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!