In a strange twist of fate,

the timely winding up of one band has led me to suddenly be involved in three separate projects, thus removing at a stroke any and all free time I might have enjoyed as a result. This does not in itself displease me; quite the opposite, in fact, but has nevertheless turned me into a permanently knackered robotic* husk of a bassist devoid of free will and creativity. Not quite what I expected to happen.

Over the past couple of weeks, Mart and I have been prodding a few song ideas that were roughly contemporaneous with the death of the Monkey into sort of shared-source ideas for future use. Keef and I attempted to kick-start the K Project in much the same way the other night, but I've just run out of energy and ideas.

This, along with the fact that I've listened to nothing other than Lynyrd Skynyrd and Drive-By Truckers for the past month or so, has led me to renounce all claims to modernism for the time being and I now cling to the lifeboat of 12-bar blues with the chaps from the 'Fynn. I think I'll learn how to actually play a bit better before returning to the indie rock-face (ha).

On a slightly less me-me-me note, I went along to Finlay's gran's funeral on Wednesday. In an odd echo of things past, the last time I saw him was my own gran's funeral a couple of years ago, and it was heartening to see that he's much the same as ever. Marriage, fatherhood and mortality haven't changed him a bit, and with any luck we'll go out and get plastered sometime soon.

Which leads me neatly onto the weekend, which was both defined and destroyed by ye booze. On Friday night, Dave and I met up with our flatmate Ali and some of her friends before drinking ourselves into ludicrous oblivion. Jeff turned up with Paul, over from Berlin for other Ali's stag do (perhaps for Paul it was a Reichstag party? My sides!), and I wittered incoherently at them for a while. Ash also turned up, and when some dimly functioning sense of self-preservation finally made itself felt, I managed to leave the pub and wander most of the way home before realising she had not yet, in fact, left it herself.

Saturday morning and afternoon just did not happen.

Saturday night, on the other hand; well, it was almost exactly like the night before, only with the addition of hats, Hawaiian shirts, Josh, fake moustaches and very, very bad dancing in honour of Ali's last night of independent revelry. We survived a visit to Dropkick Murphy's and were about to make a last stand in Medina when we found out that our companion hen party was in Negociants. This was clearly a sign, so we collapsed with them instead and drank the rest of the night away.

Sunday morning and afternoon just did not happen.

In the evening, Josh came round for some bacon-based food and some wistfully nostalgic GTA, and after some pleasant catch-up chat, the weekend came to a gratefully early close.

* Speaking of robots, this lot clearly have the right idea - it could have come from the school of Hat Night itself. Good times.