My Night With The Pussycat Dolls:

Our Glasgow hotel was across the street from the S.E.C.C. (I think I’ve put on shows there in the past, but it’s a bad sign when you can’t remember the venues from outside. I‘d know if I went backstage…). When we got back from the radio station where the band had been recording a session we ran into the crowd for the Pussycat Dolls as they were leaving the S.E.C.C. (we asked some kids holding poster who’d they’d been to see – which in itself is a bit creepy—40 year-old men cruising teenage girls outside a gig in their big white van with blacked-out windows…). Giddy on the news we were only a few hundred yards from the Dolls we all started singing Don’t Cha’. Everyone knew the lyric (respect to Cee-Lo, even though my friend says he was a bit of a dick when she met him checking into a European hotel once). I took a guess at what hotel they’d be in but in the end we decided against going around to hang out in the bar (this wasn’t a unanimous decision, btw). Aside from the fact that an unkind judge might label this as ‘incredibly f***king sad behaviour’ there’s also the matter of who needs more restraining orders? One or two my be considered fashionable—even rakishly becoming in a certain light--but when you’ve got more than a couple then I don’t think girls like it so much…no matter how much explaining you do about what a mix-up it was and how you weren’t sleeping outside her house in a car all week with a camera and some rope. Anyway, I digress.



Our hotel is in a dead part of town on the river. I quite like it, for all its deadness. There is some interesting architecture around, new buildings mixed with remnants from the city’s history. The giant crane above was next to our hotel and was no longer in service. They did right to leave it where it was - it looked great. Apparently the shipbuilding yards were bombed heavily in WWII and along rows of nearby tenement’s you can see where a building was destroyed by bombs and a newer one erected in its place in the middle of a row. I like the gritty, pragmatic parts of cities. Tangentially, I also realized yesterday how much I like Motorway Service Stations. They’re like little oases on the road. I saw a couple yesterday nestled into woods at the side of the M6 / M74. And while intellectually I know they sell the same crap as each other, part of me can’t help thinking they’re like little local grottos where you might find something cool and unique; even at Toddington or Leicester Forest East.

Okay, now you’re looking at me strangely…