For four and a half hours.

We knocked back a few beers, flicked through the pile of somewhat current music magazines abandoned by the control booth’s previous occupants, and blethered idly. Finally Nick held aloft an unlabelled CD.

“Here it is.”

He wrote “Coba Fynn” on the disk with a black marker pen and handed it to Davis. There was general enthusiasm.

“Let’s get a drink! Nick, have you got time for a drink with us?”

And so began a night out to which I really struggle to do justice. The four of us grabbed a pint in the chilly courtyard of a bar just off Buchanan Street (the fact that I don’t remember its name may give you some clue as to where the evening was headed), then we said goodbye to Nick and the three of us took the tube to the west end to meet up with Doug’s sister Jackie and the Captain.

The thing is, that despite living in Glasgow for more than a year, I didn’t really get to grips with the city until the very last minute. I can try to pin the blame on any number of factors — the drudgery of commuting to Edinburgh, living down in the south side when really we should have held out for a flat in the west end, or even the trauma of redecorating a bathroom (it really was that bad) — but it occurs to me now that I might just have been suffering from undiagnosed nostalgia.

Back before the advent of the Roquefort Files, before Chris & Leyla left for the land of Oz, I found myself over in the west end of Glasgow for a few nights out with the extended ‘Fynn family. In the same way that Josh, Jeff and I parlayed our dank, lightless East Preston Street flat of the time into a stone-cold party machine, everything ‘Fynnish seemed to revolve around the idiosyncratic flat just off Great Western Road shared by Charlie, Doug and the Captain. There was boozing just round the corner in the coincidentally-named Captain’s Rest; there were parties, where guests would peer down at the words adorning the fish tank in the living room:

Neon tetra
Neon tetra
Tu es mon raison d’être

there was watching of 2001: A Space Odyssey in the small hours, and of course there was waking up the morning after and peeling one’s drooling face off the sofa. My expectations of Glasgow were subtly fixed by a few such episodes all those years ago.

Finding myself out again in the west end with Jackie, the Captain and the ‘Fynn acted as some sort of catalyst to bring not the memories themselves to the fore, but instead the state of mind. We ate; we drank; we drank some more; we tried to play the mastered album on Jackie’s CD player only to find that it would not work; we threw our hands up in consternation and then kept on drinking until we could drink no more. It was a great night — brightened just the slightest bit by the rosy glow of nostalgia, maybe, but a great night nonetheless.

P.S. Nick emailed us the CD image later in the week. It is good.

• Me
• Chris
• Neil
• Devon
• Jesus
• my Dad
• 2010

In amongst all this, Coba Fynn have been recording an album; I built a cyclocross bike and then abjectly failed to enter any cyclocross races; the Project is finally under way again; and just the other day we took the Antiquary pub quiz by the scruff of its neck and gave it a thorough hiding. Good times! (And though that sounds sarcastic, it is not meant to be so.)

She smiled, and then started to cry.

I score 50%.

After breakfast — a long time after breakfast, so thorough is the mental preparation and discussion which accompanies any activity involving two or more members of Coba Fynn — David & Jenna gave Doug and I a lift into the centre of town before heading back to Edinburgh. Doug and I had other plans, and we sauntered into The Arches to try out Alien Wars. We were lucky enough to have a couple of complementary tickets waiting, courtesy of Doug’s disgustingly successful sister Jackie, and unlucky enough to arrive at precisely the same time as every ned of school age in Glasgow. We grabbed a pint in the bar and waited an hour, as suggested by the receptionist (who, ironically enough, was too cool for school; in the movie of this particular day, she’d be filing her nails and flirting with the guitarist of an up-and-coming electro-pop band), and when we returned the queue was exactly as long as when we had first arrived.

We bit the bullet and took our place in line.

Alien Wars is, if you haven’t come across it before, a sort of live rendition of Aliens with a Glaswegian twist. That’s not to say that the creatures can be found drinking alone at busy city-centre bars, projecting a faintly aggressive mien and determinedly trying to engage in sectarian football chat anyone foolish to move within striking distance, but instead that our host, the imposing Corporal Mackenzie, had a deep but comprehensible Glasgow bark.

“It is not true that there are live alien creatures down here,” he admonished us sternly. “Now turn off your mobile phones; they interfere with the security systems.”

Nice, I thought. Don’t want a ringing phone to break the suspension of disbelief.

“Follow me!”

