Lying low:

turns out working five days a week is pretty much not as much fun as exploring the deep south and attempting to extract some half-baked cultural conclusions from DIY disaster tourism. But lo, we are back and making the best of it.

Ash and I drove to Glasgow at the weekend: me for a Coba Fynn practice and Ash for some Christmas shopping. I don't think I've ever noticed how grim Glasgow is before. As convenient as the M8 is, there's nothing like a motorway spearing through a city to give it that urban wasteland feel. The city centre manages to be both gaudy and tatty at the same time (especially around Christmas with all the lights, all the shoppers, all the rubbish and the ever-present mish-mash of architecture) and is clogged with traffic despite the hellish one-way system. It'd be almost like downtown Memphis if it wasn't for the throngs of neds giving it a higher population.

But I digress. The practice went remarkably well, given that we haven't played together regularly for a couple of months, and I'm feeling very relaxed about our next gig. We're playing as part of a Free Candy session on Tuesday the 5^th of December at the Liquid Ship on Great Western Road in Glasgow. Notionally this is an acoustic night; in reality we'll deprive Doug of his tom-toms and hope for the best.

This is all in preparation for a balls-out New Year bash at Cabaret Voltaire on the 29^th of December with the Green Day-baiting Proxy. The gig description isn't up yet, but perhaps Charlie's first draft:

Coba Fynn are a most precocious talent. Missing this chance to see them may be an error.

will convince you to go anyway.

In other news: Casino Royale really is very good; The Departed is not, and Davis has pimped a Creme Egg. That is all.