Knackered.

Edinburgh was OK. The venue, being a backpackers' hostel, was well attended by backpackers. Not a lot of people who came along especially to see us, though. And the sound was good out front but not the greatest on stage. That's perfectly normal, to be honest: we have a non-standard set-up and a singer prone to feedback, so engineers are less practiced at getting our kind of sound right than your average guitar band's. Anyway, what it meant is that we played perfectly well but that doing so took concentration, and that means no effortless and jubilant losing ourselves in the music like we did at The 13th Note on Thursday. But it was still fun, and the crowd cheered. The support acts, Asa and Replica, were both rather good. Asa were kind of William-Orbitish — never a bad thing — and Replica were like the late great Sputniks Down with vocals, which, if you ask me, is a Good Idea.

The poor car was seriously unhappy on the way back. I managed to stop it collapsing by driving most of the way at 60mph in third. We hired a van for Sunday.

There was some argument a while back about whether the drive from Dundee to Aberdeen is more or less dull than the drive from South Armagh down to Dublin. Concensus was that it was far more dull, which I found hard to believe. Well, having done it now, I still find it hard to believe. The drive up to Aberdeen has some boring bits, certainly, but nothing approaching the unbroken stretch of nails-in-the-brain tedium that is the road from the border to Dublin. What's more, it is relieved at regular intervals by some rather beautiful and dramatic bits of scenery, while the boredom of the drive to Dublin is broken up by industrial estates that appear to have been transplanted out of Belgium. Even the drive back from Aberdeen, in the dark, wasn't that boring.

The Aberdeen gig was great. Superb sound by Jenny the sound engineer, small crowd, lovely venue, nice people, and a couple of good support acts: Death By Dave and The Boy Lacks Patience. Death By Dave are entertaining and fun and a bit odd. The Boy Lacks Patience is just one bloke with a piano, and he deserves to become hugely successful — though probably by writing stuff for other people; I can't see him storming the charts. But you never know.

And now I'm back at work, paddywhackered. Yippee.

Dunfermline next week, and that'll be the lot.