After a truly uninspiring week

consisting mostly of cooking, running and avoiding the pub, the weekend arrived and decided to make its presence throroughly felt. On Friday, Dave, Michelle and I met up with a worse-for-wear Jeff and assorted Mafia types in Hector's (we're becoming terribly gauche in our old age) for a speculative few pints. Vague plans to go to the Pleasance and then the Spiegeltent instead took the hard core of Josh, Jez (J&J from now on), Neil/Doddsy, Michelle and I to Teviot, where Jez smoked a hookah.

A hookah. You filthy people.

A fire alarm went off while I was at the bar - caused by the cherry fug reeking from the hookah lounge, maybe? - and we evacuated to Medina. As you may have guessed, this was the beginning of the end and a few tequilas and some truly awful dancing from yours truly later, we went home.

Saturday arrived, and it was not welcome. I crawled out of bed around 2pm to say hello to Gill's friends Heidi and Kate, up visiting from the big smoke, and after scraping the alcoholic sweat off myself in the shower, headed out into the blinding sunshine* to obtain the last few components of the evening's costume. The combined J&J Airlines birthday flight to Vegas had been chiselled into my calendar for weeks, and all I needed to get was some gold braid and a pair of aviator specs.

This was the easy part. The hard part was doing the actual sewing. Gill had three stripes sewn onto the right arm of my suit in about fifteen minutes flat. I believe she may even have done her nails and styled her hair at the same time.

I visibly aged while doing the left arm. Empires rose and fell in the time it took me to get the bastard things on. Still, I couldn't help but feel a warm glow of achievement as I compared the wonky, unevenly spaced braid I'd done to the arrow-straight bands on the right arm. Job's a good 'un.

We were suited, booted and capped by 9pm and walked up to the Wash to meet the rest of the crew. I already had a permanent smirk on my face - even the neds were saluting us in the street ("That's pure brilliant by the way mate! What are ye? A captain or that?") - and when we got to the pub, with a fucking throng of pilots and air hostesses**, I was experiencing full-on glee.

We walked round the corner to Vegas (in the sweaty Liquid Room as opposed to the camp splendour of Ego, but possibly the better for it) and settled in for the night. We danced the night away with our lovely trolley dollies. I won at roulette (ironic, given that we entirely failed to do so in the real Vegas) choosing the numbers 25-29 instead of namby-pambying around with evens or odds. A slinky young lady purred "Hello, Captain!" to me - at least as much as it's possible to purr when one's entire body is vibrating to Frank Sinatra - to which I replied "Ah. Uh, hello," gawped a little, and made excuse-me-I-dance-like-a-fool noises.

You can't win 'em all.

Or...can you?

About 2am, collapsed in a seat, mopping my brow and having danced myself sober(er), one of the Vegas showgirls appeared and dragged about six of us on stage - three pilots and three stewardesses. Incredibly, we were taking part in the 'best dressed' competition. We blinked in the limelight as two other groups of suave clubbers were introduced to moderate crowd approval, and when our turn came, the towering figure of Josh stood out from our mob on the dancefloor with both arms raised, and the crowd went wild.

We won. As far as I can tell, this is the coolest thing I've ever done. It's all downhill from here on in.

We popped our champagne, drank, and celebrated. Best Vegas ever.

* * *

On Sunday night, after a leisurely TM practice in Glasgow, I got back to Edinburgh just in time to join Dave and Kate at the Pleasance for Pam Ann, carrying on the airline theme.

We really, really should have worn our Vegas outfits. Or maybe we shouldn't, given that she mercilessly ripped the poor easyJet contingent in attendance to shreds. It was a good show: massively politically incorrect, caustic and well delivered.

Weekend of 13^th August, I salute you. And Happy Birthday to J&J Airlines!

* In retrospect, it was probably more that my eyes hurt rather than the sunlight being all that bright. Which is a little worrying.
** Devon and Tamsin were fantastic in helping us get kitted out; Gill, Heidi and Kate sorted Dave and I out with our pilot's stripes, and Josh produced cap badges, flying licences and wings for us all - it wouldn't have been the same without you doing all the hard work, guys. Thank you all very much!