Tales from the Fuss Mines

Yesterday I celebrated my 32nd birthday. To be more precise, I turned 32 yesterday, but celebrated the occasion continuously from Friday evening to Monday morning.

I went to Scotchland again to spend three days being pampered by Sarah. Actually that sounds awfully selfish – I wasn’t expecting to be pampered, but it turned out she had some ideas on how to make this an amazing birthday and who am I to argue? She more than managed it.

My only previous visit to Dunfermline had been a flying visit after the last night we spent in Edinburgh last month. I didn’t see anything of the place beyond the short walk from the station to Sarah’s house, and it turns out that Dunfermline has more to offer than two roundabouts and an Asda. On Friday night, having arrived slightly late and at the wrong station after engine gremlins had affected my train, we made our way into town.

We walked through the grounds of Dunfermline Abbey. The newer church buildings intermingle with the ruins of the original abbey, and it was all beautifully lit and peacefully deserted even at such a relatively early hour. In fact we didn’t see another soul until we reached the Creepy Wee, which is a pub that, as the name might suggest, is small and macabre. Beyond the cramped bar a small seating area is overlooked by skeletons hanging from the rafters, medieval torture devices penetrating desiccated bones. It’s all very London Dungeon, except with booze and loud Scotchmen.

One such drunk customer doorstepped me in the bar as we entered. I can’t have done more than brushed past him, perhaps inadvertently gently stroking his arm as one would a poorly cat. His reaction was one of exaggerated slapstick pratfall. I didn’t knock him over, but he waved his arms in the air and proclaimed “woah!” Then he gibbered at me. Now, I don’t adjust easily to the thick Scottish accent, and this slurred barrage of what approached but never quite became language didn’t go in at all. I initially managed to pick up about one word in five, and that word was “wanker.” As I gradually honed in on what he was saying I realised that my strike rate was perfectly in phase with the phrase he was repeating time after time. “I am being a wanker” he kept saying. OK, no worries, I reassured him. Other words then followed, including “English” and “football.” I decided that this was a conversation, or at least an approximation of a conversation, that could only end badly. Sarah thankfully interrupted, pushing a pint into my hand and motioning to an intimate booth at the back of the pub. I politely nodded to my new friend and beat a hasty retreat.

Sarah later told me he was English.

Despite the cool character of the Creepy Wee we only stayed for one drink. It was very noisy in there, and it felt like anyone who sat at the next table to us was bound to spill their drinks and then shout about the fact that they’d spilled their drinks, and then buy more drinks to spill. Sarah and I were after a quiet chat and we certainly weren’t getting one in that pub.

So we moved next door to another boozer. Sarah’s friend Claire had told her that this pub had been recently done-up, with a smart new bar at the back. And it’s true, the back room was all shiny and new, but also noisy and seemingly populated by an uncomfortable mix of cool kids and disgruntled regulars. Not feeling like either, Sarah and I made our way back to the more traditional bar at the front of the pub and settled down with a nice quiet drink.

Now, I know what can happen when Sarah and I “settle down for a nice quiet drink.” The painful memory of last Saturday’s twelve-hour hangover is all the reminder I need. So I knew we’d be on our best behaviour, and after just a couple of leisurely pints we set off for home. Imagine my horror (or glee, you decide) when, at around midnight, Sarah pulled the first of my birthday treats from the freezer: a bottle of fancy gin. I like fancy gin.

Single measures grew alarmingly with each pour as we watched DVDs of Sarah dancing in stage productions. She’s really good, and I’m an expert on dancing and not in any way biased. I can’t recall exactly what time we called time, but there was a five somewhere near the start of it.

-oOo-

Maybe it was the final push from my dwindling supply of youthful energy but on Saturday I felt surprisingly well and awake. Any tummy-churning the booze might have caused was quickly quieted by a stroll through The Glen (as the locals refer to the large and attractive Pittencrieff Park) and a pleasant lunch complete with mint-choc-chip milkshake in the breezy but warm town centre.

We went for a stroll through the town, busy with weekend shoppers, and Sarah gave me a whistle-stop tour of the bits of Dunfermline that aren’t in a pub. Those bits include a brilliant little sweet shop that sells almost all the old standards. No refreshers unfortunately (the pill-shaped sweets, not the chewy lollies) but plenty of other goodies to choose from. I’m supposed to be dieting though so I just settled for a couple of packs of fizz-wiz.

The evening of my entry into rock superstardom was fast approaching, but first we needed sustenance and so we made our way to the restaurant where we were planning to meet Sarah’s friends Claire and Dave. They’re a lovely couple and I’d heard a lot about them from Sarah so it was great to finally meet them. I’d been warned that Claire’s approval was needed if Sarah and I were to have a future together, so I was on my best behaviour. The four of us gobbled down a hearty tea and made a start on the evening’s booze rations.

Then we headed back to Claire and Dave’s place for more drinks and an initiation into competitive karaoke.

