Ash & I spent a late Thanksgiving over at Jeff & Devon’s place on Friday night, where we were fed and watered in rather spectacular fashion. Brenna was over visiting* during a break from her trick riding gig at the circus, but rather than press her for anecdotes about clowns, horses or freak accidents involving a combination of the two, I instead addressed myself to the turkey and quaffed beer until the room swam before my bulging eyes. I refused dessert, so stuffed was I. We blethered away until fatigue and inebriation forced an end to proceedings, whereupon Ash & I climbed up to the spare room’s cabin bed and I fell instantly into a snoring, open-mouthed slumber.

I awoke parched and sweaty, and gripped by a slight hysteria brought on by my first honest-to-God hangover in months. I nursed a tea on the couch until Ash, miraculously, irritatingly intact and raring to go, would no longer put up with my static whining and prodded me into getting ready for some Christmas shopping. We buttoned up and emerged squinting into the winter cold.

After a couple of fruitless hours we gave up and embarked on an impromptu mini pub crawl instead, first with Giancarlo and then joined by Scott & Angela. We hit the Café Royal’s endearingly dog-eared first floor lounge, only to find it had been cruelly dragged upmarket and transformed into the anxiously pretentious Voodoo Rooms. Next came the blisteringly antisocial speedcore metal of the Black Bull and finally the demographic bullseye of the Basement, where we and other young urban professionals between the ages of 25 and 35 coolly drank ourselves ignorant of Christmas shopping purgatory. A classy afternoon.

Aside from the weekend’s food and drink fest, it’s been a slow news week. In music, the ‘Fynn have bagged a couple of gigs, on the 20th of December at the Liquid Ship and the 5th of January at Barfly respectively, and in gossip, Charlie and Penny are pregnant! As Charlie wrote to break the news:

I have got news of a new member for the band. Dave already knows, as we got very drunk once and talked about it. Ah the drink, the drink. Penny is 12 weeks pregnant. Jesus, fuck.

The man is a poet. Congratulations, guys!

*…provoking a bit of misty-eyed reminiscence for me about the magnificent Road Trip #1, Brenna having been our guide to LA at the tail end of the trip.