We were hustled through the double doors into a facsimile of the darkened corridors of Hadley’s Hope and told to line up against the wall. Flickering lights and dry ice abounded. Corporal Mackenzie started our ‘briefing’.

“As you’ve been told, an alien spaceship was found during recent renovations at The Arches. We’re going to view it now, and although it’s completely safe, you must stick with me and do exactly as I say. Now— whose mobile phone is that?”

We all reflexively checked our phones.

“Security systems deactivated,” a recorded PA voice announced. Ah, very clever, I thought.

“Shit! Fuck!” bellowed Corporal Mackenzie. “It’s all a lie — there are aliens down here and we’ve been experimenting on them. Run! Run!”

I won’t spoil any more of it, but I will say that I stumbled through the last door shaky with adrenaline and grinning with appreciation. It’s great fun, and it’s only on until the end of March. Do it!

The gig was originally supposed to have taken place in Glasgow’s Barfly, but its new owners HMV had taken one look at its finances and immediately closed it down, leaving the gig without a venue and the four bands adrift. Sim-o the promoter had pulled out all the stops to find us a new home at Ivory Black’s around the corner, and we turned up at 6 pm sharp (well, sharp for Coba Fynn) to watch apprehensively as the other bands were dropped off by their parents.

“What’s the running order? When are we soundchecking?” we asked the gig skivvy.

“I remember you guys from Barfly. You’re aren’t just another one of these kiddie Blink 182 cover bands, so we’ll put you second to last. Oh, and we only soundcheck the first and last bands because of noise regulations.”

Political correctness gone mad, readers. Call the Daily Mail.

“See you back here in five hours’ time!”

And so, after a few quiet pints and a burger in front of the fire at Rab Ha’s had us yawning and fighting off a Pavlovian urge to call it a night, we hauled ourselves back to Ivory Blacks to grab another pint and watch the last couple of bands before our slot.

We tuned up and plugged in, and at the direction of the sound guy we more or less soundchecked right there and then. In normal circumstances I’d have been spluttering with indignation — how unprofessional! — but on this particular night it seemed to fit right into the haphazard, last minute feel of things, and we were off into Glasgow Girl without any more fuss.

And oddly enough, we played a really good gig.

The crowd was a mix of giggling schoolchildren, a few neds hovering at the happy/belligerent boundary and some ‘Fynn regulars. The kids were too busy exchanging Bebo addresses to pay much attention, but our faithful fans were enjoying themselves and the neds in particular seemed to have been gripped with a strange fascination for the mighty ‘Fynn. A slack-jawed couple lounged over the security rail right under Charlie’s nose and stared fixedly up at him for the whole duration, while a cheerily demented guy near the bar danced away and locked eyes with at yours truly, punching the air as we na-na-na-na’d our way through Fox in the Phoenix. We finished to whoops and applause.

Last on were Ready 2 Fall, a fresh-faced foursome of Blink 182 wannabes who took my preconceptions and rocked them to pieces. We whooped and applauded in our turn, and I was impressed enough to later visit their Bebo page (okay, not all of my preconceptions) and have a listen to their recordings. You should do the same!

A couple of Fridays ago, Doug, Keef and I engaged in a mini pub crawl around the city centre to debate the meaning of life, the universe, and everything in between. (With particular emphasis placed on the eternal question of choosing a mobile phone operating system. I will admit to bringing this up forcefully and repeatedly until taken at least half-seriously. Did I mention I’ve treated myself to a new phone after a year spent out of contract?) We ambled the length of Rose Street until pitching up in the Voodoo Rooms, where we grabbed a few drinks and found seats at a temporary table off the main bar.

The place was hoaching: there was some sort of burlesque club being held in the ballroom, and so some very strictly dressed young ladies (a more licentious commentator might say that they were in fact not strictly dressed) mingled with the greater bulk of the cocktail bar-hopping clientele. For the uninitiated, the Voodoo Rooms has a sort of gaudy chic thing happening, with so much gold paint and black leather that it shoots straight past ‘tasteful’ and squarely bullseyes ‘pompous’ instead. It’s a bizarrely schizophrenic place: half of the customers were dressed to the nines, looking down their noses at a trio of unshaven, jeans-and-T-shirt sorts; and the other half were almost overdressed, Vegas style, and playing up to the camp décor splendidly. Who was right? Is the Voodoo Rooms genuine or pastiche? I have no idea.

The next week I met up with Doug again, this time over on Broughton Street to hear a band called Horsebreaker play the Phoenix Cellar Bar. They were good, although a couple of numbers sailed dangerously close to becoming performance poetry. We hung around after the show, Doug hoping to grab a few words with the lead singer. He pounced as she walked past.

