• Joy! I’ve bought a car: a ’92 Saab 900 Turbo. It drives like new, looks like new (if one could still buy cars patterned after the classic “mid-’80s lumpen Scandinavian hatchback” school) and yet has travelled far enough to be most of the way to the moon. Incredible.

    And it shifts. Road trip 2: Nürburgring folly is go!

  • Bafflement! I was in the Herald the other day. My abortive attempts last year to buy a flat and subsequent decision to give up in disgust was apparently worthy of a mention in an article about how difficult it is for first-time buyers in Scotland, and specifically Edinburgh. Katie came round to the flat (my rented flat! Woe is me) and posed me like a sullen, homeless Ken doll – looking about as animated – in an attempt to capture the authentic despair felt by us hard-done-by middle class professional types.

    It’s a hard life. Did I mention I’ve just bought a car?

    Predictably, despite being reminded to buy a copy of the paper multiple times, I forgot. Hopefully my parents will remember what I look like without it.

  • Rock! (Yes, rock is an emotion.) Finally, like the first relieved breath of a drowning man plucked from the raging sea, the Monkey has returned to form. We’ve recruited a fledgling backing singer (hello, Kerstin!) and created a monstrous cyborg Davis equipped with a Boss multi-effects pedal. And the gig plans for mid-March continue apace. Christmas lull be damned! We’re back.
  • Remorse! We finally got rid of the Christmas tree. (What’s that, only twenty-four days late?) Too big to throw out of our third floor window without denting the pavement or crushing the skull of an innocent bystander, Dave and I took hacksaws to it until we’d dismembered its stout form into a heap of forlorn branches.

    I felt like I was sawing up a corpse. I’m sorry, tree. And next year I’ll do it all again.