The week: an emotional rollercoaster.

Joy! I've bought a car: a '92 Saab 900 Turbo. It drives like new, looks like new (if one could still buy cars patterned after the classic "mid-'80s lumpen Scandinavian hatchback" school) and yet has travelled far enough to be most of the way to the moon. Incredible.

And it shifts. Road trip 2: Nürburgring folly is go!

Bafflement! I was in the Herald the other day. My abortive attempts last year to buy a flat and subsequent decision to give up in disgust was apparently worthy of a mention in an article about how difficult it is for first-time buyers in Scotland, and specifically Edinburgh. Katie came round to the flat (my rented flat! Woe is me) and posed me like a sullen, homeless Ken doll - looking about as animated - in an attempt to capture the authentic despair felt by us hard-done-by middle class professional types.

It's a hard life. Did I mention I've just bought a car?

Predictably, despite being reminded to buy a copy of the paper multiple times, I forgot. Hopefully my parents will remember what I look like without it.

Rock! (Yes, rock is an emotion.) Finally, like the first relieved breath of a drowning man plucked from the raging sea, the Monkey has returned to form. We've recruited a fledgling backing singer (hello, Kerstin!) and created a monstrous cyborg Davis equipped with a Boss multi-effects pedal. And the gig plans for mid-March continue apace. Christmas lull be damned! We're back.

Remorse! We finally got rid of the Christmas tree. (What's that, only twenty-four days late?) Too big to throw out of our third floor window without denting the pavement or crushing the skull of an innocent bystander, Dave and I took hacksaws to it until we'd dismembered its stout form into a heap of forlorn branches.

I felt like I was sawing up a corpse. I'm sorry, tree. And next year I'll do it all again.

Snow fun anymore

now that I'm back from the Alps. Fortunately, the holiday Kicked Ass^TM, and I feel like a new snowboarder. Last year didn't really gel in terms of the boarding itself (even if the trip did include an apocalyptic night in a random club where I danced with a gay man and someone else's wife while Andy was sick over a radiator) but this year it all came together.

After a quiet first morning, I followed some of the more accomplished/reckless boarders up the Grand Motte gondola. It had started snowing at lunchtime or so, and by the time we got to the top it was entirely white - the ground might as well have been the sky, and vice versa. This was probably the freshest snow I've ever boarded on; it was literally falling as we went. I followed Maugan down the piste through a driving blizzard and couldn't wipe the grin off my frozen face. By the time we got to the bottom, 1500 metres lower, I'd already had more fun than any day from last year's trip: caning down a nigh-intangible glacier following the silhouettes of far more capable boarders than myself lent a rather zen air to the whole thing. There is no spoon, indeed.

The snow continued until Wednesday afternoon, when a few of us had booked an off-piste lesson. Our first run? An ungroomed black that was closed due to excess snow. Cedric, our devil-may-care instructor told us to "Lean back, and skim! Skim the snow!" and bombed off down the hill, dodging rocks as he went. We tried and failed to follow him, but two pistes later I'd inadvertently discovered the secret to off-piste riding: don't stop. Seriously, the only way to do it was to point the board down the hill and metaphorically speaking, just hang on. This was a bit of a revelation; previously, I'd been consistently dreadful on anything resembling powder snow - too many holidays in slushy spring conditions, I suppose - but after the lesson I was having a lot more fun even on small fields between pistes.

On the Friday I was starting to feel the burn a little (Tignes seems to be laid out such that all the traverses are on my heel edge, and my quads are still protesting a bit) but I gamely made my way over to the Vallon de Sache with Paul and Sarah to try out my mad new off-piste skillz. It was a fairly extreme Jekyll and Hyde run: the first hundred metres or so alternated between fluffy powder and skiied-out moguls, then a wobbly charge along a narrow flat section into more powder and finally into the trees where I met my terrain nemesis in the form of a 50-55° slope dropping off into a cliff.

Fortunately I stopped before the cliff part. I tried to climb back up to a higher line to follow Paul and Sarah but the snow was too deep to get any purchase. I sat there for five minutes and pondered my situation - I was genuinely starting to worry that I had bitten off more that I could chew. I strapped back in and gingerly traversed across to the left, finally getting back onto the near-vertical, icy piste. This was child's play compared to staring into the abyss, and I joyously, irresponsibly hurtled down it to await Paul and Sarah coming through the forest.

Mental, but well worth it, and an excellent holiday all round! Sitting in front of a computer all day is, at the moment, rather failing to cut it in comparison.

P.S: A special mention goes to the Alpaka Lodge for providing us with beer and quadrupedal entertainment in the form of two colossal wolfhounds and Tennessee the kitten, who was so cute I nearly barfed.

Overheard while planning boarding holiday:

someone ordering a taxi to the airport in the middle of the night. Luggage? Two person-sized bags.

At long last, the week's work emits a long, drawn-out death rattle and I can look forward to the serious business of falling down the side of a hill. Adieu!

It's ups and downs, ups and downs.