“Hi! I’m Doug from Coba Fynn. Our bands are friends on Myspace.”

“Oh, hey! So glad you made it,” she smiled.

“Yeah, so—”

“Well, great to see you! Bye,” she smiled again and continued on without stopping.

Tremendous.

We retired to the bar upstairs and drank on. And on.

I felt distinctly unhealthy the next morning and it was with a degree of revulsion that I took my first sip of Guiness that evening, back in the pub again to discuss The Project with Jeff. I’ve been a little hesitant to mention The Project here — a fear of commentator’s curse, perhaps. In fact, all you’re going to get this time round is an acknowledgement of A) its existence and B) the fact that Jeff is acting as both editor and slavedriver in equal measure. Need to know basis and all that.

Anyway, we drank and pontificated and drank and played Zeppelin on the jukebox and drank some more.

The next morning, something miraculous happened. I was without hangover. I skipped to work (through the snow, if I remember correctly) and performed a normal day’s work without the slightest hint of cranial retribution for the previous night’s alcohol abuse.

I had mastered tantric boozing.

In other news, Ash & I went round to Jez & Serena’s last weekend for pheasant (shot out of the sky by our own estimable host), chat and some impromptu hat wearing, and Coba Fynn are limbering up for the first gig of 2009 at the Barfly once more. We even have proper tickets an’ all. Good times!

Callander isn’t exactly at a rarefied Highland latitude, but the towns thin out and the midge clouds thicken up remarkably quickly as Glasgow recedes in the mirrors, and the hotel had the feeling of a country retreat rather than one on the main street of an otherwise busy little town. Waxy & Phil were talking with a knot of beaming guests, so we waved hello and wandered inside for a drink. The hotel manager gathered us up to watch the first dance as we chatted with the Captain in the library and we filed through to the function room.

The next couple of hours shot by until with alarming rapidity we found ourselves in front of the assembled guests. “Waxy, I hope we don’t ruin your wedding,” Charlie said, or words to that effect. “We’re Coba Fynn. Waxy asked us to play—” (Charlie had explained some time previously to Waxy & Phil that Coba Fynn would of course be playing at their wedding) “—so we hope you enjoy yourselves.” He turned to us. “Let’s go.”

And so we did.

It was tremendii. CF original Glasgow Girl got the guests onto the dance floor and some choice covers kept them there, Waxy’s dad joining us on harmonica and wailing vocals for Hoochie-Coochie Man. We played two wedding requests: The Lighthouse Song for Waxy, the song practically playing itself through our intruments; and Phil’s favourite Smoke on the Water. The demanded encore of Crossroads was played at a blistering pace with blistering hands, and when we finished the set after forty-five short minutes I felt a twinge of guilty triumph at having stolen the ceilidh band’s thunder.

We took paper plates of buffet pies and spring rolls outside to cool down for a bit. Doug and I analysed the night’s performance in a chin-stroking fashion.

“Nice work there on the drums, Doug. Although I couldn’t hear myself very well—I thought maybe the bass was a bit low.”

“Really? I could hear you fine. I could feel you in my bones.”

“So long as it was your bones, and not your boner.”

“Obviously not, man. But I will say that if there was to be a sexual connection between any two members of the band…”

“…then it’s going to be the rhythm section, right? That’s what I like to hear.”

Ash laughed at us.

“Oh, it’s cool; we’re just being homoironic.”†

A fantastic night, and a fantastic wedding. Congratulations, Waxy & Phil!

* A month or so back we were pressed into service for Charlie’s boss’ retiral do at Oran Mor in the west end of Glasgow. We set up in the Auditorium under Alasdair Grey’s spectacular mural, soundchecked in the abbreviated time available and then got out of the way as the first guests filed in. Quite firmly uninvited to the meal itself, Doug, Davis and I ate mixed pakora at Charlie’s kitchen table while the dinner guests gorged themselves on wild salmon, truffled asparagus and caviar washed down by 18-year-old single malts and the finest cognac. (Probably, anyway. My speculation may be informed by a touch of jealousy.) We arrived bang on time for our set, waited through an hour of overrunning, back-slapping speeches and were hustled off the stage after only twenty minutes as the function staff started cleaning up at the stroke of 11.30pm.

** At Bannerman’s; intimate is the term, I think, meaning “comprised only of the band’s friends and immediate family.”

† Gauche, non-PC or just lame? I can’t decide.

