"That's what she said."

SUNDAY:

The Blonde limps into the kitchen, still wearing her leopard skin dress from the night before. "Fuck," she exclaims.

"Barkeep, fill me up!" She sits with a glass of breakfast Bollinger, and eats ham and crackers. Her hip hurts from last night's falling over.

"Is my limp sexy?"

"Yeah, it matches my trapped nerve. We look like hot polio twins."

She lolls around on the window seat, and stretches.

"Oh sorry Punk, I think you could see my flange then."

We sit around chatting, and The Geordie says to The Blonde that she needs to decide what she'd like for her birthday from his sister.

"If you don't tell her what you want, she's getting you a mirrored bag from India."

"I don't know - some vouchers for somewhere?"

"Threshers?" he volunteers.

The Blonde just shoots him a dirty look and burps involuntarily.

We head out to The Grumpyscot's birthday brunch at a lovely bar in Stockbridge, drink the world's spiciest Bloody Mary's and discuss the photos being taken around the table.

Me: "look at my clown blusher!"

Geordie: "Tranny."

Me: "Oh my god, I'm wearing tranny blusher."

Grumpyscot: "It's ok," he says soothingly. "It detracts from your Adam's Apple."

The Blonde returns from the toilet, wearing her sunglasses indoors like a twat, and wobbling precariously. "Puffin!" she says gravely in my ear. "I nearly just stood on a dog."

Chat idly, (and inexplicably) turns to lingerie businesswoman Michelle Mone. The Blonde says,

"Yeah, she got all skinny and hot, and her husband left her. That's what might happen to me soon."

Geordie looks up from his steak sandwich. "Not because of that, because you're massively fucking annoying."

The Blonde starts chatting about her work as a spa therapist, describing the pregnancy massages she does.

Geordie: " So, you ordered the motorboat package?" We piss ourselves. My phone buzzz with a text. It's from The Punk.

"Would you like the motorboat package?x"

I say that I feel a bit violated.

The Blonde: "Puffin, you say that a lot."

Me: "That's because you're my friends."

The Blonde wordlessly grabs my right boob.

Geordie: "Do you want a bum rub?"

The Blonde: "Everyone loves a cheeky finger!"

I excuse myself and hide in the loo for a bit.

When I return, The Blonde is raging about a bloke last night poking her in the chest aggressively as they chatted.

"No one pokes me in the fucking chest! Well out of order." She demonstrates on me, it hurts.

Geordie: "Stop going on about being poked in the chest. This is like middle-class fight club."

The natural progression of the brunch suggests that the best possible thing we can do at this stage, is karaoke. We get in cabs into town, and a conversation takes place about Phil Collins. The Punk explains about someone else being called Phil being also involved in one of Phil Collins' hits. (I don't know the details, I wasn't listening.) All weekend, we'd been throwing the phrase 'that's what she said!' into conversations. With flawless timing, after the Geordie commented on the awesomeness of the tune, "double Phil!", Punk quietly said "that's what she said." It was the best one of the weekend.

Alas, (or luckily, depending on your point of view) karaoke didn't open until 7, so we piled into the world's poshest Wetherspoons to drink very cheap wine. The Geordie is telling us about his creepy chat-up lines. He leans over and strokes my face, gently, lingering on my chin.

"I like to call that The Moistener."

As The Blonde topped up from last night, her eyes morphed into the vaguely belligerent expression she gets when she's reached her drinking limit. The Geordie said we shouldn't go back to the flat to party, because she'll get into her comfy clothes then go to sleep.

"This is NOT my idea of a birthday party! Fucking leggings and headband? Fuck off." At the next bar, after this outburst, she quietly disappears and goes home.

We join her some time later, where I fall asleep hicupping with my head on The Punk's lap and begin to snore loudly. Apparently The Geordie yells, "Shut the fuck up, Puffin!" and I do.

Monday morning brings The Blonde still wearing her makeup from Saturday night, announcing that she thinks she's dying. We idly watch This Morning before Punk and I need to get our train home.

Geordie: "I hate Eamonn Holmes. I hate everyone."

The Blonde watches a horoscope advert with interest. The Geordie berates her.

"They're not real. Like Harry Potter. Or The Bible."

"I like his cool headgear."

SATURDAY

We gather in the kitchen, feeling mostly alright except The Blonde. The Geordie opens the traditional can of breakfast Tennent's and flicks through telly on his iPad.

"Ooh Puffin, this sounds like your sort of programme - 'Ashley Banjo's Secret Street Crew'." (Geordie loves street dance programmes. He's 39 and straight.)

We all piss ourselves at the show's title.

"Imagine that's your name! 'Pleased to meet you, I'm Billy Trumpet.'"

The Blonde potters about the kitchen, laughing at The Punk's amazing facial expression as he needed to sneeze and burp at the same time, so looked out of the window at some light to try and make either happen. She oversees Geordie watching the cricket. She likes to comment on sports from time to time.

"Is Monty Panesar playing?"

"Yes."

" I love Monty. I love his cool headgear."

".....his cool headgear?"

She looks pleased with herself. "Yeah, his cool headgear that he wears?"

Geordie looks incredulous. "You can't refer to it as cool headgear, he's a fucking Sikh."

"Oh." Her face falls.

We go over last night's events, including the time The Blonde barked at the Punk,

"Where's my handbag? WHERE'S MY HANDBAG?"

"It's on your fucking arm."

"Oh."

The Blonde looks thoughtful.

"You're very patient with me, Punk."

Geordie looks up from cricket coverage. "That's because he's JUST fucking met you."

So as not to waste the day of drinking opportunities that stretches out before us, we decide to get ready to go into town. Geordie frets over the fact there's a little hole in the bathroom door.

