I am thinking of buying myself some new livers. Or maybe investing in cloning technology so I can have a few of my own livers made up. Things have been alcoholic here this last week.

On Thursday came fondue with copious amounts of wine at Maggi & Jens' house. Phil, Lorna & I pitched up and immediately got stuck in to a pre-dinner beer. This was quickly followed by a succession of South African reds during and after dinner (yes I know you're supposed to drink white wine with cheese fondue, but hey we're heathens).

Rounded off with a board game and liqueurs, my Friday morning was always going to be a little tired. Thank heavens that Lorna & my idea of popping in somewhere for a drinkie on the way home was poohpoohed by Phil! As it was I didn't get to bed until 2 o'clock.

And then, just when I thought it was safe to get back into the red wine, I found myself trapped - completely against my will, clearly! - in a vicious bout of house red swilling in a fab Italian restaurant just over the river from my flat, where with Oliver and Ferdinand (and dinner) we polished off seven LITRES over the course of the evening!!

We were supposed to be going on to a Carnival party after food, but the atmosphere in the restaurant was too fab to leave: great food, great wine, great music, and great people on all the tables around us. I really must go there more often. It's not a big place but boy is it a fun place!

And to complete the unholy trinity of booze-fuelled nights, on Saturday night I met up with Lorna for cheeky pre-concert cocktails & food at Ysenegger in Neuhausen. Blimey! I haven't tasted a risotto that amazing since the Christmas opera trip. And the Touchdown wins hands down.

The gig itself was cool: we went to see Kasabian at a smallish venue by the railway tracks and ended up right at the front, in spitting distance of the band. I got some top photos on my mobile. Then, as we were leaving, I ran into Lise & Rich and Bev & Gary, so we all decided to have a drink. Which turned into yet more bottles of red wine, topped off with flaming B52s for good measure.

And THEN, at one o'clock - because clearly I hadn't drunk enough yet - I went back into town and caught up with Ferdinand at a bar called Cook, where the patrons were taking their Carnival spirit seriously and I was surrounded by a pulsating cloud of drag queens. The vodka yellows (that's German for vodka & orange) were most welcome.

Thankfully I didn't have a single drop to drink on Sunday. Instead I headed over to Michaela's house and helped Lisa paint Ryan's bedroom in Chinese colours (that is one seriously luminous red feature wall!).

Amusingly, Lisa daubed a big fat "HELL♥" on the red wall before we started painting it - she kept claiming it was HELLO with a heart for the O; but in reality it was a one-word, devil-worshipping, blood-spattered paean to Hades - only to discover that it totally showed through the first coat of the one-coat-only paint!! And she, a responsible kindergarten teacher!! Oops!!

The alcoholic haze lifted briefly again on Monday, where I played badminton as usual, but it fogged my mind in a big way again on Tuesday, which was Mardi Gras, the culmination of the Carnival season, known here as Fasching.

Germans take their Carnival seriously (see also my blog from November in Cologne), and even the European Patent Office bows to local tradition and gives its staff the afternoon off; some companies are closed all day as the revelling starts at 7am centred on Munich's Viktualienmarkt, the main food market just southeast of the Town Hall.

I got there with Isabel from work at 12.30, and already the market square was heaving with hordes of drunken skunks in fancy dress. There were nuns, witches, dudes with huge afro wigs, superheroes, drag queens, cowboys, vampires, ugly people, elvises, devils, angels, and everything in between. And the weather was PERFECT! Sunny, no clouds, no wind, and ridiculously warm for the time of year (this time last year there were such snowstorms that the airport had to be closed).

We spent the next several hours (okay Isabel left early - but she had to catch a train to Augsburg) drinking beer and eating doughnuts. I saw loads of my friends there: Ferdinand, Oliver, Harry, Ralf, Pascal, Jean-François, Andreas, Norbert, Thomas, Michael; and I met a whole load of new people too, including most memorably a rather flamboyant Israeli transvestite. It was magic. The atmosphere was the best since last summer's street festivals and the chaos of the Oktoberfest.

And the evening was brought to a conclusion by monster cordon bleu schnitzels with chips at the Krablergarten, a restaurant that punches above its weight in any price-to-portion analysis. Hurrah for German food!