In a nutshell

the week was a vertible orgy of slightly inebriated chat, mostly with the Mafia and my new crony/foil Ashley, bringing to the party the unique perspective of a Canadian archaeologist turned chef. If there ever was a person qualified to use the word "dude" in a really convincing way but who I have never heard say it, it's her.

I had a slightly odd experience on Saturday on the way to the TM practice in Glasgow. With both Davis and I suffering from fairly fierce hangovers, we stopped in an out-of-town retail park type place to get some cholesterol and drove through a McDonalds there. (I must admit to feeling slightly guilty - it's been ages since I've bought anything from the Great Satan of fast food - but it did get the job done.) We parked in the centre of the place, surrounded by single story chain restaurants, a bowling alley and hundreds of car parking spaces. I was staring out of the steamed up window and had a niggling feeling of familiarity that I couldn't place.

Then, as I was slurping the remains of my coke, a colossal Dodge Ram pickup burbled past us and I had a weird moment of cognitive dissonance: it felt exactly like we were in the US. Sitting in the car with cartons of fast food, with a massive (and massively pointless) truck rumbling by and surrounded by acres of tarmac and plastic chain restaurants it could have been any one of a number of places we stopped at in June.

That holiday has had more of an effect on me than just about any other in the last few years; it's not that I actually remember a great deal about it but I find myself reminded of situations we encountered or places we visited at the most unexpected times.

I think it was probably the 4°C temperature and persistent rain that finally broke the illusion. We left just in time to A) hit a load of traffic and consequently B) arrive half an hour late. Nice.

I had dinner with my infuriatingly culture-hopping, jet-setting and generally interesting parents on Sunday night; freshly back from Milan and Cologne, my Dad's now talking about building a Lotus 7 replica and my Mum is already planning a return trip to Cologne to buy some new furniture. This Nürburgring trip can't come soon enough - with Ruth off in Australia and apparently having an excellent time, I've been relegated to last place in the Most Exciting Family Member stakes. The more cynical/realistic among you might well argue that I've already been there for ages.

P.S: My hair continues to grow in a ludicrous fashion. I'm starting to resemble the kid from Flight of the Navigator. Starting to dress like him as well, which is perhaps more worrying.

Q: "What's it called?"

A: "Cumbernau- what the hell is that thing?"

A few post-work drinks on Friday night became a rather enjoyable evening and ended up with me staggering home at some ungodly hour and then getting up half an hour before I was due to meet Davis for Saturday's TM practice. I took a taxi (a rather warm one - not good for the old nausea) to meet him and we headed off towards Glasgow. There were signs advertising a 30 minute delay on the M8 so we took the plunge and headed for Falkirk instead. Or rather, Davis did while I lolled near insensibly in the passenger seat and tried to avoid befouling the interior of his car.

Just after we left the M8, a sign declared that there were 60 minute delays on our new route. From my point of view, the delay probably saved the practice; by the time we crawled into Cumbernauld and grabbed ourselves some food, my body was rallying and the threat of disastrous digestive problems was receding. The town centre delivered the final mental defibrillation by the mere fact of being completely, unreconcilably hideous: I ranted and spluttered as we drove through its monstrous shadow and felt almost normal again.

The practice, short as it was, went quite well, but I think we're in need of a gig (possibly at the end of January) to get us properly up and running. A new song or two wouldn't hurt as well, but general injury is still keeping us from playing at our best. It'll come, no doubt.

We got back to Edinburgh sans delay, and I was almost joyously healthy again. I ironed a shirt and put on my current pet ridiculous suit, aiming for 'swing' but unfortunately hitting 'mod' instead, and headed out.

I'd go into detail about the night but suffice it to say that it was a fun, breathless rush from party to party to Vegas, encompassing a near-monopoly of the first dancefloor by the usual swing suspects; an unwitting abandonment of your host by the same; a happy reunion half an hour later and a night at Vegas marked mostly by some thoroughly ridiculous dancing by, of course, me.

A few of us wound up at Michelle's flat afterwards and had it been summer, the sun would have been coming up by the time I walked home. A good night!

