At lunchtime a couple of Fridays ago I did my now-customary furtive change into cycling gear in the disabled toilet before heading off for North Berwick. The Social (Engineering) Committee’s semi-annual Beach Party was kicking off over at Seacliff Beach, and I decided to cycle there rather than take the shaky old coach they’d booked for the occasion.

It was not exactly a great journey, it must be said. The constant headwind wore me down and the traffic along the coastal road kept me on edge for almost the entirety of the 40-kilometre journey. For the last couple of kilometres, though, out east of North Berwick where no-one seems to want to go, the road emptied of cars, the wind dropped and the sun broke through the clouds. I rolled down the private road to the beach, pulled a pair of baggies over my indecent cycling shorts and grabbed a beer. It was a great afternoon spent milling between the beach and the marquee laid on for the day, quaffing booze on the company dollar and eating barbequed meat until my sides groaned from the strain.

I slung the bike in a luggage compartment under the bus for the return journey and would have happily called it a day, but it wasn’t over yet. Once I’d sobered up to a degree and put on some long trousers, I was off out again to meet Doug and some of his London workmates to see Mark Watson at the Church of Scotland on the Mound, or the “Assembly Hall” as it’s rebranded for the Fringe. Maybe knowing that you’re watching a comedy gig in the house of God would otherwise take the edge off — the Almighty’s watching too, and he kills a kitten whenever you laugh at a masturbation joke.

The show was solid if not quite stellar, but the three hours of increasingly sozzled conversation in the Wash which succeeded it amused us admirably. Doug, the newly arrived Davis and I got stuck into self-referential and obscure band chat with ease, while Doug’s friend Rob looked on and feigned interest with remarkable success. I rolled home at 3 am, tired, as they say, but happy.

…and then met up with Doug and co. again the next evening for more festival boozing. Bolstered by the attendance of Fat Pete and the Captain, we saw Henning Wehn perform “My Struggle” in a dank vault under North Bridge. (He’s German, and the title of the show is nothing if not bold.) I was in two minds about the gig; for the most part it was observational humour with a fairly cutting edge to it, but it was let down by some don’t-mention-the-war stereotyping that I think a 2010 Fringe audience doesn’t have much use for.

After the show we decamped to the temporary beer garden in the still-vacant hole where La Belle Angele and the Gilded Balloon used to stand, sank a few pints and chatted amiably for a while. Alright; we played drinking games. I begged off around 1am (so I could get up early the next day for a bike ride with Edinburgh RC, but that’s a post for another time), shook hands/man-hugged everyone in attendance as appropriate and walked home through the chilly, clear night. It had been an excellent couple of days, and I now find I’m hankering for another London trip to try for another weekend of carefree culture+drinks.

* * *

In other news, Jeff, Devon, Neil, Vanessa, Jez and I won the Cumberland pub quiz the Monday after the abovementioned Fringe action; Jez, Ally, Row and I came a valiant second this following week, and finally last night Jez, Row, Tom and I got thoroughly wrecked in honour of Jez’s birthday after gorging ourselves on Row’s expertly prepared dinner. I walked home at 2 am with War of the Worlds playing on my headphones. Need I say more?

Earlier tonight I did my first cycle race, the Edinburgh 48 in Craigmillar Country Park. My shins are covered in nettle rash, my hands are midge-bitten and my muscles are utterly void of energy. My brain, however, is fizzing with nervous energy — this racing business is a lot of fun — and it demands to be occupied, and so I stick on some headphones and plug myself into some sprawling Glaswegian post-rock.

Also, I’ve joined Facebook. This is less exciting.

(A real post is in the works!)

On Sunday I’d gone on a ride out to Haddington and back, organised by Edinburgh Road Club, and one of the more serious road cyclists shepherding the rest of us along was in recruiting mode. “You should come along to the Kirky 10 time trial on Wednesday nights. It’s easy to get into, and you’re really only racing yourself.”

Excellent, I thought — I’m an inherently lazy bastard, so I should be easy to beat. So it was that last Wednesday night I arrived sweaty and breathless at Kirkliston sports centre at 6.45pm. I signed on the dotted line as directed by one of the marshals, who explained what I had to do.