FUCKIN TRAMS !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

And then another:

Edinburgh does. Not. Need. Fuckin. TRAMS!!!!!!!!!!!!

We arrived after a stormy journey-into-terror drive to Glasgow (wherein we forded the M8) to find Davis alone on stage, idly picking out chords, and the sound guy looking at his watch, unimpressed.

We went on at 8.30 or so to an audience consisting mostly of the other bands, and the Captain. I had memories of the last time we played such a quiet gig, and they were not happy ones. Something this time just clicked, though: the audience, or lack of it, was incidental, and though I was happy that they seemed to enjoy the set it was more about hitting the right note within the band. We played consistently and convincingly, I think, and afterwards a Blim was sufficiently impressed to compare Fox in the Phoenix to the Clash.

The ‘Fynn and the Clash mentioned in the same breath. This is a welcome development.

I stayed to watch El Condor Pasa. Their songs and playing were good, but my God! they were bored. They’d been touring for two whole days and already they looked like they’d rather be looking for tall buildings off which they might reliably end it all. We clapped, they looked stricken. It was an odd show.

* * *

We had another gig on Saturday—a going away party for Emily, one of Charlie’s colleagues and the temporarily resuscitated Average Folk Band‘s squeezebox maestro—but before then we’d booked practice at the benighted Verden Studios. Verden is on the outskirts of Portobello, and squats within a ’70s office block on an otherwise derelict industrial estate. It has a few redeeming features—expansive windows in some of the upper rooms; mismatched but solid gear; mini-bars filled with cans of Irn Bru and bottles of beer—but mostly, it’s a hole. We were assigned a windowless box on the ground floor with litter stuffed behind the soundproofing panels and no ventilation.

And yet we had the best practice ever. We sweated freely and played our hearts out. My perception is too subjective to tell if we were actually good or not, but it felt like we were guitar heroes that day*.

The gig then came around that weekend. We had the stage to ourselves and oodles of time to play with before anyone arrived so we took our time getting our minimal set-up (amps for the guitars, a simple PA for the vocals) just right, then went our separate ways to park cars, get changed, grab some food and the like. Doug and I sat outside with squeaking styrofoam cartons of deep-fried whatever from the local takeaway, blethering aimlessly but engrossingly until everyone was back and the audience began slowly filtering in. Over the next couple of hours our better halves arrived, the Average Folk Band played a few songs, Ruth & Andy turned up with a load of visiting friends, and we finally were on around 10pm.

Christ, it was brilliant.

The Barfly set was still fresh in our minds and I’m pretty sure we played even better than the rehearsal. The crowning achievement was our run through Take Me Over (“that sounded like Nine Inch Nails” said Waxy, on hearing our first performance of it earlier this year), where we turned things up to 11, smashed it out of the stadium and [insert hyperbolic metaphor of choice here] so hard that a little girl ran away across the dance floor, hands clamped over her ears. Rock & roll!

We trotted out a load of radio friendly covers during the second half to get the audience up and dancing. Charlie coaxed a gaggle of giggling nurses to sing backing vocals on Twist and Shout; Andy arrived on the dance floor with a cartwheel inches from Davis’ face, and we finished with a messy, sprawling cover of Crossroads where we tried (and failed, but gloriously so) to channel Clapton, Baker and Bruce through our sweat-dripping instruments.

The silence rang in my ears after the clapping and cheers subsided. Sweat was rolling down my sides under my shirt, and my bass was slick with condensation. What a gig.

* Q10 in Glasgow is similar to Verden in this respect: its rooms are damp-walled caves formed by the arches of a disused railway bridge, with temperamental amplifiers, fungous couches and peeling paint, and still it seems to lift rehearsals a bit above the average.

Okay, so replace “mundane” above with “rather depressing”. To cut a long story short, I was starting to get a bit scunnered.

There is light at the end of the (train) tunnel, though. My consultant, the estimable Mr Oliver, now opines that the smallest of the three pins in my arm—the one at the olecranon, put in there to hold the ulna together—can almost certainly come out in a few months’ time. This is good news, because that’s one that I can feel rubbing against the bone when I put my arm down on a desk, and might just be restricting the extension a bit. And hell, I almost enjoy surgery by this point. Hit me with some more of that sweet, sweet morphine, Christoph!

