Normal service has been well and truly resumed.

Friday night saw some hot three-way action, with Chris and Leyla's arrival from London coinciding with pre-birthday drinks for both Dom and Kate. It was absolutely fantastic to see Chris and Leyla again; the last time I saw them in the flesh was almost exactly a year ago in Brisbane's balmy spring. Happy days, happy days. Roll up to see the 25-year old me gape at strippers and take to the water like a duck. To water. Ah. Bit of synchronicity with the rafting last week, but I digress.

We drank the night away in the Barony and then the City Café, and the craic was mighty.

Doug organised a Coba Fynn practise/jam/mess about session at the Brill Building on Saturday, so Chris and I got the train to Glasgow with my bass and some Irn Bru in tow. With Charlie living in London and Neil opting for a quiet, un-rocking life, it was just Chris, Doug, Davis and I. Despite my protestations of musical incompetence, it was in fact genius. CF's staple fare is bluesy rock - handy for me, because I can come off sounding good playing only 3 different notes per song - and we ran through some of their old stuff. Locomotive Blues, Glasgow Girl and Super Shuttle: I'd heard these played a few years ago in the Pleasance, and it was excellent fun to be able to join in this time around.

We met up with Kate and her friend Claire for some post- and pre-rock food: Kate, Doug and I had tickets for PJ Harvey at the Carling Academy* later that night. Claire wanted to come along but didn't have a ticket, so she tagged along in the taxi and we managed to exchange our 3 standing tickets for 4 seated ones on the door.

The gig was pretty good. I hadn't listened to any PJ Harvey beforehand; she's one of those artists/groups that I think I should know more about but never really get round to. Our new tickets were for seats in the mezzanine area, so we had a good view of a diminutive PJ Harvey dwarfed by her rather nifty Firebird guitar, belting out some nicely melodic punky songs.

Unfortunately, we shared the good seats with the exhaled breath and airborne sweat of everyone else in the place. It was a deeply...moist experience up there. I'd rather have been in the sway-gently pit**.

We caught the train back to Edinburgh to meet up again with Chris and Leyla. Neil and his harem came along and I stumbled home after walking Kate back to her flat (must start dealing with this 19th century politeness I seem to be afflicted with) to find them rocking out to Led Zeppelin in our kitchen. I rocked out with them for a while from a supine position on the floor and went to bed about 4.30 am.

God, what a rambling entry. I am completely knackered - still completely knackered, in fact; the knackeredness has been stalking me since poker on Tuesday and I think this coming week will be something of a detox for me ahead of the 10K on Sunday. So basically, don't be expecting any incidents involving hilarity/incompetence at pulling/rocking to be reported for a few days.

* Saturday was Kate's birthday - happy birthday, Kate! - and her present from me was the ticket for the concert.

A while back, the morning after going to see Buddy Guy, I'm recounting to Martin that I feel a small degree of pride in getting Kate into Snow Patrol (re humming of Chocolate and insistence on calling it Final Straw), and he mentions that he's going down to Birmingham to see them play the next weekend. This then makes me think hey! That'd be a great birthday present for her. So I check the website for Scottish dates. There are some in December. They're all sold out already.

Bah.

It is typical that the first decent birthday present idea I've ever had is crushed a month before the birthday in question! Seriously, ask Jeff. I'm shit at birthdays. I gave a friend of mine some tennis balls once, when I was about 15.

Tennis balls.

It's gone downhill from there.

** Indie kids don't really know how to mosh, you see.