“You’re number 17, so you’ll be starting at 17 minutes past seven. The numbers are in that box down there — find your one and pin it to the back of your jersey. The start is out by the roundabout; it’s five miles straight out, a U-turn in the road (make sure you check for cars first) and then five miles straight back. You’ll see a marshal at the turn. Shout out your number as you cross the line so the timekeeper hears you.”

Ten miles as fast as you can, and don’t get run over: this is the essence of a time trial.

Having sorted myself out, I headed down to the start with a couple of other new faces from the Sunday ride. The knot of cyclists hanging around the start were a mixed bunch: granted, the demographics of the group didn’t veer far from ‘white male ABC1’, but the bikes themselves (and the associated levels of seriousness) ranged from sleek carbon time trial machines through normal road bikes to an elongated cargo bike whose rack was laden with bungee-corded barbell weights.

“Are you having a laugh?” I asked its rider.

“Training bike,” he replied jovially. “Makes a normal bike feel fast!”

The minutes ticked down, with a rider being sent off each minute until I was next. I rolled up to the spray-painted start line and steadied myself as the fitness instructor-alike starter reeled off more instructions, smoothly punctuating them with a countdown read off his stopwatch.

“Okay, are you twenty seconds ready to go? Remember, go hard on the way out but keep something for the way back and fifteen seconds call out your number as you pass the ten seconds timekeeper.”

Another marshal, this time a curious older chap wearing a three-piece tweed suit and a flat cap (I never found out the story there — he was utterly incongruous in amongst all the lycra and tracksuits), held my bike steady as I clipped in my free foot. I wobbled a bit. Only now was I starting to get nervous. The starter counted down from ten seconds.

“…one. Go!”

The old chap gave me a rather feeble shove and I wobbled slowly off the line. Not quite the blistering acceleration I would have liked. Both he and the starter seemed concerned that I was going to fall off.

“Are you okay? Go! Go now!” barked the starter.

“Pedal!” the old guy added.

“I’m fine, I’m going,” I muttered back petulantly, steering unsteadily away from the kerb then standing up and getting some power into the pedals. I wound up to what I thought was a reasonable cruising speed, got into the drops and put my head down with my eyes flicking between the heart rate monitor on the handlebars and the road ahead.

Turns out it’s a disingenuous to talk about ‘tactics’ for a time trial. It’s just you versus the course and the elements, and other than moderating your effort to varying degrees there’s little else to do other than to keep grinding away at it. Even should you find yourself in the fortunate position of overtaking another rider, the rules preclude you from drafting behind them to gain any advantage.

My vague plan had been to stay within a particular range of effort for the first two miles, then move up a gear for the next three and finally blitz the return leg in an all-out blaze of glory to shoot speedily over the finish line with fists punching the air. Unfortunately, I’d failed to take into account the two-mile climb and unrelenting headwind that confronted me as soon as I’d started. My heart rate immediately shot through the roof and my legs were burning within minutes. My three-part strategy degenerated into just keep going and the next eight miles were an exercise in gritted teeth, running nose and streaming eyes.

I crossed the line in 29 minutes and 53 seconds, having averaged almost exactly 20 mph over the ten miles: my first time trial had been a deeply meh performance, but I’d enjoyed it nonetheless. And like I said, I’m going to be very easy to beat next time round.

Bikes: Back at the start of the July I headed into town to watch the Edinburgh Nocturne, a cycle race running in a closed loop along the Grassmarket, up the cobbles of Victoria Street and back down Candlemaker Row. A mini Paris-Roubaix, I thought, and cycled up there to meet Andy and Thomas (late of Proxy) just before the main race.

It was, sadly, slightly anticlimactic. The start was exciting enough: the competitors milled around awkwardly in slippery cycling shoes and warmed up on turbo trainers, forming up purposefully on the line with a couple of minutes to go; finally, the starting gun went off and after the briefest of lulls as twenty left feet clipped into twenty pedals the bunch charged off up the Grassmarket. Andy, Thomas and I precessed around the course to watch the action at different points, and after about 45 minutes we were back in the Grassmarket.

“Pint?” someone suggested.

