seemed okay.

And then the conversation turned to reincarnation, as it does. It became obvious that this young lady was a bit of a nutter. Her phone rang at this point, and she answered it. I was now staring wide-eyed at Ray and Kate hoping that someone would have some kind of plan to get the hell away from this lunatic. And then I had the distinct sensation of someone kissing my arm.

I looked incredulously at her. And asked quite reasonably, I thought, "Did you just kiss my arm?"

She didn't answer, because she talking was on the phone and didn't appear to have heard. She wandered off towards the toilets and I stared, aghast, at Ray and Kate. "Did you just see that? She kissed my arm! Let's get the fuck out of here."

In doing so, I leant back on the bar for some much-needed support, whereupon someone planted - accidentally - a lit cigarette on the selfsame arm. It hurt.

"Right. Let's go." And we did.