On Sunday I had a burger. That was it.

In the style of Papa Lazarou: "Hello Dave."

Tiny Monkey got together for a slightly crippled practice on Wednesday night. My finger was still painful if I applied any pressure with it, and Mart's voice seemed to have started to re-break. I popped a load of Ibuprofen, we ate and drank heartily at the Basement and got to Banana Row more or less on time.

Doug and Davis were there already; we set up in something approaching record time and started battering away at some random riffs. Despite the absence of singing and the occasional muttered profanity as I forgot not to use my staved finger, there was a perceptible energy (God, I hate using that word in a non e=mc² way) and I was pleased with how quickly things got back to feeling like a normal session.

So, just as we're getting into the swing of things, the door opens and in wanders a dreadlocked blonde girl.

TM: "Uh, hello?"
DBG (sporting a strange hybrid American/European accent): "Hi! Davey said I could sit in for a while."
TM: "Davey?" <all point at Davis> "You mean Davis? Dave? David? This is Dave."
DBG, sitting on the couch: "Davey said I could listen to you guys for a while."
Davis: <shrug>
TM: "Do you have the right band- oh, never mind."

We looked at each other, then we looked at the now making-herself-comfortable girl on the couch.

"Christ. Oh alright then."

We played away for a while, exchanging a combination of meaningful and nonplussed looks as we did so. And then, much as icing is applied to a cake, Davey himself made his entrance, shaven headed and baseball capped.

TM: "Ah. That Dave. Hello Dave."

As an exercise for the reader, I'll leave it to you to ponder the implications of a vocalist returning unannounced (although mercifully bereft of a particular toy Casio keyboard) to a band that has spent the past three months adapting to a radically different, vocals-included lineup.

An interesting practice. And at the risk of offending any one of at least five interested parties, I'm going to go out on a limb and predict that the new TM lineup is going to remain intact.

Jazz! Nice.

It's been one of those disjointed weeks without any one really big event; I managed to do something mostly fun and mostly interesting each night without feeling the need to write home about any one of them. Lucky for you, then, that I seek validation through publishing verbose accounts of prosaic boozing and everyday chat.

Thursday night - see Flat Booze Destruction Day. Civilised post-swing drinks turned into a 2 am session where we reminisced with an old Pear Tree barman and argued over the nature of relationships. Ironic, really, that none of us appear able to hold one down without severe, repeated mental trauma.

Ah well. We commiserated, and it was good.

On Friday night I absconded from a work leaving do to join Jeff, Jez and the French girls for retro flat booze destruction. I dragged myself home at about 4 am after a drinking game, involving bouncing beer bottle caps into shot glasses, degenerated into straightforward drinking because the game was too dull.

I woke up with a bit of a cold on Saturday. And yes, I do know the difference between 'cold' and 'hangover', thanks. This always happens: I can't remember the last sick day I took off work and whenever I do suffer from anything approaching ill health it's at the weekends. Anyway, I struggled through the day (by stumbling around in my dressing gown and whining a lot) and that evening I went out to the Jazz Bar with Dave, Ali and some of her mates. It was a great night: lots of excellent chat with Ali's all-round top friends; plenty of booze and some jazz that was genuinely engaging as opposed to impenetrably wanky. The cover of High and Dry was perhaps a step too far, but I'll let it slide for the time being.

At one point I was in the toilet cubicle, noisily emptying my clogged-up nasal tract and then just sniffing like a bloodhound. I came out of the cubicle and bumped into a friend of Ali's (name redacted!) who rubbed his nose conspiratorially and said "Got some charlie, mate?"

"No," I replied. "I've got a cold."

Maybe you had to be there.

[As an aside to anyone who cares: what is it with jazz bassists and the monstrously over-engineered basses they invariably play? It looks to me that a six string neck the width of an aircraft carrier serves only to allow the average jazz bassist to play in a fractionally more relaxed fashion, without having to move out of a four fret range.

Four strings, please. Four. You want chords, you play a guitar.]