Next, in case that doesn’t happen, or the joint is just fundamentally restricted for good, I’m rebuilding the bike with a pair of aero bars to shorten the required reach. Through a process of deliberately flawed reasoning, I’ve used this as a justification to invest in a pair of disc brakes and hence a whole new epic bike-building project with which to regale you, dear reader, and which commenced last week as the first new parts arrived.

Things finally started happening again at the weekend.

On Friday evening I hurried through a sunlit George Square to meet up with Ash in Ad Lib in the Merchant City, collapsed into a booth and then ate myself silly. Ash murdered a steak and I took apart a seafood risotto as we drank a few beers and talked about nothing in particular. The restaurant has a bit of a ’30s feel with marble and tiling all around which shone in the reflected sunlight, and I was as happy as Larry for not much more reason than I had a beer in my hand, king prawns in my belly and my girlfriend across from me. We hit the 13^th Note for a couple more, then sat outside Mono until the chill in the air finally got the better of us and we jumped on the last bus home, full, fou and unco happy.

The next day I took the Trøll over to a Saab garage in Govan. The MOT is in the offing and the clutch is bordering on absent, so I wanted a professional estimate of the financial damage. The owner took it for a spin round the block to check it out and I was slightly shocked by the sheer volume when it burbled back into the garage, that oddly distinctive exhaust note echoing off the walls.

“It’s loud, isn’t it?” I said to him as we regarded its oily bits, up on the ramp.

“Aye, it’s the 16-valve,” he replied. “I used to work on these when I was a lad. Really great motors all round.”

I am not ashamed to say that I felt a bout of intense, faintly ridiculous man-pride at that moment, my choice of retro-Swedish yuppie glamour making this lifetime Saab mechanic misty-eyed with nostalgia. We shook hands and I promised to bring it back next weekend.

The rest of the week shot by in a blur of train journeys and deadlines at work. I visited Jeff at the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh as he recuperated from an operation to reattach his Achilles tendon (I hadn’t thought I’d be returning the favour quite so soon), and then charged back to Glasgow last night for a Coba Fynn gig at the Liquid Ship. Charlie and I though we were good; Doug was ambivalent and Davis was hopping with morose rage. The ‘Fynn returns!

I was looking forward to a robust drive along the scenic banks of Loch Lomond, but my hopes evaporated as the central belt receded in the mirrors. The A82, running up the west shore of the loch is quite tremendously odious. This main artery to Fort William is more of a varicose vein: it is exactly two car widths broad except from strategically placed bridges of wing mirror-threatening constriction and is surfaced with moon rock, craters and all. We trundled along behind drivers still reeling at the absence of a flag-bearing chap twenty yards ahead of one’s automobile, and overtook when it seemed least impolite. Rather less patient were a stream of heedless young GTI drivers who charged past at the first suggestion of a straight stretch of road, straight-pipe exhausts yowling the anguish of straining engines so that they reverberated across the loch.

The schizophrenic traffic and suspension-shattering road surface lasted all the way to the inn, where we pulled in at noon or so. This being an unseemly hour at which to hit the bar, we drove on to Killin for a coffee and a gentle wander around, pausing by the Falls of Dochart to eat our sweaty cheese sandwiches and strolling through the MacNab burial ground.

Still at a loose end and with an hour or two left to kill, Ash suggested we take a look at the Scottish Crannog Centre, round the eastern tip of Loch Tay. She and Maria and a bunch of other aquatic archaeology types spent a spring there a few years ago, lumbering around on the bottom in ill-fitting dry suits and worrying about antiquated air tanks. We parked, balked at the entry fee and promptly got back in the car with Ash reassuring me that crannogs aren’t all that exciting. I suspect some lingering resentment at having spent four weeks in a leaky rubber suit on a near-freezing loch in service to this place might have coloured her judgement.

Back at the inn we dumped our stuff in the room—the haunted room, no less—made our way to the bar and ordered some food. We took in our surroundings.

The inn is apparently 300 years old, and the entrance hall was populated with the spoils of three centuries of extraordinarily bloody hunting expeditions. A weasel stood stiffly in its case, lips curled back from gleaming fangs and a front paw clawing the air, slavering with diminutive post-mortem psychopathy. A shark snarled from a plaque behind the reception desk, snout wrinkled in anatomically implausible fury. King of the jungle was a rearing bear, claws intact and placed ready to poke the eyes out of drunken guests wobbling back to their rooms. Alone among the frozen carnage lay a docile two-headed lamb, which either died of or was killed due to its deformity.

Which was nice.

