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.