Time For T

In the next few hours, I'll be setting off, via Falkirk, for T In The Park.

By my own reckoning, this will be my ninth T In The Park, but my first since 2006. While my brain remains free of the imminent alcoholic fug, here are my thoughts on each of the previous eight I've attended.

1997: My first festival, and T In The Park's first at Balado, near Kinross. My two friends and I take scandalously little drink and are generally unprepared for what awaits us. Highlights include Saturday headliners Kula Shaker and The Charlatans, while the weekend ends with a second tent jam-packed for John Squire's post-Roses band The Seahorses.

1998: Saturday's highlights include Audioweb and Super Furry Animals, who are so good that instead of going to see headliners The Prodigy, I instead go to the CD tent, buy a Super Furry Animals bootleg and return to my tent to listen to it. The rain came in the middle of the night and never stopped. My two friends bailed for home mid-afternoon on the Sunday, but I was determined to stick it out, despite the thigh-high mud, just to see Ian Brown. I cadge a lift home from two girls from school and get home around 2am, having been mesmerised by Brown's fantastic performance.

1999: This was my first year attending with folks from uni, one of whom I'll be sharing a tent with this weekend. I can't actually remember too much about what bands I saw, although I do remember Nicky Wire trashing the stage and giving away James Dean Bradfield's white fender guitar after the Manic Street Preachers' headline set.

2000: Mrs Wife (then known as Miss Girlfriend) and one of her friends accompany me to Balado to see Travis, Moby, Ocean Colour Scene and Beth Orton. I have no recollection of rain, but that line-up is hardly the most rock'n'roll, is it? Although I've just looked up the full line-up online and it seems we chose not to see Muse or The Flaming Lips....

2001: The first year in which the three of attending this year went together. Again, my overall recollections are hazy, but I do remember seeing Paul Weller's acoustic set. Having suffered through the whole of Wheatus' horror show, Weller promptly came on stage and started flexing his ego, playing Style Council songs and little-known solo work. Then Noel Gallagher joined in, they played That's Entertainment and everything was right with the world. Stereo MC's were also among the surprisingly fantastic acts.

2002: I left for T In The Park 2002 immediately after graduating, eschewing a night on the piss with my fellow graduands for a night eating cold food in a muddy field. The sound quality at the main stage was woeful, turning Oasis' headline set into a faint swirling noise. It also had the same effect on Primal Scream. Doves and The Cooper Temple Clause were both brilliant though.

By 2003, Mrs Wife and I were saving hard for a trip around the world. And by 2004, we were in Australia.

So by 2005, having returned from foreign climes, I was ready for a return to T In The Park. A huge group of us from Brechin set off together and turned a large part of the campsite into our own compound, cordoned off with yellow and black police tape. One of the most enjoyable Ts in terms of the pre-festival banter, plus the weather held out, which is always a bonus. Yet again, Super Furry Animals and Ian Brown are amongst the bands I see, although Ian Brown throws a strop early on during his set and storms off, having played a few Stone Roses songs. Still a great weekend though.

2006: Mrs Wife (who by this time is the newly-appointed Mrs Wife) again accompanies me, and I'm lucky enough to have a free press pass this time. Sound quality at the main stage again plays an unwelcome part, ruining the Arctic Monkeys and Hard-Fi sets, but The Who more than make up for it.

And, for a variety of reasons (primarily the £200 cost of a ticket and the number of neds) I've not been since.

Who knows what T In The Park 2009 will bring? I'm hoping to see Nick Cave, Jane's Addiction and Blur, but aside from that, the weekend is a blank canvas.

That Was The Week That Was

I'm operating on zombie-esque levels of sleep now what with the combination of Norway, Connect and being back at work today.

Norway was a strange experience - any country where three pizzas costs £75 and a round of drinks more than £100 is a tad too pricey for me. But we managed to see a bit of Stavanger in between the work sessions, and found enough free drink to keep ourselves going without taking out a second mortgage. A party on a traditional sailing ship in the sunshine on Stavanger harbour was the highlight of our time.

Our stay in Stavanger was fairly short, and within a couple of days my merry band was heading to Inveraray for the second Connect festival.