As a last hurrah, I went out for a couple of quiet pints on Sunday night, having accidentally locked myself out of the flat. Fortunately Dave, or 'Fate', as my phone's predictive text would have it, intervened to let me back in.

And predictably, I feel completely fine today.

Email from Doug re the weekend's amusements:

B2: "Hello, Berkeley 2."
ME: "Hi. We have a rehearsal booked today at 3 o'clock under the name Tiny Monkey."
B2: "Uh huh, yes."
ME: "I'm afraid to say that bass player has a broken hand from street fighting last night and the rest of the band are cripplingly hungover. So we will have to cancel the rehearsal."
B2": "AAAARRR HAHAHAHA HARHARHAR HAR HAR HAR HAR"

I laughed, anyway.

Saturday night's alright for fighting, part 2:

Katie's off to Glasgow for a new job there and so she threw a flat cooling-type party for all of her Edinburgh mates. It was really good fun; I spoke to a load of people I hadn't seen for ages (as is always the way at Katie's parties, it seems - the definition of 'for ages' in this case is probably just 'since Katie's last party') and happily ploughed through a load of beer.

I knew maybe half the people there; the rest, I think, were Katie's old and new workmates and some of their friends. Jeff and I had a small chuckle about a wide-boy stoner type who refused (in a hilariously earnest way) to take off his beanie and hoodie indoors, citing a medical condition that made him too cold. He seemed a little sketchy for the party - didn't quite seem to fit in, and I was rather glad when he wandered off to talk to some other people.

At some point I became aware of sketch-boy and another guy having a heated disagreement over, of all things, whose joint he was smoking. Somehow a third guy got involved and before I knew it, I was standing outside the front door of the apartment block with Jeff, Devon, some random others and the three protagonists. The second guy, a workmate of Katie's as far as I could gather, really wanted beanie man to leave. More, accurately, he wanted him to "Just fucking GO HOME and take your prick friend with you! You always manage to spoil these parties."

A neighbour was understandably interested in who was shouting like an about-to-be-murderer, so he stuck his head out of the window and I trotted off to reassure him that we were dealing with it. Hard to be convincing when some near-lunatic is shouting bloody murder behind you at 2 am.

Anyway, somehow beanie man and Katie's workmate were separated and I think beanie man left. (It sounds a bit clichéd, but it really was 'heat of the moment' stuff and I wasn't exactly keeping a blow-by-blow diary of the evening, so I may be getting some of this back to front. Jeff or Devon can maybe put me right.) The third guy, brought along by beanie man, wanted to pick up his jacket or wallet or something so he ended up back at the party and immediately started acting up, having a go at Sam of all people. Sam is the very definition of laid back, and I cannot possibly imagine what caused this idiot to throw a punch at him, but we got him downstairs (again, Jeff, Devon and I) and made sure he didn't come back in.

Everything was just about okay: this guy was clearly angry, drunk and quite possibly on something or other, but we were keeping him calm enough to not quite attempt to fight with us.

His mistake was first trying to kick me, clipping my left hand in the process, and then throwing a punch at Devon. Both of these things annoyed me, so I wrestled him to the ground to stop him getting any more lairy and then shouted at pretty much everyone to calm the fuck down. (I've just re-read that paragraph and realised that it sounds ridiculous. But seriously, that's pretty much what happened.)

Eventually he wandered off. We went back to the party, sporting various minor designer injuries - cuts and bruises to hands and faces, mostly - and I lightly shook for a while until someone stuck a glass of whisky into my hand.

Once the party was winding down and I was less concerned about being accosted by any of the nutters involved, I walked along to Stockbridge with a friend of Katie's (trust me, this was for my security as much as hers!) and then up to the flat without incident.

I woke up the next afternoon with an absolutely killer hangover. I mean truly epic. I called Doug to beg off the afternoon's TM practice because I couldn't play the bass without my left hand twitching with pain and went back to bed. And then, right on cue, my parents arrived to witness the spectacle of their hollow-eyed, bruised and scraped offspring attempt to make coherent chat. Terrific.