Il neige!

Pretty damn heavily as it turns out, so I might try one more boarding day this weekend. I'm going to France for a couple of weeks at the end of February, so I don't know whether or not to risk another day of purgatorial Scottish mountain weather before then...

But I digress. On Monday a Belgian friend of Jeff's arrived with another friend to stay for a few days, so (of course) we had to go out and show 'em a good time. Thankfully it turned out to be a reasonably sensible night (at least for your correspondent and the Belgians; Jeff was kicking it big style until 2.30 am, the dog).

Tiny Monkey convened on Tuesday evening for a bit of an experimental practise: we tried to write a song. Admittedly, we didn't get as far as a whole song, but we've got a killer verse. All we need now are a bridge, chorus, middle eight and lyrics. And a singer. And a drummer.

I can almost smell Top of the Pops.

Burns' Night:

the one night of the year you can absolutely guarantee that someone's going to try to goad/cajole/blackmail me into playing the bagpipes.

And so it came to pass that last Sunday evening the Roquefort Files were enjoying a nicely relaxed Burns Supper along with the rest of the still-recuperating Mafia, courtesy of Annabel and Devon. My sister (a fellow lapsed Scottish musician) promises to play some fiddle tunes if I'll play the pipes. Cue hackles raised, minor self-pitying rant, caving in and finally a lift up the road to pick up my pipes.

As per usual, once I actually played, I enjoyed it. And despite my feigned indignation, it was a top night. The food was staggeringly good and the Mafia were on collective top form: thank heavens for the healing powers of haggis and beer.

The Mafia (in full, glorious effect - witness Jeff's heroic inebriation and the multitude of Mafioso nationalities) descended upon a Big Fat Greek Party on Friday. There was drinking, talking loudly and standing around in a manically hand-clapping circle watching Greek people dance, one by one. 'Nuff said, I think.

Saturday consisted of one long, fraught hangover. I can honestly say it's the worst I've had to contend with in a long time. The planned Saturday evening session fell through because of the mass casualty rate after the Greek party, so I toadied my way into a poker night organised by Michelle instead. It turned out to be more of a poker rally, with eleven of us in the one game. And much as I hate to admit it, Ben was right: eleven is possibly too many...bluffing was more or less out of the window because the odds were that someone betting high had a good hand.

Still, factor in one Australian flag-patterned cake containing enough food colouring to dye the North Sea and the night is saved by dint of mutual blue-tongued hilarity.

Oh my word.

Rock I say, ROCK.

Skanky, not wanky.

The Roquefort Files went to see Primal Scream in Glasgow on Friday night. They were playing in the Carling Academy (the same venue I'd seen Grandaddy at) and we managed to miss the support band. Again.

Anyway, the 'Scream wandered onto the stage (complete with Manny from the Stone Roses, quite clearly off his face on something or other, providing a Spinal Tap-esque stage presence) and launched into Accelerator, a mind-buggeringly dense, feedback-laden track. Annoyingly, the sound was persistently poor throughout the whole gig; it was certainly loud enough but the quality was abysmal, even for lo-fi tracks like Accelerator.

Apparently, Primal Scream are a fucked up band. They told us so about half way through the concert. As Bobby Gillespie helpfully explained: "Coldplay: not fucked up. Primal Scream: fucked up!". How very rock & roll... On the whole, it was a frustrating concert. There's a good band lurking under the self-preening, druggy image they project, but it was pretty hard to discern, and crappy sound quality just grated the whole time.

After the gig, we met up with the Captain and Fat Pete (don't ask) at the Festival Club, a Celtic Connections event in the oxymoronic Quality Hotel. It was a damn sight better than Primal Scream, thankfully, consisting of a collection of groups/performers taking part in Celtic Connections each performing a few songs. We got drunk and tapped our feet.

Saturday was utterly non-blogworthy. I ate, I drank tea, I played the bass. I unexpectedly went out for dinner with my parents, and therefore managed to miss a party in Fife. Usual stuff.

On Sunday I dragged myself out of bed at 6.45 am so that I could drive to Perth and meet Doug for a day of boarding. This was also utterly non-blogworthy. The snow - the bits of it left clinging to the rocks and mud - was crap; my technique was rusty, my temper was bad and my Achilles tendons are still aching. 3/10 on the Roquefort Files' SBD scale. It was just about saved by a couple of cathartic bad-coffee-fuelled bitching sessions in the Meall Odhar (Gaelic for 'Malodorous') café. Just about.

Once I got back, I hurtled across to the Cameo to meet Kate to see a prearranged but completely forgotten-about film - Lost In Translation. It was rather good, I think. It put me in mind of Morvern Callar; it's a film where very little happens, but unlike MC, it manages to engage the viewer by, sensibly, not disappearing up its own arse. There's just enough humour in it to drag it away from being overly sentimental, and the performances were absolutely brilliant. Top stuff.

Afterwards, we did the Blind Poet (Kate: "I'm more in the mood for skanky than wanky on the pub front") pub quiz, and were crap.

It's been a slightly odd weekend. The signal to noise ratio was pretty low; for all the running around I did, and for all the money I spent, I just feel a bit knackered. Ah well; science may have caught up with the good/bad weekend curve after all.

I cannot wait till the day I get to be a snowboard instructor.