So, the first week of the new year. It started off badly enough then went mostly downhill from there. The first two days back at work were thirteen-hour marathons devoted to answering a battery of near-identical, mostly redundant and wholly irritating questions from our esteemed Japanese customers.

Midway through the second fruitless day, I got a phone call from the RAC engineer who had just finished inspecting the Porsche 924 I'd seen in a local garage.

It turned out that the fuel tank (£250) was close to death; the transmission (£545 and up for a rebuild) was leaking oil and was quite possibly fundamentally shafted; the engine (£80 for the relevant seals) had multiple oil leaks and the brakes were in dire need of attention. Oh, and the fuel accumulator (£80) was rusty. If I hadn't rammed a tree because of failing brakes, ground the engine and transmission into expensive mechanical paste or had the fuel tank fall out, there was still the exciting possibility that the thing might catch fire at any moment.

Most seriously of all, the horn went off at random times and really made you look like an idiot.

I decided, on reflection, that I wanted neither to burn to death nor appear to other motorists to be the sort of twit that uses the horn instead of the brakes and so I chose not to buy the car.

On Thursday evening I decided to play a bit of GT4 to take the edge off the disappointment of missing out on the 924. I won a few races, bought a few imaginary cars and accidentally turned off the PS2 before it had finished saving my (four months in the playing) game. I turned it on again, and the save was corrupted. Sweet! Way to go, self.

Then, on Friday morning, having gotten up and ready by 8.30 for a 9 am meeting, I left the flat to find that my bike had been nicked from the stairwell.

That pretty much capped an all-round bastard of a week.

I got to the meeting, bluffed my way through it and avoided everyone until it was time to go home. On the way back, I dropped past the old flat in the hope of a restorative cup of tea and somehow ended up staying for an accidental but fantastic dinner. I went out with Sam for a few jars after that and pretty much rinsed and repeated for the next two nights: an epicurean feast at the old flat followed by some light boozing with a thoroughly nice bunch of people.

Jez then sold me his disused but excellent bike for £50 on Sunday.

Thank God for friends, food and wine!

Arse!

The RAC inspection verdict is, paraphrasing a bit, that the 924 is a big pile of shit. Back to the drawing board...

New year, new nutter.

A while back, Gill casually mentioned that she'd invited some friends up for Hogmanay, and would it be fine if we had a smallish New Year's Eve party? Ali said that was fine, but she'd be in Australia. Dave and I mumbled assent while watching The Mighty Boosh for the n^th time and immediately forgot all about the party.

About a month ago, I panicked and spammed everyone I knew on the off chance that they hadn't already organised something for Hogmanay. I heaved a sigh of relief that I'd finally remembered to do something about it and then forgot about it once again.

Around half past three on the afternoon of the 31^st of December, I remembered about it for a second time, panicked for a second time, bought a couple of crates of beer and some ice and went back to playing GT4 for the rest of the afternoon. About half past eight that night, in the midst of a drinking game and with a playing card stuck to my forehead, the reality of the situation finally sank in and I hoofed it back to the flat in case anyone turned up.

Turns out the best way to organise a party is to studiously avoid organising it. People turned up in droves and it was, by all accounts, a rather good bash. I spent most of the time wandering round thinking "It can't possibly be going this well", given that we'd spent a grand total of half an hour preparing for it. The bells came, we trooped outside to watch the fireworks and then back to the party until people starting drifting away around three or four.

By five, things were mostly quiet: a few people were dancing in the living room (which had assumed the role of techno room thanks to Gill's new, tranced-up iPod shuffle); a few more were in the kitchen (the ambient room) and a very, very drunk guy called Simon was starting to get a bit lairy. At six, we were down to the flatmates and a few remaining die-hards. Simon had been convinced to go home and we closed the door behind him with relief all round.

This lasted about a minute, until Simon's shouted, repeated insistence that he wanted to go home floated through the door.

"Go home, then!" we told him. "It's downstairs!"

Sounds of shuffling around, sundry bangs and thumps echoed up the stairwell as we stood round the closed door and debated what to do with this season's fashionably caned idiot.

"Let's beat him up and throw him into the street," said Francis.
"I don't want to get into that sort of stuff again," I said. "Maybe he'll just wander off."
"I'm in Lincoln!" Simon shouted through the door, and then started to shoulder charge it.
"Oh, Christ," we all said and braced the door until he stopped a few minutes later.
"I've called the police," said Michelle.

They turned up as he started breaking panes of the stairwell's window.

"You've ruined my new year, you prick," the first policeman said as he sat on Simon.
"You're under arrest," the second said.
"No I'm not," said Simon.

They took him away and told us they'd be back in a while to take statements from at least a couple of us. We sat down in the living room to wait. A snoring partygoer on the couch farted loudly enough to wake the dead - a reverberating, thunderous raspberry of a fart - rolled over, and kept sleeping.

I went to bed and woke up at midday. The police hadn't come back, the flat smelt like black lung and the floors were sticky where they weren't carpeted with bottles. Good party!

Happy New Year!

etc., etc. I'll post something witty and erudite tomorrow but in the meantime you can have a look at Michelle's photos of the party.