We got a drink at the Blue Blazer, and by the time we got back to the race it was all over. No-one seemed to mind. Cycling — at least for the three of us, with only a fairly vague notion of the tactics and skills to watch out for in a road race — is probably more of a sport to get involved in than to spectate at.*

Dogs: Maisie has been enjoying the weather too, although admittedly she enjoys being outside in more or less any weather short of an apocalyptic thunderstorm. There must be something in the air at the moment, though, because she has taken to barking at inanimate objects such as tents and telephone boxes. This is difficult to explain to passers-by.

Drinks: I haven’t been doing a lot of boozing of late, but when I have roused myself from the sofa the results have been epic.

One Saturday night a few weeks ago Jeff and I went out for “a couple”, and ended up unsteady and bleary-eyed Hawke & Hunter around five hours later, having taken in Pivo en route and declaring it not a patch on the real thing.

Then, last Thurday night Davis and I met up, ostensibly to discuss what needs to happen to the Coba Fynn website before we launch the album, but having cracked open one beer we felt compelled to crack open a whole host more. Friday morning was unproductive a living hell.

Finally, this last weekend I went out for a Jez-by-proxy evening, meeting up with his ex-flatmate Beryl and and his sister Rowe at 99 Hanover Street (don’t worry, I’d tucked my shirt in and buttoned my cardigan in preparation), and was surprised to find myself in the sticky-floored cavern of doom that is Finger’s Piano Bar at 3 am after a night of excellent chat and ropey beer. The cocktails at 99 Hanover Street may be “sex in a glass”, but the Guinness was closer to “the unfulfilled promise of a lost lover”, or “a kick in the balls”. Still, a great night!

So far, so entertaining. It was to my great chagrin, then, that I found the other morning that some criminally negligent moron had driven into the side of the car, leaving the driver’s side door rather more concave that it’s supposed to be. My month’s worth of good humour evaporated.

I fumed; I prodded the dent experimentally to see how bad the damage was; I glared around at nearby cars looking for matching scrapes, and then I saw a note under the windscreen wiper. Mr. Crashy the hit-and-run-bastard may have driven off without so much as a by your leave, but some crafty onlooker had seen fit to write down the offending registration number and leave it for me. I called the police and then the insurance company, and my mood brightened considerably as a result.

* As an aside, Rowe was on holiday in France during the Tour, and managed to watch Contador and Schleck battle it out on the Col du Tourmalet more or less by accident. Now that is a cycle race I’d have liked to watch in person.

A couple of weekends ago now, I had a Proper Weekend. For the first time in ages, a Saturday and Sunday were blighted neither by an excessive hangover nor unreasonably crappy weather and were filled just so with pleasantly engaging activities. If it didn’t feel pompous to do so, I’d have gone right ahead and called it ‘beatific’.

Ash had been invited to a barbeque on the Saturday in a small village called Dirleton, a few miles west of North Berwick, for her boss’s birthday. It was taking place at a nearby beach called Yellowcraigs, and it seemed cruel to leave Maisie the Dog behind in the flat while were off gallivanting in the dunes and munching on barbequed burgers, so we decided to take her with us in the car.

The only snag, of course, was that Maisie gets motion sick. Voluminously so. On the very first car journey we took with her, driving back to Edinburgh from the dog rescue centre in Dumfries, she lurched around the back seat like a seasick muppet and glumly yakked her way through a series of technicolour yawns. We stopped each time to clean up the mess, and as soon as we pulled away again she would start panting, then drooling, then perform another stripey laugh.

We tried her in the car again a few months ago with similar results, although by then we knew the signs and hastily pulled over each time it looked like things might go awry. I was not overly optimistic, then, about the forty-five minute drive out to Dirleton, and it was with some trepidation that we coaxed Maisie into the car on Saturday afternoon, whereupon she curled up in a pathetic ball on Ash’s lap and gazed mournfully around at nothing in particular. We opened both windows, set the fan to blow a cool stream of air over her, and set off.

And miraculously, Maisie was fine. She fairly bounded out of the car as soon as we’d arrived and fixed us with an accusatory stare from a safe distance, but within seconds she was back to normal and bounding off after her tennis ball. We found the barbeque in a hollow between the woods and the sea, said hello to the various archeologists and heritage types in attendance, and settled in for a couple of hours of random chat+burgers. It was a relaxing afternoon: Jeff and Devon arrived a while later, guests of Ash’s boss’s husband; we overdosed on burgers; we blethered about nothing in particular, and, to Maisie’s great consternation, we wandered over to the beach to throw the ball into the water for her.

