I'm in the middle

of a twelve day bonanza/marathon of stuff. My diary, usually an exemplar of lunar desolation, is a bubbling font of excitement, liver damage and financial ruin. This was the week that was:

Wednesday: Martin and I met up in the Basement for some old-school pre-practice beer and food, and we toddled merrily along to the practice without the hollow eyes and fatigued limbs that usually accompany a midweek rehearsal. It went well: our unashamed (and shaky) impersonations of '70s Zep and '90s Weezer have produced a couple of promising song ideas. An acoustic gig in Glasgow may be in the offing, so the first taste of new Monkey goodness could well be of the unplugged variety. Stay tuned for details.

Thursday: our long-serving, long-suffering French teacher Celine is moving down south to do a teaching course, so I remortgaged the house and met up with her, Ben and their crew in Centraal to say au revoir. It turned out that a friend of Celine's used to teach French to Doug years ago, before I'd even met him...Scotland is a marvellously parochial place, and Centraal is a marvellously expensive bar.

Friday: Ruth's Oz trip is coming up fast, and she and Katie organised a dinner party round at their flat. It was a great evening. I know this because my phone contained, as is becoming usual, a series of slavering notes detailing the night, increasing in incomprehensibility as the wine flowed. I ranted and gibbered about going dancing and convinced/browbeat one of Ruth's friends into coming along this week. I may have passed the point of graceful backing out. This dancing thing has assumed a life of its own.

I left once it became obvious that I couldn't talk without instead dribbling insensibly.

Saturday: I woke up with a pounding, rolling hangover. I watched The Third Man semi-conscious and prone on the couch until 2 pm and stumbled my way to readiness for the afternoon's karting.

The karting was, of course, excellent fun. Despite a few dodgy pre-race moments, sitting in the kart and having my delicate innards agitated by the humming engines (the idea of barfing in a closed full-face helmet really doesn't bear thinking about), I was fine as soon as each race started. I felt sufficiently better to repeatedly barge Ben off the track and to claim 5^th in the final - not bad out of a field of 16, I thought.

The whole day was notionally Andy B's stag do (I say 'notionally' only because he contrived to avoid being stripped naked and chained to a lamppost+inflatable sex doll by virtue of organising everything himself) and we retired to Britannia Spice, still reeking of oil and flushed with the violent enthusiasm of pretend motor racing.

The evening stretched out into a classic food / pub / polite conversation with bouncer designed to ease our passage into Pivo* / whistle theme from The Third Man at Dom until he breaks down / shots / invade our counterpart hen night party and walk home half-asleep at 4.30 am.

Sunday:Tired as a dog, I took the train to Glasgow for a TM rehearsal. The practice was unremarkable but fairly productive, taken up mostly with getting Davis up to speed. The only notable thing about the trip was the Orange marching band I had to weave through on the way in - in my old age, I'm becoming a militant agnostic. I'm just as inflexible as the people I want to shout at.

I rushed home to meet up with my friend Rachel, an old coffee shop colleague from a good five years ago now, leaving messages for her every half an hour ("I'm on the train! When are you arriving?"; "I'm back at the flat! Where shall we meet?"; "I've just eaten - have you eaten?") only to receive a bemused message about 8.30 saying it's next Sunday.

I went to the fireworks instead with the the mafia and called it a reasonably early night. Only another six days to go...

* Bouncer: "So how many people do you think the Berlin Bierhaus holds?"
RF: "Christ, I dunno. Two hundred?"
B: holds up 4 fingers
RF, feigning amazement: "Really? Four hundred? No way. What about Espionage?"
And so on.