Limpet Bizkit

Last week I had the notion that Ash and I should have a day out of some kind: a mini road trip, in effect, to blow away the cobwebs of too many 40-hour weeks since our last big holiday. I brought the Trøll back from work on Friday evening so we could hop in and enthusiastically drive off at daybreak the next morning. Subsequently we went out with Austen, Maria and Angela for a few drinks and hit the sack rather later than intended.

Saturday morning came and went in a couch-potato haze but with my idea stubbornly refusing to die a death, I dragged a justifiably complaining Ash round to the car. Truth be told, I was feeling pretty ropey myself but if there's one thing I've learned from my parents it's that you will enjoy yourself, dammit! Our one errand for the day was to buy a new TV to reduce the eye-strain meted out by Ash's portable set, so we stopped by Cash Generator to pick one from the graveyard of dubious legality and loaded it into the back of the car.

"So where should we go then?" I asked, having failed to settle on a sensible destination despite my insistence that we go there, wherever there happened to be.
"I don't know," wailed Ash, "I feel awful. My eyes hurt!"
"Let's go to Gullane," ever my fall-back position for pleasant weekend drives.
"Okay, okay. Let's go then."

So we set off. Mindful of the vacuum tube in the boot, I took it easy (not that the sunny day traffic and continual roadworks afforded much chance to pick up any speed) and so we crawled out east to arrive around three with the sun still high in the sky but producing no palpable warmth. We rolled to a halt in the gusty beach car park and hurried gingerly down the path to the shore where the beach opened up before us. Some hardy outdoor types were picnicking and watching a solitary, insane kite-surfer battle the wind.

"Man, I feel terrible," I said to Ash. We looked pathetically at each other, turned and bolted back to the car.

Stuck in a fifteen minute traffic jam just outside Portobello with hunger, fatigue and seemingly unending headaches bearing down upon us, Ash pointed at a Burger King sign just visible across a deserted car park and said emphatically, "We need burgers!"

We practically skipped back to the car. Or we would have done if the saturated fat hadn't been weighing us down.

P.S. The title, by the way, is in reference to a game that Scott and Angela introduced us to on Sunday night: try to come up with band names that involve fishy or otherwise marine terms. Try it. B:Ream. Sole 2 Sole. Bob Marley and the Whalers. Sweeet.