The Roquefort Files

It has been, to be honest, a pretty mundane couple of weeks. I’ve been been inexorably pulled back to work in the office (rather than at home) by a day more each month, and now I’m back up to four days in, one day out. Coupled with this, I’m not convinced I can ride my [...]

Ash & I were oot the other night in the west end, meeting some of the people from her degree course. After a pint in Nice n Sleazy we were persuaded to head over to the Halt Bar on Woodlands Road. What an odd night. We fought our way through to the hoaching bar (I [...]

I never used to like AC/DC. It’s Johnny-come-lately Zeppelin lite for people who don’t appreciate the subtlety and invention of Page & Plant’s fusion of blues, folk and rock, or their attempt to give voice to Tolkien’s ersatz but earnest English mythology, I told myself. It goes without saying that I can be rather full [...]

I’m alive! Or rather, life is gradually converging on normality sans about 15% or so of my previous physical capacity. After spending the five days in hospital I lay around the flat for the following week, exercising the Playstation and the usually-dormant dishwasher; my arm was still non-watertight and I felt guilty at the mountain [...]

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 [...]

The various members of Coba Fynn have been the pivots around which some of my more memorable nights out have eccentrically revolved. Chris presided over a number of noteworthy evenings back in our salad days, culminating one night in a Dantean descent to the lowest level of Espionage with a man named John who foamed [...]

Coba Fynn played Barfly again the other week, trying out a couple of new songs on a mostly unfamiliar audience (most of whom had been bussed in from Dunfermline to follow their leaders, Nine Circles and Val Verde) and with a secret weapon up our collective sleeves. Now you may remember we play the Liquid [...]

We spent a pleasant Christmas at my parents’ place over in the Kingdom; my first Christmas spent in a house I actually own will just have to wait its turn. Speaking of which, it turns out buying a flat is a licence for relatives to abdicate responsibility for aforethought in the present buying process. “They [...]

I went to the dentist yesterday for the first time in…well, put it this way: Creation Records was still alive and well the last time I sat in the big white chair. I wasn’t avoiding it, I just sort of forgot sometime around the turn of the century and carried on regardless. (I can almost [...]

We’ve been to the movies a couple of times this week, for the first time since we moved: first to the very proper Glasgow Film Theatre for some good old fashioned elitist cinema, and then to Cineworld for the more populist stuff. The art deco GFT is a great building, all geometric curves and ’30s [...]