We were getting ready to leave when a boy of maybe 5 or 6 came over to us and held out his hand for Maisie’s ball-chucker thing.

“You want to throw the ball for her? Sure, okay.”

He took the launcher in two hands and walloped the ball off the ground. It bounced away in the direction of the barbeque with Maisie charging after it.

“Er, you might want to not throw it quite so hard…”

Maise came trotting back and after a bit of persuasion, dropped the ball at his feet.

“Sit!” the kid bellowed at Maisie, who was a little taken aback.

“And you don’t need to shout,” I tried to tell him. “She’ll sit down if you just—”

“Sit!” he bawled again, for good measure. Maisie sat.

And so, for the next little while we tried to curb Connor’s (for that was his name) enthusiasm and minimise the psychological damage meted out to Maisie in the process. Eventually the ball was getting just a bit too wild and Connor’s demeanour was heading towards that staring-eyed, foot-stampy enthusiasm that immediately precedes someone getting hurt.

I knelt down to call time.

“We’re going to go now. Can I please have the ball launcher back?”

Connor conveniently forgot how to speak, and evaded my eyes. The adults in attendance looked at each other, foreseeing a tantrum. Not wanting to be seen to be wrestling a five-year-old for control of a plastic stick, I tried a different tack.

“Okay, how about we take turns? You’ve just had a go — can I have a turn?”

Connor fixed me with a cold, dead stare and said:

“It’s. My. Turn.”

His Mum arrived shortly after that and tutted him into handing over the ball launcher, thank God. We collected Maisie and bolted for the car.

* * *

The rest of the weekend was a genial amble through a series of untaxing but enjoyable activities. On Saturday night I watched the England-USA game over at Jeff and Devon’s, complete with Bud, snacks and snarky Eurovision-style commentary, and on Sunday I took Maisie out for a walk in the glorious sunshine before a leisurely cycle and finally collapsing in front of the box for the Canadian GP. Good times.

The reason for this sudden profligacy — after all, ITTET £2k is still a fair old wedge — is that for the past few months, Ash, Jez and Devon have been knitting together the threads of an autumn road trip down to Provence. With echoes of our pan-European 2006 trip still ‘Ringing in my ears, I decided I needed a suitable car for this year’s edition.

As ever, I started off looking at completely impractical vehicles and gradually homed in on a model which split the difference between zOMG11!! awesomeness and sober practicality. I tried and failed to organise a test-drive in an Renault-Alpine GTA, a rear-engined, plastic-bodied sports car (or “death trap” as they say in France); I quizzed my Dad about having a garage-owning friend of his build me a refurbished Mark II Escort; and I gazed longingly at aged ’70s Toyota Celicas on classic car websites.

In the end, though, it was an episode on our 2006 trip to the Nürburgring that got me onto the straight and narrow. On my lap around the track, we’d been overtaken by a pair of Alfa Romeo 75s, square-edged 1980s saloons with suitably Italian/off-the-wall design features like inboard rear brakes and complicated de Dion suspension. These Alfas shot past the Saab and proceeded to drift round the next corner before disappearing off into the leafy distance. Fast forward to earlier this year, and I happened to come across a bright red 75 for sale at a dealership in Edinburgh. Not only that, but it was going for the paltry sum of £1,300. Intrigued, I arranged a test drive and cycled over to the garage on a Friday morning off work. With the garage owner riding shotgun, I took it out for a jaunt round the bypass.

My word.

This was a proper old sports car, even though it looked like a horrible joke from the late ’70s. The throttle response was incredibly eager; just a touch on the pedal and it snarled and popped away, and I liberally but accidentally spun the wheels the first time I pulled away from a stop. It felt lively and balanced. This thing would be a monster on A- and B-roads up north.

It was brilliant, and I didn’t buy it.

There were problems. The gear shift was incredibly vague (the ’box is mounted at the back, so the linkage is longer than usual), it had a tendency to wander at motorway speeds, and the dashboard sported some ultra-tacky faux wood trim that had been glued on by the previous owner. I chatted to the garage owner after we’d returned to the forecourt. “It’s really a £2,300 car,” he explained. “£1,300 for the car itself and about £1,000 to fix all the problems.”

