As per usual,

the festive season has resolved itself into a constant stream of enjoyable nightly boozing and less enjoyable financial stress.

On Friday I went along to a mini bash at Vanessa's small but perfectly formed flat. We drank mulled wine and ate fun-size sausage rolls; I used the sentence "I'll need to consult the board on that one," in polite conversation and my (requested!) music choices were repeatedly passed over for Jewel and Ryan Adams in a kind of alt-country Christmas armageddon.

I met up with a load of workmates after the party started to wind down and when Broughton Street closed for the night, we hiked along to our flat to continue what was turning into a rather classic evening. The flat was still well-stocked with excess booze from my Dad's 60th and we tore into it with gusto.

Around 3 am I cornered some hapless girl by the stereo and proceeded to mercilessly castigate her for her lack of enthusiasm about Led Zeppelin. We engaged in a preposterous, bourgeois iPod battle over who had the coolest next song to play, swapping the cable between them every ten minutes or so and all the while lambasting each other's parochial and narrow-minded choices. Eye-wateringly middle-class, post-ironic and utterly, utterly top. I may even have been wearing a brown T-shirt with a wanky logo as well.

For my next trick, I will disappear completely up my own arse.

The end result of all this is that I've formulated a thesis (a bastard child of Godwin's Law) relating to debates about rock and roll:

As any debate about rock and roll grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Led Zeppelin approaches 1.

And as with Godwin's Law, the person that makes the comparison is assumed to have lost the debate. I say this not because the Zep are not the greatest rock and roll band ever to have walked the earth, but merely because my own chat will improve immeasurably if I can stop banging on about them after 6 pints or so.

On Saturday, the usual TM practice went particularly well: a new, Franz-tinged song is sounding remarkably good and we discussed the possibility of getting one of Jez's friends in to try out as a backing vocalist. I tell you, Russ Abbot has infused us with a renewed sense of purpose. What a guy.

Josh, up visiting from York this weekend, had asked me to organise an outing to Christmas Vegas that night. I duly assembled a crack team of no-shows and apologised profusely to him as we had a pre-club drink in the Outhouse. I made numerous passive-aggressive, pleading phone calls to everyone and in the end it all came together with only a moderate amount of fuss.

Josh, Jeff and I arrived early and warmed up by winning a few beers at blackjack and by then the rest of our crew had started to turn up. Michelle mentioned later that she thought it was a little quiet, but I really enjoyed it: Josh was off like an oiled whippet in search of ladies to dance with, and even I trotted out a few swing moves on the mostly empty dancefloor with Michelle and Kate.

Dave and his mate Bob turned up a little later, and then sometime even later in the crowded, sweaty depths of the basement, Keef appeared and we talked prog rock while keeping a weather eye on the particularly appealing Christmas crowd. There's a distinct Vegas mafia emerging, I think...

All in all, a rather splendid evening. I'd write more but I have to be off to the pub again now!