YAAAAWWWWN. A GUEST POSTING FROM S-WC

Nope….I’m not being rude.

S-WC used the word ‘Yawn’ in the title of his e-mail.  Here’s the rest of his whimsical words:-

Jet lag. Wonderful thing. Its about three am, I am in a place called Dayton in the United States of America, which for those of you who don’t know, is in Ohio. I have been here for five hours, and have had about twenty minutes sleep. The whole place is unsurprisingly quiet. I’m really hungry as well which is not helping my mood. There is an all night shop down the road, but it looks quite ‘edgy’ so I’ve raided the mini bar. I say mini bar, it had some peanuts, a small warm bottle of water, some ‘chips’ and a shoe horn in it. The shoe horn was a bit rubbery but strangely tasty. For some reason still unknown to me, the Americans don’t do kettles or tea bags. Christ there is not even a gym. There is a bar, but its shut.

So then I looked at the info they leave in the room so you can get your bearings, saying that I appear to be on the 11th floor in the biggest hotel in the area, I might just be able to find my way around. However, Dayton appears to have lots of museums, a University Campus and that’s about it. Down the road, is a suburb called Kettering. My fingers are crossed that it is more lively as the UK equivalent. Apparently the Steve Miller Band played there once, so there is hope. Once when on an overnight stop in the UK version of Kettering I went to the town centre to find something to do in the evening, I managed to pick up a ‘What’s On in Kettering’ leaflet and it just said ‘Fuck All’.

So as I sit there wide awake in the sixth biggest city in Ohio, ‘the Gem City’ (named after a racehorse and not, you know, jewels) I reached for my ipod. I was trying not to as I listened to it much of the way over on the flight, but if needs must.

The weird thing about music is that is somehow, in the strangest or simplest of situations, it can lift a mood. By the end of the first track I was feeling slightly better, and I was smiling by the end of track two and track three made me do a little jig around the small box room I was in.

I now think that, you know, this place ain’t so bad, I arrived safely, the family are well back home, my luggage wasn’t lost. As I type now, I feel calm – the sun is being to rise across the skyline and this being America I can look forward to a heck of a breakfast, consisting of waffles, blueberries and maple syrup. I’ve also spied a Krusty Kreme Doughnut shop from the window, about a five minute walk in the other direction from the dodgy all night shop. Bonus. Also I get to go to Chicago on Sunday, so I should probably cut my whinging.

So here are the first three songs on the iPod this morning. I thank them for lifting me out of a rubbish mood. Its also a little odd how iPods have this habit of picking songs that suit the situation.

mp3 : Simon & Garfunkel – The Sound of Silence
mp3 : Dracula Legs – Heartburn Destination
mp3 : The Orwells – Blood Bubbles

S-WC