• 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.)

I mostly jest. But the truth is somewhat related: the big event for me at Christmas was that I got a coffee and tea set while my Dad revelled in his new iPod Touch. There is a distinct role reversal happening here. (Happily, it is the baddest-ass tableware I’ve ever seen. And I did actually need a teapot, so I should quit my whining.)

Christmas morning came and went, and after gifts had been exchanged and breakfast rolls eaten (bought round the corner at Stuart’s the baker, the outgoing Scotch Pie World Champion), Ash and I waddled out for a constitutional. I took the opportunity to show her around some notable Buckhaven beauty spots: the rocky shoreline, with Edinburgh and the Bass Rock off in the indistinct distance; the ex-harbour, now home to rather less than the second-largest fishing fleet in Scotland; and of course WF Stark the butcher, the new World Scotch Pie Champion. For all its faults, the town of my youth is a seriously good place for pies.

I was in a bit of a quandary at New Year: Chris & Leyla are over here at the moment and were planning to be in Edinburgh over Hogmanay, so I was itching to get over there to see them again. Unfortunately, Ash’s imminent exams had her in a minor fit of nerves which in turn brought on a bout of the cold, and I really didn’t want to leave her to see in the new year by her snuffling self. She ended the deadlock by pleading with me to bugger off and leave her to study and recuperate. I agreed under protest.

Jeff & Devon were hosting a mini Hogmanay party, so after a few phone calls I picked up Chris & Leyla from a friend’s house in Corstorphine and drove the rest of the way into town, the car alive with ridiculous chat and reminiscence. It was fantastic to see them again. We kept on blethering away at the party, and at one point I had an abrupt realisation: “Wow, I forgot you guys were married. Of course, I remember playing the bagpipes at your wedding. That was mental—I was scared for half the day and drunk for the rest.”

Chris: “Yeah, me too.”

Ally G was also in attendance, and in a reprise of our most recent holding-forth on typography, we spent an age talking about modernist architecture, or at least our hazy understandings of it. I was particularly enthused that day: for all the times I’ve marvelled at straight lines and textured concrete on holiday, I’d come across some amazing, textbook concrete monstrosities/masterpieces on Christmas Day when Ash and I came to the flats at the end of Shore Street. These won a Saltire Award back in 1973, and only 35 years later (the concrete is still barely touched by the weather and shone even in the dim winter afternoon) are already being demolished to be replaced by soulless, faux miner’s cottages.

I took some photos with my phone, intending to proudly preserve part of Buckhaven’s otherwise undistinguished architectural heritage but irritatingly they seem to have vanished into the electronic ether without a trace. The sad thing is, judging by the new foundations being built in the muddy wasteground where the first demolished blocks used to be, the rest may even be gone by the next time I’m home!

Anyway, enough wallowing. Merry (belated) Christmas and a Happy (less belated) New Year!

The way had been prepared by Dead Monkey — happily not, as I had initially wondered, a cruel pun directed at the late Tiny Monkey — with a fairly relaxed style of indie. We hustled onto the stage, spent a brief moment checking everything over and then didn’t so much launch as amble straight into David Lynch’s Lunchbox Blues. It went well. There was clapping.

By halfway through the set there was also dancing. This is a new one on me for these little gigs; foot tapping and the odd whistle abound in normal circumstances, but dancing is seemingly brought on by abandoning any pretence at musical relevance and laying down a big, fat blues rhythm. By the time we got to Hoochie Coochie Man, we’d loosened up (in my case, the angle of the neck of my bass had declined by about 5° from the vertical. This is as relaxed as I get during gigs) and laid it out with as much grit as we could muster. What a brilliant song.

We finished on She’s Not There, hovering near extinction for a few bars in the middle, but pulling it together to scrape our way to the end. Except that we didn’t finish. We could hear a sufficient number of voices shouting “Encore!” amid the clapping for us to throw the to-the-minute timing of the evening to the wind and to plunge through an unrehearsed but (I think) successful Crossroads.

“So what did you think?” I asked everyone I could lay my hands on.
“Brilliant!” they all said.
“Not bad,” said Keef. I knew I could trust him.

Seriously though, we all really enjoyed playing, and I can’t thank everyone enough for coming along. I’ve been periodically spamming the great and the good with gig invitations for a couple of years now and it never ceases to amaze me that they A) still come along and B) still profess to enjoy themselves.

* * *

Still riding high on the post-gig euphoria, I approached the flat’s now-regular Hogmanay party with enthusiasm. Dave, Gill and I brought back a load of communal beer from Tesco (a one-party party, perhaps?), and once I’d finished loading up the iPod with suitably happy music and had concealed Jeff’s personal liquor stash under my bed, I poured myself a generous White Russian. I drank it. I rinsed and repeated a number of times, welcomed the new year with flailing arms and then took a little nap. Ash roused me from my “sleep” and guided me gently out of the flat. This was a good thing, because pretty soon after that the contents of my stomach were russian back out again.

Jeff never found his spare booze, the party finished five hours after my hasty exit and the new year got off to a distinctly queasy start. A classic year already, I think.

P.S. Mart took a load of photos of the ‘Fynn’s return. Also, check out his post-Monkey music!
P.P.S. I must also say thanks to Thomas of the ever-entertaining Proxy for taking the gig’s organisational reins over the past couple of months. Cheers!