T minus three weeks or so

until the Monkey plays its next gig. I drove Davis and Kerstin through to Glasgow for the Saturday rehearsal. And I'd like to apologise to the driver of the silver Clio I cut up/zoomed past on the way onto the motorway. I heard a doppler-shifted horn during that particular maneouvre which makes me think I may have startled them a little and I feel a smidgen bad for that...

Anyway, after hoofing along the M8 I was feeling a little on edge (at 90 mph, every BMW is an unmarked cop car) and I didn't really settle into the practice very well; a shame, because even though I was less enthusiastic than I might have been, everyone else was doing sterling work. I'm feeling a hell of a lot more confident now than I was a few weeks ago!

Having hummed and hawed about it for a week or two, I managed to convince myself on Sunday that I don't need another winter coat, especially a vaguely military one that is redundant for the oxymoronic reasons that A) I've managed to miss the whole military jacket bandwagon by oh, six months, and B) I already have one, albeit one that's six years old and whose age belies an unwitting and unhelpfully timed bout of fashion prescience. (Pick the clauses out of that sentence.)

So anyway, I was walking along Princes Street and wandered into Schuh with a view to replacing my nigh-cylindrical Etnies. I came out having unrepentantly spent more money than the coat would have cost and am, as a result, immensely pleased with my so-trendy-they're-probably-already-bust Feit trainers.

More worrying is the fact that I also bought, and cannot wait to get home to change into, a pair of Hush Puppies. I think they come with a free pipe and Reader's Digest.

Most worrying is that I've just spent the past three paragraphs describing the thought process that led to a shoe purchase. Josh and Jeff used to jokingly (you were joking, right guys? Guys?) refer to me as Imelda Marcos and now it's come back to roost.

On Sunday night Ashley and I (mostly Ashley) cooked for a load of the usual suspects who have fed and watered me/us more times that I can remember, and it was good. I had a hideous realisation about half way through a rave about how the Amaretto was so good I could just drink it straight from the bottle that I had become the drunken entertainment for the evening. I followed that up with a serious of factually weak anecdotes and then went to the pub. Good times!

"Underworld Colon Evolution"

is how Underworld: Evolution is correctly read aloud. Dave and I went to see this on Monday and while it wasn't bad per se, it was more or less completely identical to the first. Not so much evolution as treading water. Harmless (apart from the gore, gratuitous sex and swearing), mindless (apart from the intestinally tortuous plot) fun (apart from the boring middle section), more or less.

Oh, and I decided to officially recognise Valentine's Day this year. In previous years I've mostly ignored it (or wished that I'd had the option to ignore it), because my feelings about the day itself usually lay somewhere between "meh" and "this blows goats". This time round everything was marvellous, and did not blow goats. We (oh, how I taunt you) did absolutely nothing special, just had a few drinks in sundry nice little bars and talked about the usual stuff. Excellent!

TM have really pulled the collective finger out of late, turning in at least three good practices in a row. Pestering the staff at Banana Row for the bigger room is paying off: we can all fit in the room without danger of stuffing guitars and drumsticks into each other and Mart can sing without feedback pulverising our eardrums. This, along with the increasing urgency lent by the approaching gig is making us actually pay attention and Saturday's session at Berkeley 2 was one of the best yet. We don't sound perfect, but mostly we sound right.

Before I forget to plug it (ha! I'll spam everyone I've ever said more that three words to), the gig is going to be on the 23^rd of March at the Bongo Club. We're not on the programme yet (and given the reluctance of the booking chap to stick his head above his desk, are unlikely to be for a while), but Proxy assure me that it's all in hand. It's going to be worth coming along - if TM's vaunted new elecroclash/ska direction doesn't float your boat, then you're dead inside. 100% fact.

I've had a bit of a filmic week in general; after getting back from the practice in Glasgow, I went to see Good Night, And Good Luck on Saturday night with Ashley, Austen and Maria because Walk The Line was sold out. I enjoyed it in spite of slightly plodding pacing: great acting and excellent period detail. Splicing in archive footage of McCarthy's borderline paranoid rants was a stroke of genius; David Strathairn's twitchy calm came across as that much more rational and believable. Good stuff!

