The other side:

I went to see Travis on Tuesday night at the Liquid Room with Mart and Alice. Ash was feeling a bit under the weather and I was loathe to leave her, but the final episode of the OC was on and I had a sneaking suspicion she'd be in good hands. My bike bag was searched at the door and the bouncer confiscated my poncy, minuscule tyre pump for the duration, presumably in case I decided to maliciously inflate someone. We filed in, bought a pint and waited for the show to start.

I'd do a long, meandering review but it isn't necessary: Travis are really, really good live. I lost interest in their albums after The Man Who, but each time I see them in person they rock my socks off. Truly astonishing. CF would do well to take notes!

* * *
Ash and I drove through to a sunny Glasgow on Saturday to take a look around the university precinct and the West End in general. The area has a rough and ready bustle about it that Edinburgh lacks: the emotionless cattle that graze the shops on Princes Street on a Saturday put me in mind of the words "brainwashed" and "consumerism" in very close proximity, and it's just plain depressing. The West End, on the other hand, has an atmosphere that might reasonably be accused of vibrancy* and even the neds lend it a bit of colour (admittedly from a limited palette of green, blue and white) like so much sociopathic bunting.

The university area has that same mixture of ornate sandstone charm and forehead-smacking Brutalism that George Square does in Edinburgh, and just like George Square it's surprisingly attractive in the sun. We wandered around a bit: past the Hunterian and Ash's putative department, along storied Ashton Lane and then took the subway into the centre of town. There's a certain worldly feeling imparted to cities with a subway (even one so minimal as the Clockwork Orange) and again, it's something Edinburgh lacks. We're civilised over on the east coast, but we're not genuinely cosmopolitan, I think.

Alternatively, I may be reading rather too much into the presence or otherwise of a single underground train line.

We had some pub food at the Ubiquitous Chip on the way back to the car and took a scenic route home so lengthy that I began to wonder if I'd accidentally strayed into England. Back on the right road eventually, I let the Saab stretch its legs and the sun set just as we hit the outskirts of Edinburgh, lighting up the countryside briefly before descending into a damp greyness. A most edifying day, if I do say so myself.

* Yes, I know: "vibrancy". Very Rough Guide of me.

Lack of focus

is great.

Coba Fynn's mini tour is at an end (two out of three ain't bad, if I do say so myself); work has settled down to a dull roar that can be drowned out by some music and I've set aside, for the time being, my self-improving worthy novel reading project. To fill the void with meaningless trinkets, I went on a bit of an Amazon bender and I'm luxuriating in a spot of unabashed consumerism for the first time in ages. As a result, Crosby, Stills & Nash are taunting me with deceptively simple hippie-rock brilliance, and The Graduate soundtrack has me wishing for summer sun and an Alfa Duetto to drive in it. The Count of Monte Cristo has lost out to Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and even more shamelessly, Joss Whedon's Astonishing X-Men.

Over the weekend we drank with a pleasingly full house of the usual suspects (including the usually-absent Jez and Serena) on Friday, and on Saturday were entertained by Angela and Steve up at Ash's old flat. I ate until I suffered mild digestive distress, quaffed wine and beer and blethered at length about Victorian novels - I was lapsing back into reputability even against my better judgement. On Sunday the sun returned and we debated what to do. "Maybe drive along to Gullane?" I suggested. Our inertia overtook us and we made the weekly pilgrimage to the Star Bar's beer garden instead. In the end it was just as well we hadn't gone to the beach, what with a tonne of sewage a second spewing out into the Forth. Moral of the story: go to the pub instead. It's closer and one is less likely to contract hepatitis.

Prescient?

So we played two gigs at the weekend: on Friday we opened at Fury Murry's and on Sunday at the Universal.

Friday was the 7^th anniversary of the 'Fynn's first ever gig, and although we weren't playing in the same place as we had done back in 2000, Coba Fynn had a long and illustrious history of rocking Fury's before I joined and I was intrigued to see what all the fuss was about. Ash and I jumped in the Trøll, dribbled through the glutinous Edinburgh traffic* and then hared along the M8 in time for the "strict" 6-6.30 setup window.

Just to give a bit of context, Fury's lurks on a tributary of Glasgow's no-way traffic system, with a strip bar and the carbuncular St. Enoch's Centre for its nearest points of reference. It shares genes more with a fallout shelter than a club and to say it has sound quality is something of an oxymoron. We rose to the occasion and churned out a mediocre set. It really did blow: the sound on stage somehow went south between the soundcheck and our set, and I'm pretty sure it wasn't the presence of the crowd (thank you both for coming) altering the acoustics. So, unable to hear much of anything, we played shoddily through an abbreviated set and got the hell off the stage.

That is the last time I make a Titanic crack about a gig.

Fast forward to Sunday though, and everything that went wrong with Friday night was miraculously reversed. A practice beforehand tightened up the playing and sorted out three new songs; a venue small enough for un-mic'd amps gave us a great sound and an appreciative audience made all the difference. The Average Folk Band, headlining after us, were stonkingly good and provided an excellent soundtrack for the rest of the night. Hurray for the Universal! I sincerely hope we get to play there again, and I think Fury's has been edged out of the 'Fynn pantheon...