"But people will want to check out my junk." We don't. He's safe.

Our first port of call was a pub imaginatively called Tiles, because it was covered in tiles. We had a pint and the Blonde launched into a story, slagging someone off, her favourite topic.

"...her boyfriend's a right dickhead - he told me he wanted to take me down the passage by Paperchase, and you know...." She made a gesture with her hand.

Geordie looked alarmed. "Finger you?!"

The Blonde looked confused. "No, I was picking the skin off my finger."

Geordie told us about a glorious moment that we missed the night before as we slept, where The Blonde sat on the toilet, hammered, and blew her nose. She's currently obsessed with Danish dramas and inexplicably felt the need to explain to the Geordie what exactly it was all about.

"SO - Borgen. Borgen is..... congestion. Borgen is congestion, right. BUT - Borgen can also be anything you want."

"And then she sicked herself to sleep," he explained.



Soon enough it was time for The Blonde's birthday dinner, a civilised gathering at a cosy French restaurant in town. Blonde introduces her work friend.

"Have you met Sunni? She's 6ft, from Iceland, 24 and beautiful. Dickhead."

Down our end of the table, between eating frog's legs and snails, we discussed some of the horrific photos of me that had been taken during the previous evening and that day.

"I look really special in pictures."

The Grumpyscot agrees. "Basically, you're Joey Deacon with a red bob."

We move on to a rowdy bar full of dressed-up Edinburghers dancing to RnB. As we sit outside and smoke, The Blonde accosts random strangers for photos.

"Do you know who I am? It's my birthday! Did you know it was my birthday?" There's a brilliant photo of one poor stranger bloke in the middle of The Blonde and Mrs Yang, looking basically frightened for his life. During the evening, we get accidental triple measure drinks, Blonde falls over at least three times, and I see a poor girl sat in the corner at 2am by herself, crying into her pink martini. On the way home, police patrol the streets, herding drunk people. The Blonde gets inexplicably worried that we'll get arrested by them simply for talking a bit loudly.

She then proceeds to abuse Geordie for no reason on the way home.

"You RUINED my birthday, you dick!" He just laughed.

"What's your name again?"

FRIDAY

It was always going to result in a blog post of complete filth and debauchery. A visit to Edinburgh to see The Blonde, The Geordie, Grumpyscot and to introduce them to The Punk. Two birthdays, multiple pubs, some swearing, laughing 'til we're almost sick, and quite a bit of falling over on The Blonde's part.

Punk and I excitedly got ready for the trip, of course going via the Italian deli to pick up some posh ham for The Blonde. She loves ham. The journey up was fairly uneventful, except me hand-drawing a gin label for The Blonde's birthday present, and Punk managing to snag his own beard with the scissors we used for wrapping presents. (He shouldn't be allowed near sharp stuff.) At York some unbearably posh students got on the train, shouting loudly.

"Ya, ya, sorority girl, ya, the countryside gets nice after Newcastle." I was getting quietly pissed off until one of the posh twats got their iPad out and proceeded to watch the final episode of Sherlock in my eyeline. The sight of Benedict Cumberbatch pacified my rage.

On the journey a conversation took place on Twitter between @StyleCouncillor, @Ginodb, me and The Blonde - they set us a photo challenge which basically involved us making tits of ourselves in public. We are more than capable of this by ourselves.

Arriving at The Blonde's, we had a tour of the flat and decided to have 'a couple of drinks' before we headed down the local to meet everyone else. The Geordie shouted, "Gin me, bitchface!" to The Blonde and she happily obliged. I'm pretty sure this is how they talk to each other all the time. The Blonde exclaimed that she was pacing herself and saving herself for the big birthday bash tomorrow, so she only had five gins and a glass of wine pre-pub.

At the local, we met The Grumpyscot, The Yangs and some other Edinburgh friends-of-friends. The Blonde was, by this point, being quite er, direct. She addressed an unfamiliar girl.

"What's your name?"

"Jo."

"How do you know The Grumpyscot?"

"Oh you know, just from the pubs really."

"But you seem... so.... normal."

*nervous laughter*

"What'sh your name?"

"Jo...."

We all look at each other, wondering if it's time to take The Blonde home.

"So how do you know people?"

"Um, from the pubs - I've met The Grumpyscot and The Geordie one big weekend when we were all out on the piss."

Thunder flashed across The Blonde's face at the name-drop of her husband.

"SO - who would you say you know better? The Grumpyscot - or The Geordie?"

Confusion reigned over the table.

"Umm....." The poor girl wasn't sure what to say, but before she could think of the least provocative answer, The Blonde butted in again.

"What'sh your name?"

At this point we made our excuses and left. Once home, around 8pm, we decided ordering pizza was a great idea. The Blonde had other ideas, and refused to take a break from dancing wildly with a glass of wine in her hand and singing Erasure's Respect repeatedly. At one point, her and The Punk did an interpretive modern dance routine to a track, none of us can recall what song it was, but I do recall The Punk crying out about his knees hurting, and The Blonde shouting, "Look! I'm 'birthing' you! This is so powerful." Shortly before toppling over. She disappeared off for a bit, then Geordie comes back in to the lounge, with a photograph of her in the exact same position as she was found in the weekend before - sprawled between the bathroom and the hallway, asleep. He dragged her on her back through the flat to put her to bed.

"Geordie, I feel a bit sick..." she moaned. At that point, the Punk wandered past in his bedtime clothes.

"OOOH, you look SEXY in a vest!..... urgh I think I might vom again."

I decide to call it a night, but was apparently found about twenty minutes later falling asleep on the sofa in the dressing room, using a pile of coathangers as a pillow, mumbling about being 'so comfy'.

It was about 10pm.