So that was fun.

A couple of days ago I went down to Edinburgh to meet the good people of Palimpsest.

Halfway there (as the bus was just getting into Glasgow bus station) I got a call. It was Daveybot one of the people I was on my way to meet.

"Hi, Liam - where are you?"

"I'm on a bus just coming into Glasgow bus station - why?"

"Because - er... you're two months too early. The Big Day Out is in May..."

Hysterical laughter ensued and I got strange looks from my fellow passengers all the way into the bus station and beyond.

This is what must have happened: I see the date writ large up on my computer screen. May 20th. I set off downstairs with the intention of writing it up on the family wall-planner in the kitchen (which is mostly used to keep track of which kid's turn it is to have their choice of telly before bath time but occasionally gets more important stuff written on it like: 'MOT due', 'Dentist 4.45' and 'DADDY'S BIRTHDAY!') but, somewhere en route, I get distracted by some child's toilet emergency, and when I finally arrive at the planner, I get bewildered by the dazzling array of months starting with M to choose from - and stick it the first one I come to. Mar 20th.

So I went over anyway and we met for lunch.

After I had managed to get lost on Princes Street - which I would have thought was impossible given that it is dead straight and only has buildings down one side, but there you go, it was one of those days - I finally met up with Dave (and were joined by PaddyJoe who also lives in Edinburgh) and had what Dave described as a 'bad (REALLY bad) sandwich'. (It was supposed to be beef - it could have been some part of a cow I suppose, though they did a good job of cutting the the lace holes off my slice.)
I would have described it as 'inedible' but I did manage to eat it - but only after doing that excruciatingly embarrassing thing where you take a good hearty bite into a sandwich and suddenly find the filling is a lot more solid than you expected just as you pull your hand away.
Your teeth have neatly bitten through the bread but encountered sudden unexpected resistance too late to stop your hands from continuing with the simple automatic action of 'lift sandwich to mouth, let mouth take bite, put sandwich down on plate'
As your autopilot hands pull the rest of the sandwich away from your face, the rubbery ,unbitten contents, clenched between your teeth are pulled out from between the two halves of the roll till there's nothing holding it up and then it flaps down moistly onto your chin like a Mauri's tongue during a haka.
Embarrassing at the best of times in the presence of someone you have only just met -but doubly so having just spent the past two hours proving yourself a total idiot to him and then screwing up his lunchtime by ending up on the wrong end of a pretty long street...

Dave and Paddyjoe had to get back to work so I took a wander over to a National Gallery on the pretence of looking at art (when all I really wanted to do was look at the best statue of girls' arses in the world).

This is what it looks like from the front apparently.

Then a stroll down the Royal Mile to the parliament building which (Sorry, Dave) totally underwhelmed me, then back up the hill, train, Glasgow, bus, home - the bus journey was interminable. Two rows behind me on the other side of the aisle, a ski bum, just returned from three months on the piste, bumped into a female someone he vaguely knew and then didn't stop talking about himself (VERY LOUDLY!) for two and a half hours. Two and a half hours! I'm surprised there was any room for the rest of us on the bus his ego was taking up so much space - no, that's a fib. He did stop talking once, right in the middle of a sentence when his friend's mobile rang, she answered it, she talked, she said goodbye, and ran off - and he carried on exactly where he had left off. It was almost as if she had pressed a pause button on him.

Yeah and like there was this fancy dress party but we didn't have any costumes so we dressed up as women... it was quite funny, and Klaus dressed up as one of the instructors and that was quite funny and then this other dud he was called John he got really drunk and that was quite funny and he did a strip and that was quite funny...

He said, "That was quite funny" a lot.

I wanted to kill him. That would have been quite funny.

So what have I learned from all this?

Answer: Don't order a 'Beef' sandwich at The Bad Ass Bar, Bistro and Grill 167 Rose Street Edinburgh, EH2 4LS ; they're crap.

The rest of it could happen to anyone.