We ended up going to see Walk The Line on Sunday instead. I feel a bit guilty about not enjoying it quite so much: Joaquin Phoenix is good, but he's not as method as David Strathairn, yo. If nothing else, it was enjoyable in a far less vapid manner than Underworld, and I didn't feel like I'd just eaten my entire daily intake of calories in the form of fizzy cola bottles.

And now, dear diary, I wish to fuck off home given that I'm still in the office and working on a non-feature to combat a non-bug that will serve only to exacerbate the imagined problem. O happy day!

Pentlands chicanery!

What an all-round top week.

On Wednesday night I drove round to Jez' flat to show off the yuppie-mobile and to do a bit of route-planning for RT2. We've come up with a classic GT route that takes in lunch in SW1, a cruise through France and Belgium to the track, down to Luxembourg for par-taying in a Grand Duchy-stylee, two days with no planned route in Champagne (I know! Crazy. You just never know what's going to happen in this mad, mad middle-class life) and finally a sprint to Cherbourg or Le Havre to return.

Route duly planned, Jez proposed that we take a drive to his favourite road through the Pentlands. I thought why the hell not; I'm only just getting used to the car and some light hooning would be just the ticket to get to grips with it.

It was fucking mental. '70s headlight technology, a moonless sky and a wet single-track road do not engender a relaxing driving experience. Fortunately we didn't crash, the car handled it far better than I had expected and when we turned back to Edinburgh I was grinning like a fool.

I picked up Ashley from the airport on Thursday morning and took it rather easier on the way back into town. "I get motion sickness," she explained, and looked to be the picture of jetlagged bewilderment. I had visions of the Marvin-head-explosion scene from Pulp Fiction, only with, y'know, a stripey laugh, and took it even easier.

TM got together that night for another practice, and it rocked. Pure and simple. They're getting better each time. I think the presence of a new face has impelled us to get our shit together; trying to convince someone to join as a new vocalist is made rather easier when we don't play like we're all slightly stoned.

The weekend was a pleasing blur of light, heavy and moderate boozing with some general pootling around the flat and a narrowly avoided party apocalypse at Jez' flat in between. I am left tired but happy.

P.S. And I've got a torque wrench on order. I barely know what it does, but already I feel like a mechanic. What can possibly go wrong?

I am utterly devoid

of writing juice. I'm juiced out; wrung like a dessicated lemon skin or hollow kiwi husk.

I think that second sentence bears the first one out rather convincingly, n'est-ce pas? However, I am nothing if not bloody-mindedly persistent, and so I'll press on into the wilds of writer's blo(g)ck. You lucky things.

I seem to have done everything twice this week: two TM practices (the less said about the first the better); two drives through to Glasgow in the Saab (the less said about the second the better) and two big nights out (both of which thankfully can be written about without causing me retroactive physical pain).

The first practice was a farce of the first order. It has become, through unspoken, desperate concencus, a practice of which we do not speak. I still shudder whenever I come perilously close to actually thinking about it. We shall talk of it no more.

The first night out - Ben's leaving do on Friday - came and went without incident, and I was able to get up on Saturday morning to run some errands. You know, return a Christmas present for my Dad, get a cringe-inducing bad haircut prompting the comment "My Mum had the same haircut in the '60s"; that sort of thing. I jumped into the car and careened down to Carnwath and up to Glasgow to take my mind off my Princess Diana mop and get the hang of the car.

Initial long drive impressions: it's fast enough to get me into trouble, corners well enough to persuade me that I wasn't in trouble in the first place and brakes unconvincingly enough to make me think that I may be on the receiving end of the Crunch^TM rather earlier than I would like. It does cruise very well, though. Makes far more sense for RT2: NF's pan-European travels that a fire-hazard Porsche at any rate.

I had grand plans to get away early-ish from Jeff's birthday bash that night so that I could pick up Davis and Kerstin for Sunday's make-or-break TM session. Let's just say that I enjoyed the night and that I did not enjoy the next morning one iota.

We arrived forty-five minutes late, with various levels of hangovers, and proceeded to have a really good practice. We chewed the fat in the 13^th Note afterwards, and the sense of relief was palpable. Forward the Monkey! (Now with 100% more retro-yuppie transport goodness.)