So, I passed on the 75 that day, but the Alfa bug had bitten and after a couple more test drives (one of a ratty green GTV with missing dashboard trim and a wobbly driver’s seat, and one of my eventual purchase), on a rainy night last month I took the train over to Bellshill to pick up my dark blue GTV Twin Spark.

Both my previous cars had a certain element of built-in self-effacement about them. The Cappuccino, for instance, was so diminutive that it deflected the inevitable “mid-life crisis car, eh?” sneers that a sporty two-seater convertible would otherwise have drawn. The Saab was so self-consciously quirky that it attracted bemusement more than it attracted praise or derision. It also helped that parts kept seizing up or falling off.

Not so the GTV: It’s an unapologetically sharp-suited Italian sports car with leather seats and a 7,000 rpm wail, and I almost feel guilty owning it. I want to put a sign in the quarterlight saying, “For sale: Bought for £2,000. Please don’t hate me.” It looks like a million dollars and it probably makes me look like an attention-seeking yuppie. “Surely Jez, as a BMW driver, knows my pain,” I thought, so at his suggestion we went for a drive down a familiar country lane out beyond Penicuik. I wound down the windows, wound up the engine, pointed the car down the winding road and let ’er rip.

“It’s faster than I thought it would be,” Jez said mildly as we came to a hurried halt at an unexpected T-junction a few miles later. High praise!

Later that day we went down to Jeff & Devon’s place to eat barbeque, play cricket and drank beer, and sat lethargic and stunned in the evening as the sun set in the west. All is right with the world.

The next morning, goaded out of bed about four hours earlier than my hangover would have liked, I had some tea and toast for breakfast, then suited up and jumped on my bike. Today was a manifold experiment: how long would Buckhaven to Edinburgh take along the Fife Coastal Path? Would a heart-rate monitor/cycle computer be useful? And most importantly, would the one-two punch of a Tunnock’s Caramel Wafer and a Stuart’s scotch pie be the match of 60 kilometres of winding coastline?

This final question was an ad hoc addition to the day’s challenges, brought about by my complete failure to bring any cycling-friendly snacks with me in the first place. The caramel wafer was provided at my Gran’s house a mile or so along the road — a distance just far enough to warm up, followed by a tea break just long enough to cool down again — and the pie was safely ensconced in my backpack, bought at Stuart’s in Buckhaven before I left and ready for consumption somewhere down the road. A cup of tea, a chocolate biscuit, a pie and some lycra: my loins were girded.

I hit the coastal path just beyond Kinghorn, exchanging fast but worrisome B-roads for gravel paths and startled pedestrians for the next fifteen miles. It was a great day: cloudy but bright; cold but not windy, and I gradually forgot where I was as the miles rolled by. I’ve always been a bit less than enthusiastic about the south coast of Fife (familiarity breeding contempt, maybe) but it was a lovely cycle; the harbours, fishing cottages, old woods and train lines, with the quiet rustle and slap of the dark water of the Forth behind it all, put me in mind of a highland lochside.

I climbed up and over the Forth Road Bridge and freewheeled down into South Queensferry about an hour and three quarters after having left Buckhaven, rested my bike against a wall and collapsed, sweaty and smelly, onto a bench in the shadow of the rail bridge. My pie was calling.

This was no ordinary pie: Stuart’s are the founders of the World Scotch Pie Championships, and have won it countless times; their arch-nemeses W.F. Stark face them across College Street and snatched the crown a couple of years ago. This was a pie whose shell bore the weight of history, expectation and tradition. The fat had frozen into little white pools on the top of the crust, and yet this only made it more appealing. It was a glistening, golden-brown cylinder of meaty joy, and I ate it with gusto. And a coffee from a café over the road.

God, it was excellent. 500-odd calories of bakery genius, a smart-bomb of beef, mutton and lard, and it propelled me home over the last 15 kilometres. My heart-rate monitor told the full story: 60 kilometres, two and three-quarter hours and not one but four pies’ worth of calories expended. I was ravenous for the next two days.

Anyway, at 9.15 on Tuesday morning I found myself down at the cook school with a bunch of other initiates, drinking coffee and wondering exactly what was in store for us.

I’ll cut to the chase.

Langoustines.

Langoustines were what was in store for us.

