I went out for a couple of drinks

(My God; how many posts here begin with that phrase?) with a workmate on Tuesday night. We ended up in the Candy Bar. I say "ended up"; it was more that I couldn't be arsed to make a decision as to where to go and so she steered us toward George Street. I'd never been there.

We ordered two (2) drinks. "That's £9.95," the barman said.

I believe that I actually laughed in his face. "Dear Christ," I snorted. "Ten quid?"
"Yes," he said, stony faced.
"Fuck me."

They were tasty beverages, it must be said. But then so was every other pint of beer I've ever had.

The rest of the week was fairly standard issue, revolving around the three main things I'm doing at the moment: rehearsing with TM; learning to comport myself with some reasonable dignity on the dancefloor, and preparations to avoid a glamourous but pointless death on the Nürburgring.

The swing lesson was pretty good this week. The crazed instructor that usually takes the second half of the lesson ("Tonight, we're going to interpret the later works of Cecil B. DeMille through the medium of contemporary Balboa. Don't worry, this is suitable for complete beginners.") was in charge for the whole session and I was pleasantly surprised. Behind the smirking, I'm-a-dancer exterior there lurks a competent teacher. My concentration always collapses about half an hour into the lesson, but even by then we were all a damn sight better than last week.

Friday night was a post-work blowout in the usual style, and I dragged myself out of bed after four hours' sleep to get the train to Glasgow. We'd booked a monstrous 6-hour session at Berkeley 2 with a view to recording a few demos of our own songs.

Davis was, of course, a full hour late. How we laughed.

In the end we got three or four reasonable takes of each of the three tracks we wanted. This is maybe a little disappointing given how much time we had, but the inclination during a 6-hour session is rather perversely to overestimate how much time there is to get stuff done. More discipline next time. And less farting about.

With a bit of luck, the final tracks will appear on TM.net sometime later this week, and the "Recent News" page will once again be semantically valid.

J&J turned up with a six-pack on Saturday night for some engagingly un-PC chat. We wandered along Rose Street for some light drinking, and the libellous character assassination that passes for conversation after a few beers. Excellent stuff.

Sunday was taken up entirely in virtual fishtailing around the Nürburgring. Jez wants to buy a Fiat Coupé Turbo for the trip. He's fucking insane.