With technology on most modern mobile phones that rivals even dedicated gaming platforms of the previous generation, and increasingly tactile and engaging control mechanisms available for domestic systems, it’s no surprise that social and casual gaming has seen such vast growth in recent years. And it’s no coincidence that previously excluded demographics – best represented by young adult women – have come to represent a significant sector in the games market. The stereotype of the pale, unwashed, unloved nerd has taken a hammering, particularly since I got a girlfriend.

But I’m not a great fan of party games, if I’m honest. Don’t get me wrong, I love parties, and I love video games, but rarely have the two been successfully combined. I’m a fuddy-duddy I suppose, and I’m also what I refer to as an athlete-gamer. I’ll happily spend my time playing the same level of a decade-old bullet-hell shooter over and over, trying to eke out the last few points. Or racing time-trials in Wipe3out in the hope of shaving a few hundredths of a second off my already-perfect lap. I briefly held the world record time for Battersea Bridge in Colin McRae Dirt 2, and my best Minesweeper time (expert level) is 64 seconds. I think I pretty much embody Arcade OCD.

Minesweeper Victory, Productivity Defeat

But I digress. I was surprised and delighted to have such a ridiculously good time playing SingStar with Sarah, Claire and Dave. This is a game that, on the face of it, should be the digital equivalent of scraping one’s nails down a blackboard while chewing tinfoil. The premise is simple: plug-in two microphones and sing along with some of the most despicable pop tragedies of the last half century, the winner (if such a term is even relevant here) being determined by mechanisms unknown, ostensibly related to each contender’s accuracy of pitch and rhythm. And it’s so utterly hilarious!

Although most of the music selection hits pretty wide of my tastes there are some good songs in there, Claire and Dave having accumulated lots of add-on discs for the game encompassing hundreds of tunes. I was dismayed to lose the “Friday I’m In Love” contest to Dave, but came back strongly when I hammered him with a rendition of “Everybody Hurts” that was like Michael Stipe had taken control of my crooning organs.

Wine flowed, briefly interrupted by Dave’s home-brew bitter and a tasty birthday cake, baked by Sarah, in shared celebration for Dave and me (it’s Dave’s birthday tomorrow, so this was a joint bash.) The karaoke gravitated inexorably towards the “Best of Take That” disc, and my interest inevitably waned. But not by much. I was enjoying myself.

It was drawing close to taxi-time, and we had a quick round of Wii-Bowling before leaving. Sarah and I drew for third place after watching Claire roll five consecutive strikes to take the victory. I was suffering the inevitable Wii malaise, by which I mean I couldn’t be arsed standing up and sitting down twice a minute to play properly. Maybe I could have edged it over Sarah had I done so. Probably not, I think my score was beginner’s luck anyway.

Another fun evening drew to a close with the girls surreally promising the computer that they’d lose impossibly huge amounts of weight in the next two weeks – a practise I can only assume is by order of some Nintendo-sponsored doctor. I shudder to think what recommendation it’d come up with if I went anywhere near the Wii-Scales.

-oOo-

Sunday still wasn’t my birthday, though it was the third and final day of my birthday celebrations. We didn’t get up to much, a lie in and lazy breakfast being the order of the day. Sarah gave me my presents – a new ukulele, some sweets, a book of facts about the Lake District and a “Quint’s Shark Fishing” T-shirt – all of which I love. I’ve really been spoiled this weekend!

Then we just chilled out in front of the TV for an hour or two. Sarah had recorded a program about Paralympic athletes that featured an old friend of Sarah’s, who very unfortunately broke his neck in a fall from a balcony, but made the best of a horrible situation by becoming an Olympic hopeful in wheelchair rugby. It was a really fascinating documentary, and those guys don’t go easy on each other, it’s a really violent sport (they even use steel-armoured wheelchairs!)

In the afternoon we went for a diet-ruining munch at MacDonald’s before heading into the cinema to watch The Expendables, which was a lot of fun. Completely predictable, cheesy and throwaway explosive fun from start to finish, though with some strangely clever action-movie in-jokes and amusing over-the-top performances throughout. As you might expect, Mickey Rourke kills the others at acting, and his emotional storytelling bit was genius. Well worth seeing if you like your films brash, noisy and knowingly silly.

Then we did the domestic-couple bit, with a trip to Tescos and an education in how to pack shopping. I’d never realised the complexities, and I look forward to passing my GCSE next summer. Then back home, where Sarah had some work to do before morning, so she set me up in front of the Point Break DVD with a pint of pear cider. What a wonderful girl she is.

Dunfermline station the following morning concluded my birthday weekend. My actual birthday I spent mostly on trains, parrying text messages and tweets of best wishes (thanks everyone) and eating too many egg sandwiches, followed by my mum’s chicken and chorizo sausage spicy stew stuff (yep, that’s what it says on the recipe.) In the evening I farted quite a lot. Happy birthday to me – and it really was.