Sure, there was a load of other stuff like gnocchi, tiramisu, mascarpone mousse, sautéed endive and the like, and some of it was pretty challenging to put together, but none of these things required quite the same commitment as our crustacean friends.

At the very start of the class, Ryan, one of the tutors, brought a polystyrene crate out of the walk-in fridge and plonked it on the worktop in front of us all. He popped open the top and plucked out a langoustine, a six-inch long mini lobster/giant prawn with two long, slender claws and a multitude of gently squirming legs. Holding it by the torso, he gestured as he talked, explaining (to our universal horror) how we were to prepare them, and then directed us back to our stations.

I turned round to put on my apron, and when I turned back I was confronted with three live langoustines, coiling and uncoiling fitfully on the chopping board. I sighed and picked one up by the thorax. Its black, beady eyes swivelled around and its legs pedalled the air. I took hold of the tail with my other hand as Ryan had done – Pinchy was cold but very much alive, and I could feel his clawed legs working away inside my fist.

I took a firmer grip around the tail with my left hand and the torso with my right. Pinchy’s tail curled round against my fingers.

Then, as demonstrated a few minutes previously, I twisted him firmly in half to the sound of splintering chitin and tearing flesh. I fairly dropped the newly bisected crustacean onto the chopping board. The tail curled up instantly, while the feelers, claws and legs on Pinchy’s business end continued to twitch away, innards exposed where the tail had been attached just moments ago. “That’s just reflexes,” Ryan said mildly as he passed.

“Fucking hell,” I confided to the woman at the station across from mine. “That was fucking mental.”

“I know!” she agreed, then squealed as her own langoustine writhed out of her grip and dropped to the floor. “Shit.”

Okay. Deep breath. Next bit.

I picked up Pinchy’s dismembered tail, only for it close around my fingers. Sharp points at the bottom of each segment of the shell poked into my fingers. (The woman across from me later showed off her blue catering sticking plaster, covering the cuts which her own notionally dead prey had inflicted, post-mortem.)

“Ah, fuck. Fuckity fuck,” I moaned as I pried the tail straight. I spread out the five flukes, grabbed the middle one, broke it free and pulled it out along with the intestine, a translucent three-inch tube dangling from the tail fin. I dumped the guts into the bin, dropped Pinchy: part II onto the chopping board and breathed out. It hadn’t been in the same league as, say, slaughtering a fatted calf you’ve raised from birth in front of the kids (who incidentally, named her Daisy within minutes of meeting her and have since bonded with her in a touching display of affection) and then having to explain to them the nature of life, death and where baby calves come from, but it certainly focused the mind on what has to be done in order to get something even as insignificant as a single langoustine onto the plate.

We cooked the tails, cracked open the shells, chopped up the meat and wrapped it in hand-made pasta to make ravioli. They were delicious.

A few numbers for you: ten merry men. Three Norman bad guys. One Robin Hood. One cross-dressing ‘Maid’ Marian. One racially insensitive Azeem costume. Josh was up. It rocked.

No matter. I am a professional, and most hotels have bars attached, so I should be fine.

Speaking of drinking on company time (quelle segue!), we completed a particularly arduous deadline a few hours early on Friday, and so decamped to Cruz, down on the Shore of the Water of Leith, for a few self-congratulatory pints. Cruz is the 2007 style-bar refit of the Ocean Mist, a steamer moored at the quayside, and it’s an idiosyncratic place. The Herald certainly thought so, leading to perhaps its best ever bar review:

What Cruz has on its side is novelty. That’s possibly not what they said when a freak natural-gas explosion shook the ship a couple of weeks ago, but it’s not every night that you can enjoy a drink in a place where a wobbly table makes you feel sea sick, the ceiling is only an inch above your head and the circular windows give you a view of the wide-open ocean (OK, the flats across the water).

Although it’s only a couple of years old, the party-like-it’s-1999 website begs to differ, and the place itself already feels a bit dated. The picnic tables on the quay are wobbly almost to the point of collapse and the Guinness tastes like it’s cut with bilge water, but when the setting sun casts a rosy glow over the Water of Leith the health and safety issues just melt away. On an afternoon as nice as that one, Cruz could be replaced by a raft of water-cooler barrels lashed together with parcel tape and it would still be a fine venue for an alfresco pint.