Deathkill4000.

Doesn't sound like a funk/dance night, does it? I didn't think so either.

It wasn't a funk/dance night. The Barfly curse continues.

I drove through to Glasgow on Saturday evening to go out with Doug and Neil; Doug just recently bought a new flat in a converted warehouse (v. trendy) and I met up with the two of them there. We wandered into town to meet up with some of their mates and had a few drinks at the Arches Café Bar (vv. trendy), before heading to Barfly for what Doug characterised as "this cool funk thing they have on Saturdays". It took us about fifteen minutes of "A bit of hair metal, a twist of breakcore and some banging techno served with lashings of electropunk and a side of Scandinavian rock'n'roll" to realise that perhaps this wasn't the club we were looking for.

"Er. Maybe it's on downstairs?" said Doug. It wasn't, but hey; we stayed anyway.

Sunday was a pleasantly unchallenging day of sloth. After a bit of semi-serious career analysis/house buying chat with Doug I headed back to Edinburgh. The weather recently has been a bit frustrating; in any other country, cold weather + rain = snow; in Scotland, cold weather + rain = cold rain. The sheer amount of wind and rain on the motorway made for a rather slithery drive, along with some unintentional (but entertaining) sideways action when I came off the exit roundabout at Edinburgh. When I got back, the gloriously time-wasting Rebel Strike went on the GameCube, followed by some much-needed bass playing (and mourning of the cancellation of this) in preparation for Tiny Monkey's next practise session.

P.S.: Oh, I almost forgot:

• I got a God-awful haircut on Saturday. It's sort of a Marine-style mini-mullet. Absolutely ghastly, but it looks marginally better after a shower, thank fuck.
  
• And the weather just got even worse; hailstones practically the size of a baby's head. Lovely.
  

Tremen(dou)s.

Dr. Dick (my work's in-house sawbones) was of the opinion that I didn't have the cold at all; I instead had the marvellously named Delirium Tremens. Or the DTs, if you're a serial drunk. I hadn't even known what it stood for, but it would certainly explain feeling alternately shivery and feverish and sleeping very badly. I troubles me slightly that I drank enough over Christmas and the New Year to actually have ethanol withdrawal symptoms, but fortunately this week (as nominal cold turkey) has been entirely on the wagon so far.

Mind you, I'm supposed to be going out tomorrow night.

I am a bad man v2.

I rather evilly sloped off to go for a day's snowboarding on Saturday, rationalising the fact that if I were to go on Saturday, although I'd miss Antonio's birthday lunch I'd at least see both him and Estelle that evening at her party. If I were to go on Sunday instead, I'd probably have to miss Estelle's party so I could get up early enough.

With my conscience thusly fooled, I dragged myself out of bed about 7.30 am and headed up north to Glenshee. The Capp's screenwash, of course, ran out a couple of miles outside of Perth and none of the local garages for local people on the way had any left. This made for an entertaining drive, to say the least. It's amazing how much grit a minivan travelling at a road rage-inducing 15 mph can throw up.

Most of the best runs were served by T-bar lifts ('T' standing for 'torture', at least for boarders) and my right leg was killing me by the end of the day. I made the mistake of taking the Carn Aosda T-bar at one point, 'Carn Aosda' being Gaelic for 'Bugger Me, It's Windy Up Here'. After having to keep my toe edge dug in the whole way up - the entire lift path is at a slight oblique angle - so that my calf muscles were aching mightily, it was so windy at the top that I had to unstrap my board to avoid being ripped bodily off the side of the mountain.

On the up side, the lee side of the mountain had a reasonable cover of semi-fresh snow. Fresh snow is great; the confidence inspired by a forgiving surface is better than any amount of practise and I had an enjoyable hour or so caning down just a couple of runs. All in all, a 6 out of 10 on the Roquefort Files' official Scottish Boarding Day scale.

Unfortunately, my legs are now stiff as a board and I appear to have the cold. Rats.

Happy New Year!

And I feel like I've survived a tour of duty in 'Nam. This particular festive season has been pretty liberally festive, and it's not over yet: if I can get through Antonio's birthday lunch on Saturday and then Estelle's party that night, I'll consider myself free to curl up in a ball and sweat alcohol until I feel better.

Hogmanay was splendidly exuberant; the usual suspects were out, about and healthily liquored up, not least your humble correspondent. We wandered along to the Royal Mile to watch the fireworks only to find out that they had been cancelled - the weather earlier had been rather fierce. Still, all was not lost and the crowd were doing fine without any external stimuli. I got to bed about 5 or so, and I still feel like I'm in a different time zone; by the time I was up and dressed on the 1st it was getting dark again. As a result, I couldn't get to sleep for hours last night and when I did I had some extraordinarily odd dreams. About 6 this morning, I glanced woozily at the clock and managed to drift off, only to do the horror movie-style jerk-awake thing: as soon as my eyes had closed I started dreaming that a dog or a cat (or some similar small furry quadruped) was running around my head, growling and yowling.

All very odd...!

Auto-uPdate: my FireWire card arrived on the 31st. It works well; installation didn't even need any drivers and the iPod is now happily docked to its new mothership. It's a little disconcerting to have every CD I own immediately available; I'm spending half the duration of any walks deciding what to listen to before I manage to pick something!