A Christmas hamper

of random bits today, rather than a coherent post.

* * *
Ruth was working on Christmas Eve, in a little bar a couple of towns along from my parents' house. I drove along to pick her up after the pub had closed and they'd had a chance to close up, at about 1.30 am. When I arrived, there were still a few die-hards downing the last of their pints, so I hung my jacket over a bar stool and settled in to wait.

"This is my brother," Ruth said to her inebriated boss, who was perched precariously on another stool at the end of the bar.
"Oh aye," he said, "so the Saab is yours then?"
I'd loaned Ruth the Trøll while I was on holiday. "Yes. Nice to meet you too," I replied.
"They're great cars they are."
"Yes. Yes they are."

I waited a bit longer. The last group of drinkers were getting their stuff together, and on their way past an old schoolmate said hello. "Long time no see! You've got the Saab 900, right?" she said. We talked for a bit, and then they were off.

Ruth introduced me to the very last punter, a youngish regular, on his way out. "Hi there - so you're Ruth's brother?" Then, in slightly hushed, reverential tones: "That's a great car you've got. I love those Saabs."

These people do not get out much. "A 1992 900 S! And with the Aero kit, if I'm not mistaken. So rare that such an objet d'art comes to our humble village."

* * *
The hot water in our flat is, and has been for the last year or so, only intermittently functional. We have an odd setup whereby the hot water for the shower room and the heating comes from a modern combi boiler at one end of the flat, while the hot water for the bathroom and the kitchen comes from a grain elevator-sized immersion boiler at the other end. Needless to say, the apparently Victorian-era immersion heater functions reliably, if inefficiently, all year round. (The environment audibly groans when we fire it up.) The shiny new combi boiler is rather more of a prima donna.

A while back we discovered, after a succession of visits by largely moronic plumbers, that the heating system has a small leak somewhere. Evidently it's not large enough to easily detect, but it did let the pressure drop until we had neither warm radiators nor a hot shower. The final, competent plumber showed us how to open a top-up valve to refill the combi boiler until a proper fix could be applied.

Of course a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, and although the leak goes unfixed (hell, if anyone of our neighbours noticed a jet of scalding water gushing into their flat, I'm sure they'd let us know. And we did tell the landlord about it. Honest), we now merrily poke around with a screwdriver every few months to make sure the pressure's up.

Last week, though, a new problem arose. The shower became a turbo-sauna. It was like washing on the sun. I developed a technique for showering, which was to plaster oneself up against the tiled wall furthest from the geyser emitting from the shower head and let the superheated steam remove the outer layer of one's skin. Woe betide you if any of the actual water should graze your unprotected self.

Fortunately, and for no discernible reason, the temperature dropped back to a tolerable level during the week. This pleases me because I can shower in safety, and disappoints me because I am deprived of a punchline for this little anecdote.

* * *
In preparation for the upcoming CF gig, I plugged in my bass last night and played away for a while, gazing idly down at the twin curiosities of the gay-bar-for-neds and the brothel above it visible from my window. I was reminded of an evening a month or so back. On the way to Café Royal, I'd rounded the corner onto Rose Street when a drunken buffoon on a stag night stumbled out of a nearby pub, cornered me and asked where they should continue boozing. "And find some wummen tae, like."

He stank like a brewery and I sorely doubted his chances of both getting into any pubs or getting any once he was in there. But I was brought up well, and I tried to be helpful. "Hmm. George Street has a load of pubs, but they're all a bit posh." I had a rather evil notion. "You're already on Rose Street, and it's pretty good for pubs. There's one just across the road, actually-" I said, pointing down the alley to the gay bar, and right on cue, two people physically flew out of the door.

"And dinnae come back!" bellowed the barman.

My drunken friend went to George Street.

(Sort of) World Tour Redux:

Antipodean boozing and American rambling:

• Brisbane (photos)
  • The terrorists have already won
  • J'arrive!
  • The holiday gathers momentum
  • Torpedoed!
  • Insectile armageddon
  • Due to my sudden apparent respiratory dysfunction...
  • The eve of the wedding
• En route
• USA (photos)
  • Memphis
  • Tupelo, Hazelhurst
  • A week in New Orleans
  • The Gulf Coast
  • Mobile, Chattanooga & Nashville
  • Return to Memphis

Work in progress.

I've just moved the RF to Blogger's new layout system, and there are a few changes and glitches compared to the old layout. If anything is completely broken, please leave a comment on this post! Cheers.

The Manhattanite/Orwellian nightmare before Christmas.

For the first time in almost a decade, I've done most of my Christmas shopping before the day itself. I still needed to get something for my Mum and to pick up some wrapping paper and cards, and so on Sunday I walked along to Stafford Street to make my yearly pilgrimage to Studio One and Paper Tiger. I browsed around Studio One, comparing elegantly minimal, Scandinavian knick-knacks and settled on a sort of candlestick-thing. My credit card went into the machine and I duly punched in the PIN. Into Paper Tiger; select some suitably tasteful wrapping paper and some cards; debit card into slot and enter PIN #2.

