here is an update and here are some photos

Happy New Year my Live Journal chums, not so happy 2009 for many I think?

So Christmas was quite lovely as usual but went by in a flash.  I received a toy synthesiser, an atlas and a crate of ale, so I was happy.  Emma and I spent the two days with my folks, and also my sister had her boyfriend to stay and he's nice.  First vegetarian Christmas dinner for me; Emma and I got veg haggis, veg sausages and for some strange reason cheese stuffed jalapenos.

Sunday 28th we had a family pre-my birthday pub lunch, which was nice except for most of the group getting poor food.  Then Monday Emma and I were up to Edinburgh for the festivities; the train was an hour late and Emma got carried away drinking a vile concoction of navy rum and cheap ginger ale.  We stayed at Dan and Cat's house, and after delicious home made goulash we were off to the Canon's Gait to start the birthday holiday.  We were joined by Chris and Nicky, who awarded me a box of spooky York ale in amazing disco wrapping paper, Neil, Oli and Adri and then, when Henrik, Vlad and Simona came we adjourned to the World's End and were met by Phil and Bengt and his girlfriend.  I drank many fine pints of ale and felt great like a birthday boy should.

On to the 30th, my actual birthday, and it was cafe breakfasts collecting Autoclav1.1 Kev and Tony separately from the station before an afternoon in the Tass and Stevie bringing us Christian P.A.L who he'd kindly fetched from the airport in his car.  Quick getting changed and ready and then off to the Ark to prepare the Nasty Noise Disco.  Soundchecks were good except Dan from Wraiths went home ill, leaving Neil to a solo set, only to return twenty minutes later revitalised and ready to go.  Stress happened in the hour prior to opening as Stevie was sent off to acquire DJ decks and door and bar staff arrived only at the last minute.  Once the night got going it was great, with the place packed out with many friends from different places (plus strangers as it was a proper gig) who brought wonderful presents (the light up theremin won the prize).  All the bands were great, particularly P.A.L, who just happened to play the best set I've seen him do and let me sing his cover of "Discipline" by Throbbing Gristle for an encore.  After the DJ's, Cavey Nik, Stevie and Iain Sublevel3, played exactly the right mix of industrial, EBM and minimal electro music I wanted and the dancefloor was always full.  Oh so much fun!  After, Emma's punk friends Demian and Katy took us to her flat for more drinking and laughing.

New Year's Eve I was tired and groggy but not really hungover, and we met Neil, Tony and Kev in the Auld Hoose pub for an afternoon of it.  By 8pm we had a gang of 20 and we adjourned next door to Kismot for a massive curry feast.  This was delicious but of course we overate like bastards and so the rest of the night suffered slightly, when back in the pub we lazed around, struggling to drink much on our full bellies.  Luckily the pub was quiet most of the day so we had plenty of seats.  I took half the team to North Bridge where we watched the midnight fireworks obscure themselves with smoke and got champagne thrown over our heads by strangers.  Back in the pub it got busier by 1am, but hard to get into it really.  Later I was in a rented holiday flat in Leith with Henrik, Ville, Alice etc, and we were all a bit sleepy, and then later (~6am) I went down the rad to Donna and Phil's purple flat to retrieve Emma, to find things winding down quite a bit there.  I was quite sober too and very tired.  Then at 7am Emma and I arrived back to Dan and Cat's flat to find they'd accidentally locked us out by leaving the key in the door, so we couldn't use the spare key they'd lent us, and amazingly they slept through 20 minutes of knocking, bells, phonecalls and shouting before we gave up and taxied back to the shared flat in Leith.  Trying to sleep on the floor in the hallway was not easy or fun; bad start to the year.

New Year's Day we got back to a surprised Dan and Cat's about 2ish and went to bed for a while; later we met them and went for a drink in Bannerman's.  Christian P.A.L joined us and later Alice, Ville, Andrea, Oli and Adriana, as well as Stevie and Kama who came in for a bit to take Christian away.  I could drink again and enjoyed myself well, although sickness was coming on and my voice was squeaky.  That night was a hard one, coughing and sneezing and starting to die.  Friday there was a quick drink in the Royal Mile pub with Dan, Cat, Oli and Adriana (most other visitors having left by then) and then we were on our train home just after 6pm, where I slept most of the way despite an absolute bastard of a loud walkman listener behind me.

Here are the photos from Edinburgh.

At the weekend we were ill and Emma soon overtook me with a real grown-up flu.  Glad I had already taken yesterday off work, today back is no fun.  Happy 2009!