A return to form, of sorts.

After a disjointed week (ironically so, because I'd actually organised things more than a day ahead of time) this week drifted back into a more familiar pattern: booze, practise in the flat, rehearse with TM, booze, see a film.

TM's first Big Practise started at 2pm on Saturday. The five hour session was supposed to let us record some backing tracks for Dave to practise vocals with and to get to know some of the new songs we've chosen for the gig.

The reality was that two hours of recording without a singer is soul destroying. It's like Tango without Cash. The sight of Dave singing directly into Doug's ear (silently to me, ear-splittingly loudly for Doug) so that he knew when to change the drum rhythm will stay with me for some time as despair embodied.

Also, a bass is fucking heavy if you have to wear the damn thing for five hours straight.

Despite all of this (and it was mightily frustrating at the time), it was worthwhile. We have the sans-vocal tracks out of the way, and at least a couple of new tunes are sorted out. Post rehearsal, we worked out a set list over some curry and beers, and now it's set in stone we have something concrete to aim for. Rehearsals should, from now on, be a damn sight more productive from an actually playing a gig point of view. Which is nice.

I tried to do a bit more Christmas shopping on the Sunday. I seem to have perfected Christmas-shopping-as-thought-experiment: I don't buy anything, but the act of shuffling zombie-like through shop after shop focuses the mind marvellously on anything at all apart from the gaudy trinkets I'm actually looking at.

Finally, on Sunday evening, I went to see Garden State with Kate. It's a good film - it's about the closest I've seen of late to be charming without becoming cloying or overly slapstick. Maybe Igby Goes Down is a good comparison. We had a few pints in Favorit afterwards, and it was good.