Highlights from the weekend were an incendiary set from Gossip, an all-too-short mid-afternoon slot by Elbow, a nostalgic run through Gomez's debut album and Friday night's headliners Kasabian blasting through their greatest hits.

And lest we forget, Rangers pumped Celtic 4-2 at Parkhead.

All in all, it's been a great week!

North Then South

The week ahead promises to be a busy one, with a spot of jet-setting preceding a weekend of music and pear cider in Argyll.

Tomorrow I fly out to Stavanger with five colleagues for the Offshore North Sea conference. I've never been to Norway before, so the novelty factor alone will make it an interesting trip, although the fact that I have to work while across the North Sea will take a little of the shine off.

Still, it's another corner of the world I'll be seeing for the first time, and it certainly beats three days stuck in the office.

I'm home alone at the moment as I prepare for my trip, Mrs Wife having left Dungroanin' on Thursday bound for Edinburgh and Cardiff, the former to take in some festival shows and the latter to see REM for the first time.

I'll arrive home from Scandinavia late on Wednesday night, and after a day in the office on Thursday, I'll be away to Inveraray for the second Connect Festival, where the bill this year includes Kasabian, Manic Street Preachers, Gomez, Franz Ferdinand and, most exciting of all from my point of view, Elbow.

Last year's festival felt like a well-kept secret, but I would imagine that this year's line-up will mean that a bigger crowd turns out. Still, as long as the weather holds and the pear cider is flowing, I'm sure it'll be another weekend to remember.

Trolleyed

This week, I'll be playing in three football matches in the space of four days, including my first 90-minute, 11-a-side match in several years.

The last time I even donned the football boots was back when Mrs Wife and I were living in Argyll, and I was training with the local amateur football team.

I'd decided that the world wasn't complete without me showcasing my magnificent footballing abilities on the pitches of Scotland's west coast, but I was scandalously short of fitness.

So I threw myself wholeheartedly into the club's pre-season training campaign.

Until, a couple of weeks in, I suffered one of the worst injuries I've ever received.

Bizarrely, this incident didn't occur on the football pitch, but on the aisles of a supermarket.

It was the weekend of T In The Park 2005, and I had arranged to meet Baby Brother so that we could travel home together to get ready for the festival.

Unfortunately, I forgot to factor in that Baby Brother is an organisational nightmare, and it was after midnight that we finally left Glasgow.

I hadn't eaten, and hadn't bought any food for T In The Park, so I persuaded Baby Brother to stop at the 24-hour Tesco on Dundee's Kingsway.

For those who aren't aware, this branch of the supermarket is roughly the size of Wales. The aisles must be half a mile long. And at 2am on a Friday morning, they were deserted.

And so it came to pass that I rounded the corner with my trolley, and saw a vast expanse of empty aisle in front of me.

The opportunity was too good to resist. Pushing the trolley in front of me, I ran at full tilt down the aisle, until I determined that I'd picked up enough speed to go from trolley driver to trolley passenger.

I should probably explain now that the trolley wasn't a full-size effort with a seat for a small child and enough space inside for a large television set - it was a flat bed one designed for the shopper who needs a grocery receptacle bigger than a basket but smaller than a wheelbarrow.

But I digress. Running along this deserted supermarket aisle at 2am, I hopped on the back of the trolley.

The physics of the situation are simple - 14 stone suddenly hopping on the back of a flimsy trolley at 10 miles an hour doesn't work. The trolley shot out from beneath me and went skidding across the shop floor. I was left to slide along the aisle on my face. Unfortunately, my right foot caught on the floor. My leg, suddenly stretched between my sliding body and my stationary foot, pinged.

There is no cool, calm and collected way to pick yourself up off the floor of a supermarket at 2am when you've got a pulled hamstring. Nor is there a subtle way of picking up and refilling your trolley, or of completing your shopping with an all-too-obvious limp.

As far as I'm aware, no-one saw my mishap. But I'm still dreading the day that I appear on You've Been Framed, my fall from grace (and trolley) having been captured on CCTV and preserved for posterity.