The sheer Sex and the City-ness of it all assailed my senses. Here I was, on a crisp winter's evening, dressed in an accidentally fashionable pea coat bought six unfashionable years ago, ferrying home designer charity Christmas cards (like they say in Friends with Money, why not just give the money straight to charity?), wrapping paper so restrained as to be conceited and an Ikea-but-more-expensive candlestick. I didn't mind per se, but my God, did I feel ridiculous.

As soon as the pseudo-respectability turn had passed, I started thinking about the bizarre act of tapping in my PIN to identify myself as the appropriate card's owner. The reduction of this act to typing four digits into a keypad make the world seem a step closer to 1984. To the Man (the state is too inept to count as such, while your common or garden retail corporation is continually trying to extract the largest possible amount of money from me and isn't held back by troublesome ethics), I am quite literally just a number. Granted, I've been just a number for years now - to the electricity company, the telephone company and my bank among others - but the removal of any truly personal acts of identification, like matching a photograph or signing my name, seems like a step too far.

And then piled on top of any vague metaphysical concerns, there's what would seem to be the oddly lax security behind Chip & PIN. To wit: four digits isn't a big number to crack; a photo would massively restrict fraud should anyone get hold of my card (and assuage my increasing feeling of nothingness to boot), and I haven't yet seen a keypad with a worthwhile guard to shield your PIN from prying eyes. If these four numbers are all that stands between me and the supposed legions of identity thieves waiting to relieve me of all my money (ha! Give me three weeks of Christmas shopping and I'll do it myself), maybe a token effort at bolstering their security might be a good idea, n'est-ce pas?

Anyway.

Bookending this journey through ill-defined concerns about self and self-worth (in monetary terms at least) were a couple of pleasantly festive evenings hosted by Jez & Max and Jeff & Devon respectively. At Jez's we quaffed mulled wine and ate homemade mince pies, and at the old flat we ate and drank ourselves into a happy stupor. All in all, a moderately inebriated and wholly tasty weekend. Roll on Christmas...

A musical interlude:

Tuesday's gig went really well! We independently got to Glasgow and set up our gear in the Liquid Ship, then retired to Gambrino's Pizzeria for some food. After all, man cannot rock on lunch alone. We threw the grub down our throats with nervous energy, talked ourselves up over a calming beer and headed back to the bar to catch the last acoustic act before we took to the stage ourselves. Charlie's fellow medical types had turned out in pleasingly large numbers, as had the Captain (a man who really, really wants Coba Fynn to do well but who thinks we're crap) and Hannah.

After Davis/d(e) and Charlie had minutely tuned their guitars with the volume all the way up for the audience's benefit, we gamely skiffled our way into the Belle & Sebastian stylings of David Lynch's Lunchbox Blues. Apart from some slightly over-loud bass (at least I'd remembered to turn it on), it slipped past in three short minutes of indie goodness. We finished, they clapped, and the 'Fynn was back.

We proceeded through old and new songs for the next twenty minutes or so. Cracks in the rhythm section's composure appeared and healed up periodically, while the tuning of Charlie's guitar proved somewhat elusive. We got to Locomotive Blues, barrelled messily but (I think) winningly through it and ended on a high note. G, if I remember rightly. They clapped again and a few die-hards shouted "More!" We politely declined (Charlie: "We don't know any more,") and called it a night. Even the Captain was impressed. The first test is over, and a few more practices are all that stand between us and the main event at Cabaret Voltaire on the 29^th.

This band shit is awesome.

On Saturday night, the musical shenanigans continued. Ash, Jez, Serena and I went to Henry's Cellar Bar to watch an acoustic set by Mark Morriss of the newly rehabilitated Bluetones. We wound up in the Cameo Cinema bar; I wound up drunk, and Mark wound up being subjected to a half-hour, blow by blow account of our recent tour of the South. Good times!s

Ben, an ex-workmate

with a penchant for buggery motor sports, was up visiting over the weekend and so Dave had industriously coordinated a corresponding return to the go-karting track. It was raining on and off, so we struggled to put on rubberised romper suits over our fireproof overalls (we were covered come hell or high water) and waddled out, gangster style, to the karts. There's nothing like howling winds, biting cold and the grating buzz of a two-stroke single to fire the petrol in one's veins, n'est-ce pas?

These were newish karts by the looks of things, with lots of mudguards and heatshields to guard against the dangers of burns and lawsuits, and yet they already felt somewhat...run in. After the heats, it became obvious why: put a bunch of bumpers on a go-kart and it turns into a dodgem. I was nudged onto the grass, into tyres and occasional head-on collisions and by the final I was determined to stay out of absolutely everyone's way, whether ruthless veterans or hapless newcomers.

And the final was good. A good clean race and a respectable 5^th out of 16 doesn't make for a thrilling story, but I was far happier (if rather bruised) by the end of it. I can't believe it's been so long since the Nürburgring trip, and our day of pretend racing has me wanting to do it again.

In the absence of any other excitement, this is going to have to be a short entry. But remember: Coba Fynn are playing the Liquid Ship tomorrow night. We'll be on last (erk - is this the "headlining" of which they speak?), at around 11.10 pm. Come along! It'll be a spectacle, regardless of which way the cards fall.