The juggernaut of Hat Night '05

swung inexorably into action on Friday evening. The usual crew assembled at the old flat and the games began: hats were assigned and Josh concocted (I can't bring myself to say 'made', not when the end result tastes like 100° proof cough medicine) a batch of 'Liquid Gold' to fuel the proceedings.

Ali A wasn't drinking, so we turned him upside down and poured beer on his head to compensate.

Ally G on the other hand was drinking. He needed no help in that respect.

The evening becomes agreeably fuzzy in my recollection after we left the flat. We visited the Barony and the Phoenix, which I don't imagine I'll be visiting again any time soon. It's rare to see the normally poker-faced barman there so much as crack a smile let alone a frown, and hey: I don't remember seeing him do either, but then I also don't really recall Ally dropping the four pints, Jeff and I jovially scuffling in the corner or my solo dance routine beside the jukebox either, so there you go.

Hats were placed on random punters, as per Hat Night procedure.

Later on (once the Phoenix bar staff were really starting to get antsy), an oxymoronically sober Jez shepherded us back to the flat, along with the two young French girls he'd found to take Josh's vacant room (see below) for a few months. Presumably they'd turned up for a quiet get-to-know-you session with their new flatmates. Quite what they made of the drunken carnage they were greeted with is anyone's bet.

(I know, I know: any one part of the phrase young French girls in combination with Jez is enough to give me a thrill of sympathetic fear for them.)

The evening ended, after a lengthy and earnest conversation about the intersection of scuba diving and indie music (clues: Scapa Flow and British Sea Power), with me cycling up the road in a foolish and multiply illegal fashion, and receiving a rebuke from a rather testy policeman for my troubles.

A classic Hat Night, and one that shall be (mostly) remembered.

Next day was my birthday, and I felt categorically awful. I crawled to the living room couch in an attempt to get up after fielding enough "Happy Birthday!" phone calls to feel guilty about still being in bed at 2 pm. Gill put on Swingers in response to my grunted instructions (and surprisingly seemed to like it - I'd always seen it as a guy film in the same way that certain films are 'chick flicks') and by 5 I was able to function normally again.

I walked up to the Golf in Bruntsfield, where Josh had gathered the great and the good of the Mafia for a final drink before he headed back to York. I was good to see everyone in one place; what with job interviews, theses, work, the band and so on it seems like we've all been busy for the last month or so. I hung around long enough to say hello to everyone (and to talk up vests for a while) and headed home for a relatively early night.

I'd hired a car to give Josh a lift home on the Sunday, with the ulterior aim of viewing a few suitably mental hot hatches for the Nürburgring trip while I was down there. I arrived at Enterprise to find out that my booking contained no information about A) what kind of car I wanted (an estate); B) no agreed price (a ludicrously low £51 to match Alamo, negotiated over the phone a week ago) and C) no mention that I wanted a one-way rental.

<sigh>

It was sorted out in the end, and we made the journey in about four hours thanks to some entertaining A-road action. I found out once we arrived that the one car I'd really wanted to view had been sold an hour before we left Edinburgh. A second car turned out to be so old I couldn't get one-day insurance to drive it, so the automotive side of the trip was pretty much dead in the water.

Deprived of any car-related high jinks we ambled around York for a while, eating lunch, dropping off the hire car and finally coming to rest at Bar 38 on the bank of the Ouze about three. We had a few pints to kill time until I had to catch the train, but neither of us was exactly bursting with energy. It was the first 'holiday' I'd had for ages, and I was content to watch the tourist boats and rowers head up and downstream as the sun sank towards the rooftops. We walked to the station for 6 o' clock, I said goodbye to Josh and wandered into the ticket office, feeling a little melancholy.

At least I was feeling melancholy until it turned out I'd prebooked my ticket for Sunday by mistake and had to stump up £60 for a single back to Edinburgh, only to miss the first train back and end up sitting on the next one in a carriage empty apart from the four people singing karaoke for three bastarding hours and the snacks trolley guy hounding me relentlessly to buy a coffee made of platinum or something, given the astronomical cost of the bloody thing.

Hmph. I must be getting old...