Geordie, Alan and I have just had the most extraordinary weekend of our lives - I think it's fair to say that, and we've had a fair range of bizarre experiences between us, with or without the band.

  The background, for those who know even less than we did beforehand (and that was little enough): sometime over the summer Alastair 'fixit' Graham Campbell said we'd been approached to play in Budapest or Bucharest, he wasn't sure which, for an ex-pat party organised by a couple of enterprising Scots. I hope it's Budapest, I said. I'll believe it when I see it, said Alan.

   In September Al said it was definitely on, and Bucharest not Budapest, and to his chagrin he had a previous invitation and couldn't renege on it. Alan was appointed liaison man with Johnny (Bullough) and John (Forbes Leith), the organisers: they proposed to fly three of us out and shore us up with local musicians. I, being the only treble instrument, had my doubts about this, but we sent out a copy of the fiddle music and I schemed to get another fiddler or at least a clarinet out as well. Sorry, no dice, they said; but trust us, the Romanians are good.

   Well, by Thursday night we knew: that BA had donated our flights, and Seagrams and BAT sponsored the party itself (I can't imagine anywhere else much where there would be cigarettes on every table); that it was OK for Kasia to get herself a flight and come with us - Kasia being Geordie's Polish girlfriend, who had actually worked for a charity and lived in Bucharest four years ago, so knew it well - and that it was going to be cold. Other than that, we expected it to be pretty Spartan - a matter of sleeping on someone's floor and avoiding the cockroaches, and in a curious and probably rather grim and depressing place. We also knew that we were going to have to get up quite horribly early to catch the Gatwick train.

  I had Geordie and Kasia staying the night before: I personally had three hours' sleep, and I don't know that they had much more. I was, in any case, pretty wrecked after the last two months' work and band busyness and Dorset dramas. Never mind, thought I, I'll sleep on the train or the plane... ...not so, in either case: I was too busy looking out of the window - at south London looking suitably apocalyptic in a fiery sort of sunrise, and although there was thick cloud from Brighton to Bucharest it was really rather pretty from above, rather like a great white astrakhan with the Transylvanian Alps wearing through it in places.

   It was still quite dense down to about fifty feet, where we suddenly broke through to a John Le Carre-ish landscape of mist, snow, Communist concrete and abandoned Russian hardware. Amidst all this was the new airport building like a Symbol of the Resurgence of Capitalism or something - lots of smoked glass and marble facing, behind which a tangle of loose wires and a lot of rubble.

   Before we'd a chance to clear passport control we were met by a dappish character (dapper and yappish) who introduced himself as the defence attache and shook our hands bracingly, and swept us through to arrivals where his driver was waiting. Geordie didn't twig that the driver was the driver, and he'd been warned about Romanians, so he refused all help carrying his keyboard - we always knew the keyboard was heavy, but BA put a special label on it to make it official - 24 kilos, it is.

   We left John Le Carre country and drove along a few miles of straight road lined with dilapidated concrete and dirty snow. The buildings reminded me of the sort of dreary between-wars stuff you get around Belgian or Italian railways, nothing either very shocking or very exotic, although I did get quite excited at being able to understand most of the Romanian on the hoardings. Then we started along a long straight stretch through the woods, and it was undeniably Romania: we were on the middle of three carriageways, and assumed it had been, as in Russia, reserved for the Party brass. Not quite: it was for the personal use of Ceaucescu... creepy stuff.

   We circled the Monument to the Heroes of Aviation and passed the Palace of the Media, a faithful copy of Moscow university long since abandoned by most of the media and not much wanted by anyone else. Finally we struck the city centre, or at least the northern edge of it where a lot of the embassies and residences are: Italian all over again, but this time immense villas, in one of which we were billeted with the Defence Attache (Geords and Kasia) and the Cultural Attache (I didn't think anyone apart from the DA called them that since Esprit de Corps) (Alan and myself). She was lovely, a no-nonsense Australian with a flat full of good music and gorgeous Australian paintings; and there was no question of anyone sleeping on a floor, nor could we find a single cockroach to avoid. In fact, generally the creature comforts were rather better than in Italy, I reckoned: everything worked and was warm, every building unbelievably warm (Italy, reckoning itself a warm country, is totally at a loss when the temperature dips towards zero, you'd never think it happened every year).

   We had time for tea with Mrs DA and a stroll across the compacted snow and grimy icy puddles along the Calea Victorei which is the heart of things, and runs through a good many of the old buildings Ceaucescu didn't have time to tear down; though some of them have torn themselves down through sheer neglect, and through the ornate stonework you see gaping rafters and drifts of snow everywhere.