We had some food (plentiful but slightly dull) and found a seat by the fire crackling in a suspended grate. The bar was low-ceilinged and warm, and we sat back for a night of moderate boozing and chat with the other residents. A guitarist set up an amp and played away for most of the night to the unending joy of a hard core of pissed locals. I was gazing blankly across the room, the heat and the IPA threatening to overwhelm me when I noticed one of them, a middle-aged woman, precariously balanced on a pile of logs by the fireplace with a whisky and lemonade dangling from one hand and looking not so much the worse as the worst for wear.

As I watched, she toppled slowly and rigidly straight back into the chimney breast, tipping over the fireguard and ending up with her body pointing out into the room and her head directly beneath the fire basket.

“Holy shit,” I and a number of other onlookers declared simultaneously.

Ash spun round at the clang of the fireguard falling and immediately tried to haul the woman’s sack-of-potatoes dead weight out of the fireplace. She couldn’t shift her at all; I was still gaping uselessly at the situation, and the two guys nearest the fire lunged in to help drag her clear. The music eventually stopped and the stunned room looked on as a barmaid helped prop her up in a chair. The woman was unmarked, without even a speck of ash on her, and although she complained of a painful head she was at least talking and looking a damn sight more alert than she had five minutes previously.

“I think it’s time for you to get a taxi home,” the barmaid suggested as the rest of the room nodded in agreement. “Who’s with you tonight?”

There was some reticent discussion as to who this was while the barmaid moved away to find a phone. The woman sat still for a split second and then just keeled forward off her chair, landing spreadeagled on the floor in front of the bar. She was helped up and out of the room by the barmaid and another customer with the determined air of being disappeared, whereupon the music resumed and the atmosphere flooded back in with indecent haste.

We talked for a while in hushed tones to our neighbouring table, all jocularly unconcerned by the two concussive smacks this poor woman’s head had sustained, and hit the creaky four-poster sack when the bar closed an hour or so later.

So, the verdict on the Drover’s Inn: eat somewhere else, stay away from naked flames and pray you don’t get so drunk they go all Stasi on you, and you’ll have a grand old time.

* * *

The ‘Fynn did not, as it turned out, play a gig yesterday: the implosion of the Average Folk Band put paid to that. Rest in peace, AFB.

I looked at the programs printed on the front of the powder drawer and tried to work out, safecracker-like, which program that might be. “And if we have to wash anything other than, let’s see…left three, right two, left four…Nylon Whites at 90° with a 2,000rpm spin?” I asked.

But in the spirit of not looking a gift horse in the mouth, we happily suffered the odd T-shirt reduced to postage stamp size and averted our eyes from the electricity bills generated by this monster. There was, of course, the minor drama of a leaking pipe and a put-upon downstairs neighbour, but once the new hose was in place we went back to a happy coexistence with our sun-cracked beige ’70s appliance.

Then, with Ash off in Canada for most of February, I was left in sole charge of the beast. Everything mostly seemed to go well; I did once have to call her and sheepishly ask how to get the door open at the end of the washing cycle, but leaving it to rest for a couple of minutes and then giving the door a firm yank seemed to sort it out. And so it went until the first wash after she got back.

I went through the usual rigmarole: twist the dial to the appropriate point; wait for a couple of minutes; sternly yank the handle, only to rip open the locked door and send the watery contents of the machine onto the scullery floor.

Rockin’.

The old lady from downstairs rang our doorbell shortly after we’d mopped up the deluge and duct-taped the washing machine closed, and in that kindly oh-it’s-no-trouble-really sort of way she apologised for her kitchen roof having had the temerity to start leaking a second time. We begged her forgiveness and assured her that a new washing machine would be ordered as soon as possible, and that she should have suffered her final inundation from above.

The new machine arrived a couple of weekends ago. We connected it to the cold inlet pipe, apologised again to the lady downstairs when the newly unused hot inlet pipe decided to start leaking in an unassuming but persistent fashion, and dealt with this last possible source of troubled waters with copious amounts of electrical tape and a large bucket.

I’m ready to make the switch to a washboard and mangle.

* * *

Coba Fynn (now finally, reluctantly and regrettably with added MySpace presence) continues to produce new material and new offspring—Chris & Leyla are expecting a baby in September so that Charlie & Penny’s kid will have someone to play with during the 20^th anniversary tour in 2019. Congratulations guys!

Oh, and we probably have a gig this Sunday at the Universal. But nothing is firm yet; our plans still have a spongy quality to them. More news as it happens.