Last week kicked off with the annual Coba Fynn & Friends (post) Christmas Night Out at the Celtic Connections Festival Club. We assembled at Khublai Khan’s to gird our loins before heading along to the Central Hotel. This high concept, medium execution restaurant has always puzzled me a little. Call me a sceptic, but I’m fairly sure the Mongol hordes didn’t generally sit down to a campfire barbeque of shark, zebra or kangaroo all that often. Aside from anything else, kangaroo is just so chewy. But then I’m not a culinary historian, so I shall leave the scholarly proof of this thesis to someone else.

After the meal we threaded our way between the drunken Saturday night lunatics and over to the Central Hotel. We found a table in the dining room, turned over to the many teuchter revellers for the night, and sat down to chat away the rest of the evening. Enough sound leaked in from the main stage to lend a celtic air to proceedings and eventually we wandered through for a dose of pleasant but slightly uninspiring music. The Captain and I walked the three miles back to the south side at 3 am, steadfastly ignored by each and every cabbie in favour of homeward-bound five-packs of wobbling sequin-dressed tarts. Despite the extended traipse home though, it had still been a good night.

* * *

On Monday I joined Jeff, Devon, Neil & Vanessa at Jez’s sister Rowena’s debut art show up in Tollcross, and, when prompted by Jez for my opinion, I made the offhand comment: “I like the framed prints best.”

“You mean the ones that aren’t by my sister?” he replied, rather impressively pitching his question without a hint of disappointment.

“Oh! Ah. There are two artists on show? I do like your sister’s drawings too—”

(“They aren’t drawings – they’re done with graphite, not pencil,” he interjected smoothly, politely illuminating the deepening hole I was in.)

“—but my own sister was doing some woodblock printing recently and that’s why the lino prints caught my eye.”

All of which was true, and yet somehow rang splendidly hollow. I would post a link to some of Row’s work to prove that it really is good, but sadly she would appear to be utterly absent from the web.

* * *

On Thursday night I was over in Edinburgh yet again, this time for a gig down at the Bongo Club. Keef’s new band were playing, and despite his youthful enthusiasm for Coba Fynn gigs I hadn’t returned the favour since 8 Million Ways to Die, back in the days of Tiny Monkey.

Keef brought me up to date with the current inhabitants of the Castle Street flat, all there to cheer him on, and I questioned Amanda, the new occupant of my old room, about how she was getting on. “Seen any fights at the gay bar? How’s business at the brothel?” Fortunately for all of them (I’d had a few jars earlier with some work types and was in an extra-garrulous mood), my chat was drowned out when the Kirstyn Knowles Band took to the stage.

I’d listened to a few of their songs on their Myspace page (and you should too), and it should have been a great gig. They played extraordinarily well as a group and had obviously been practicing hard. Keef is a particularly strong drummer, and he and Garry the bassist were a compelling rhythm section.

Unfortunately, the sound guy was a complete donkey. Kirsty’s vocals were barely amplified at all, and the levels for the rest of the instruments were all over the place. Incredulous looks were traded around our table with each new, even more crappy adjustment to the mix. The band were good but my word, the sound was criminal.

We all hung around afterwards to catch the last band, called The Gallery. We blethered away, waiting for them to start. I said hi to Doug, who arrived just after Keef’s lot had finished. The music began suddenly and we all shut the hell up; partly because it was too loud to talk but mainly because the band was incredible. I’d place them somewhere near Biffy Clyro in their Blackened Sky phase, only with talent. I stood agape, occasionally confiding to Doug some pithy insight—“Fuck, these guys are good,” or “Bloody hell! Did you hear that?”—until they finished, and stunned, we applauded.

I’d demand that you go to their website and listen to the songs on it, but the two recorded tracks there are oddly flat compared to their live performances so I’d recommend catching a gig instead. They were so impressive I wouldn’t be surprised if, in five years’ time, I’ll be able to wave dismissively at them on Later…with Jools Holland and tell whoever cares to listen that I saw The Gallery way back when, in a converted student union in Edinburgh. Tremendous stuff.

Doug was kind enough to put me up in a spare room in his flat that night, and as an unexpected bonus, locked me in the next morning. I was able to sleep off my hangover until he returned my emergency text message, telling me where to find the spare keys. A puncture on my cycle to work made me even more ridiculously late; I rolled into the office just after noon to a round of applause from our chortling customers and tucked in to their complimentary lunch. Good times.

* * *

I was happily typing out this entry on the train home tonight*, on my little fold-out keyboard, when a couple of young kids looked up from their McDonald’s and came over to boldly ask if they could have a go. I slid the phone+keyboard over to them and pointed out how to make capitals, delete letters and so on, and answered their questions.

“What are you writing about, mister?”

“I can’t really dress this up, kids—I’m writing about me.”

So they played away and were eventually herded brusquely off the train by their dad at Falkirk High. I felt a little sorry for them: their dad had been occupied with his own mobile the whole time, eyes barely leaving it and occasionally issuing a distracted order to “Sit down Justin, sit down Britney. Leave the man alone,” while nursing a Coke. By the look of his eyes as they got off the train, he’d been nursing something a bit stronger before they’d boarded. The kids were inquisitive and bright, and the dad just the opposite. Depressing.

* Yup, that’s right—I’m writing about what just happened as I was writing. This entry is turning into a philosophical Möebius strip.