The gigs were bookended with a pleasant day in the sun with Ash: we lounged around beer gardens (drinking coffee, oddly enough, but then cafés with outdoor tables are few and far between round these parts) and ambled along the north sides of the New Town streets to keep the sun on our pasty faces. It feels like summer, or something like it, has finally arrived and everything looks rosy from here!

* I don't whether it's a hardening of the mental arteries as I get older, the fact that had I've more occasion of late to use the car than usual or whether the traffic really is worse, but my God! I can't drive within the Edinburgh city limits between 8.30 and 6pm without being overtaken by A) insensible rage and B) chancing bastards in the bus lane.

"Must be somebody famous..."

Coba Fynn played the Liquid Ship on Thursday. We soundchecked and retired upstairs for an hour or so, then filtered back downstairs with Charlie's massive entourage of medic mates as the hour drew near. Martin and I were hanging around near the door, waiting for the rest of the band to arrive, when I inadvertently overheard a Mum-and-Dad couple talking to their son.

"Wow - why are there so many people coming down here?"
"Must be somebody famous playing," remarked the son.

I pretty much cracked up right then.

We aimed for (and mostly hit) a relaxed, acoustic vibe and although we each managed a few technical howlers, it seemed to go across pretty well. I drove back to Edinburgh around midnight under a yellow moon, ominously silhouetting a jagged mass of cloud and giving the impression of a fell peak in the sky. All this visual drama was wasted on me, and I mostly spent the drive trying to remember what the word "gibbous" meant*.

Ash and I spent a superbly pedestrian Saturday afternoon loafing around Princes Street and the gardens, eating ice cream and generally indulging in a bit of unbridled consumerism. After a bit of filmic horse-trading ("Hmm. Spiderman 3 - well clearly we're going to see it whether we like it not, so...") we decided to go to see Sunshine later that day. Ash was more enthusiastic than I was, which is odd when the subject of the discussion was a science fiction epic with more than a passing resemblance to 2001, but then Danny Boyle squandered my Trainspotting goodwill with 28 Days Later and I'd been a bit sceptical since I'd heard about this new film. We had a coffee, bought our tickets and took our seats.

I was blown away from the word go: my jaw was either gaping in wonder or clenched in fear the whole way through. It wasn't without its flaws - the South Park-inspired spacesuits look like they were designed more with iconic appeal than practicality in mind, the "bomb"'s ambiguous, improbably picturesque physics were a little cheesy and there were a few other common-or-garden holes in the plot - but taken as a whole it was incredible. The imagery is mostly convincing and occasionally amazing: the apocalyptic, claustrophobic observation room scenes are excellent and the burnished, Grecian shields of the two ships rolling together as they dock is pure Kubrick but spectacular nonetheless. The action is perfectly judged, exquisitely tense and brilliantly shot. In short, I loved it. I have a feeling it's going to rather eclipse poor old Spiderman.

* Man, I need to wean myself off florid 19^th century fiction.

Sunshine

Ash and I took advantage of the balmy weather on Saturday, promenading serenely through Inverleith Park and over to the Botanics, petting friendly dogs along the way. I remember walking through the "desert" glasshouse in the botanics a few years ago, standing on a yellow(ish) brick road with the Sahara behind me and Death Valley ahead. It's such an odd conceit but so fundamentally Victorian ("Let us bring the Empire to the citizens, a thousand cubic fathoms at a time!") that I can't help but look at the gardens more as a time capsule than a museum. Another glasshouse has a tiny, darkened aquarium room that was opened in 1967 (and last cleaned out in 1968) and again I couldn't help but gleefully embrace the notion that I'd stepped forty years back in time. Frankly, I learned nothing about plants or fish but I had a great time anyway.

In the afternoon I took the iron steed for a ride up and around Arthur's Seat. I'd been using it week in, week out for about six months now without tackling anything more challenging than Broughton Street, and I thought it was about time I worked up a sweat.

Turns out one gear is easier than twenty-one, which is very odd: there's a fairly small range of speeds that are comfortable with a ratio of 44/16, so I found myself sprinting up (relatively speaking anyway) the steep bits and easing off on the smaller gradients and before I knew it was up by St Margaret's Loch and stretching out my noodly, unexercised arms. I freewheeled down the rest of the way in the sun with mechanically-minded passers-by grimacing at the racket.

On Sunday morning we toddled round to Jeff & Devon's for a masterclass in french toast making for me, and brunch for everyone else. Fortified with excellent breakfast grub and culinary knowledge, I headed off to Glasgow for the final Coba Fynn practice before our mini tour commences this Thursday at the Liquid Ship and would almost certainly applied my big fat "excellent weekend" stamp to this entry were it not for the arrival on Monday morning of a letter threatening legal action on behalf of BT. One phone call later and it transpired that in addition to barely meeting the definition of "telecoms company", they are incapable of properly maintaining (ex)customer records. If my eyes roll any further back I'll be examining the inside of my skull.