   Then we got to the shops: Communist survivals with stone-chip floors and racks of ugly coats, some trimmed with real kitty, and horrible china and glass and coy handicrafts and dour shopgirls - didn't see any prices on those, but I didn't actually ask. Which reminds me of the anecdote in The Great Fortune (recommended by Mother before I went out there): a Romanian and his German friend were walking down the Calea Victorei, between the wars, and the Romanian named the price of every woman they passed. The German, somewhat shocked, asked 'Are there no honest women in Romania?' 'There are,' said the Romanian; 'but VERY expensive.' I speak in pique, you understand, because the vast majority of Romanian girls are tall as trees and slim as wands, with huge black eyes and long black hair, Slavic cheekbones and perfect porcelain skin. The men aren't bad-looking either, although the only ones we met who weren't intensely serious were our band. For the rest, an experience of Kasia's summed it up: seeing a girl at the party sitting on her own and looking glum, Kasia went and introduced herself. 'How are you doing?' said Kasia. 'I'm Romanian' answered the girl.

The expats, whom we met that evening, were a very different story: real frontiersmen, and enjoying themselves. God knows I have Views on the sort of post-Communist enterprise which sells fruit machines amongst the wreckage, or repackages the groceries Western-style and sells them at five times the price; but this was rather different, more a matter of saying 'What this city needs is a courier company' (there wasn't one), setting one up and handing the business over to the Romanians six months later to go and establish something else.

   We met in the Australian bar (because there must, always, be an Australian bar and an English pub and an Irish pub...) which was much like any Australian bar except that the waitresses were slim dark Romanians (at least these ones smiled) and the prices were in lei. Converting fifteen thousand lei to the pound took some getting used to - the piper came in one evening saying 'there was a lassie said she was hungry, so I gave her ten grand'. Also, looking past the other punters and outside the picture window you were brought up short by the pitted snowscape and the ranks of beat-up Dacias (Renault 12s Made In Romania). Just as I thought I couldn't stay awake another moment or drink another mouthful of Stella, someone said 'You are coming to the party, aren't you?' and since the four of us were sharing one key to the street door, I gathered my strength and we took a lift to embassy-land.

   The party was in the sort of mango-walled green-woodworked salsa-playing place that would have looked totally convincing in Fulham or Clapham; except that it had clearly been someone's home previously and the bathroom was just that, tub and all, which amused Alan no end. No-one tried actually having a bath: given the press of people waiting, it wouldn't have been popular. I thought I was managing very well, and talking perfect sense, until we decided that it really was home time and the cold air hit me. My boots have no grip on packed snow, anyway: I had to be steered by Geordie and Kasia, and I was quite cheerful I suppose. I expect I've now lost any credible authority I had over Geordie - I haven't had any over Alan since he went to the Academy and learned to tackle.

   We'd aimed to explore the city a little the next morning, but I resisted my alarm clock until about eleven thirty local time (two hours later than here, so not altogether shocking). We finally set out around one, with two hours in hand before we were due at the Cercul Militar for a practice. Kasia took us to the altogether more typical concrete jungle where she used to live: showed us the hulks of tower blocks begun decades ago and abandoned for lack of cash, and the market - covered since her time - selling vast quantities of cabbages and parsnips and onions and other disheartening roots; not to mention soap and cigarettes and woolly gloves and cheap scent with enticing Western names like Don't. We also gawped at the Dacia with its boot and back seat laden with strings of pretzels, and more strings hanging like charms from all its mirrors. Enough social realism: back to the Piata Unirii and the Palace of the People, another gut-churning Ceaucescuism: meant to be the largest building in the world (but he got his maths wrong, it's the second after the Pentagon), marble-faced and looking along miles and miles of parade ground lined with marble fountains. There's a site on the Net where you can see pictures of all the things he tore down to make room for it and the parade ground... The parliament has taken it over, with some embarrassment, and it's open for visits (but we didn't have time). Instead we headed back to the old town and did some more gawping: at the Greek church, at the Savings bank (something like a cross between the Paris opera and the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele, the amazing glass arcade in Milan, if that makes sense); and at Karu cu Bere, the grand old Victorian cafe-restaurant which was Kasia's recommendation: marble pillars, gothicky wood panelling, elaborate tiled floor and around the walls painted panels with Scenes from the History Of. It did feel a bit like having your pint in church, but perhaps that was because there was no-one else in there. From there to the Cercul Militar - the army club - where I had to stop and tie my jaw up before we went any further.

   From John Le Carre to Tolstoy - marble and mirrors everywhere, a grand staircase, a comfortably-sized ballroom with caryatids and galleries at each end, chandeliers big enough to set up house in, acres of parquet and crimson velvet (OK, so I am laying it on with a trowel, but I can't help it, it was like that). There was also a sound system about ten times our usual fit-in-the-back-of-the-Fiesta number, and the boys to set it all up and twiddle the knobs for us too. Just the thought of getting to the end of the evening and not having to coil cables or heft speakers put that much more of a smile on all our faces.

   I met Florian, the Romanian band leader: almost a caricature Eastern European musician, stocky and dark and a demon player - also a constitutional flirt and hugely amused by every part of the proceedings, even the fact that no-one had warned the boys that there would be nothing to eat, and the poor dears played from half seven to half two with no other sustenance than whisky. 'Have you got the music we sent you?' I asked. 'What music? he said, and my heart sank somewhat. Someone produced the music, I explained the repeats in a double set and we proceeded to play through the Duke of Perth - not disastrously, but at a speed guaranteed to give nobody's granny the vapours. I'm going to have to work hard, I thought. Alan appeared to say that we had the offer of a lift back, and we'd do well to take it if we wanted time to write out chords for the accordion (it's not a constant of the Infamous Grouse that we're always writing music at the last minute, it just seems that way), collect our things and come back for supper before having another practice with the full complement at half seven.I misunderstood the plan, and was changed into my black velvet and boa before supper when everyone else was in jeans, but as such I probably fitted in better at Capsa's - Bucharest equivalent of something like Rules' I suppose, preserved for the Party brass and now serving variable meat and overcooked veg in faded splendour to almost nobody - admittedly, we were early, but we had the attentions of more waiters than there were of us, opening bottles of wine for us with slightly more enthusiasm than we could quite cope with. From The Great Fortune again: '...Clarence noticed that the waiter was serving them with wine from a new bottle. "I ordered only one bottle," he said. "Why have you brought a second?" "This, domnule," said the waiter, giving the bottle an insolent flourish, "is the third." "The third!" Clarence looked bewildered. "I did not ask for three bottles." "Then why did you drink them?" the waiter asked as he made off.' and that was fifty years ago...

   Back to the Cercul Militar, where we heard a sedate but perfectly danceable Duke of Perth coming from an ante-room: the rest of the band had arrived. Pleased to meet you, we said, now let's go and try it with the PA - oh, and just a tad faster than that. They blew our socks off - it was phenomenal. Between the boys themselves and the quality of the sound system, I think even the Cavendish would have looked to their laurels. We played for a couple of hours, but only really to go through the repeats and the time change in the Foursome. We downed tools for ten minutes or so at around twenty past nine - the drummer a few minutes earlier than that: Florian said something that sounded like Oi, and got an impassioned stream of Romanian in answer. 'I think that's Romanian for fuck off,' said Alan. Then people started arriving, and it really did look quite like War and Peace; and all we had to do was wait and see their faces when they heard how fabulous we sounded. God, we were good; and even when we were bad, we were good: we'd been put down to play a Quickstep and a Charleston, quite without consultation - we'll play all kinds of reels, but flat races really aint our thing. I had to cut out the Quickstep anyway, as half of Geordie's music had gone astray, and have Geordie do his jazz thing instead - I'd told John and Johnny this, and they were perfectly happy - but hadn't been able to warn the DA (possibly the only person in the room who could have danced a Quickstep); he wasn't pleased. Hell's bells, I thought, can't really cut the Charleston too. We'll have to wing it, I told the Romanians - help me as much as you can. We'd shuffled to the end of the first verse, as it were, and Florian tapped my elbow. 'Leave it to us,' he said, and picked it up and ran with it - for about fifteen minutes - the most energetic, inventive and all-round superb Charleston I'd ever heard. There wasn't space for another single person on the floor, and the three of us stood by and stared - there was nothing else we could do. Then, at the end of the evening, after we'd reached the triumphant end of the 51st, they struck up with a hora - getting a note or two in for the Balkans I guess. Wow. Well, by the end of the evening there was no question but we have a repeat booking next year.

   I thought I was about ready to go home and die, but discovered that I did have just enough energy to hit The Club - complete time warp experience, Italy c. 1988 but without all the slimy Italians. We attracted a certain amount of attention, with Kasia and me in our velvets still and Alan in his trews, but the man of the moment was undoubtedly Geordie in his kilt, he spent the rest of the evening holding court and loving every minute of it.

   There wasn't much of Sunday before we had to get to the airport - where, for the first time, we found postcards. Pretty grim they were too: jolly peasants in national dress in front of ersatz traditional houses, bathed in unlikely sunlight and printed on flimsy cheap card. I got one to send to the office, but you my friends deserve better - I hope this vast screed qualifies, if you break it down it probably does work out at about eight Mairi-style overblown postcards' worth. This, this is why I fight my way to Putney and coil cables and heft speakers and get lost on the outskirts of Aldershot and such - it's all worth it for something like this. I tell you, Christmas isn't going to do anything for me this year; and I have no regrets that it wasn't Budapest. Nothing could have been as good - except the same again but with more sleep beforehand. If I get nothing but return receipts for this, I'll know that you're all disgusted with me. But I probably don't care. xx M