Had a longish journey from San Francisco to Seattle. Made a friend on the train called Clayton Molloy Leston, a 25-year-old American dreamer/singer/songwriter/person-type-thing, who had a small guitar poking out of his rucksack. After an earnest man approached him to enquire about his instrument (who soon pranced off only to return with his flute), Clayton asked us if we wanted to hear a song.
It was very hard to say no – so we didn’t, and instead sat in our self-made hell, inner cheeks raw with bite marks whilst we attempted to listen to a quite spectacularly high-pitched version of ‘Dock of the Bay’ with a dignified composure. With the aforementioned earnest-flute man standing by – eyes closed in rapture, singing and finger-clicking along – this proved somewhat difficult. CB joined in the harmonising in order to relieve any energy which might otherwise had manifested into a Grade A giggly-fit, but I instead chose to stare at the Washington State landscape, solemnly contemplating all that is wrong in the world to prevent my own sniggers from emitting and interrupting the otherwise intense atmosphere.
Arrived later than anticipated in Seattle (Amtrak trains are rarely on time), and headed straight to what proved to be our relatively expensive hotel. Filled up the ice bucket and kicked back with some cans of Dr Pepper and Diet Pepsi, watching people on the telly biggying up Jesus. Thank God we weren’t sleepless in Seattle that night.
Woke up on Labor Day (a big federal holiday in l’America), and decided that in order to get the most out of our only day in Seattle, we should target specific neighbourhoods.
Headed to Capitol Hill, where after much dithering, we settled on a pizza place to eat. Whilst we slurped on our post-meal drinks, a lovely waitress told us about a local festival taking place that day called Bumbershoot. When we discovered it was only $35, we decided to go and check it out.
Home of Bumbershoot: the Space Needle in Seattle
Upon reaching the Space Needle (where Bumbershoot was being held), we were distraught to have discovered that we had missed the first act of the day – Miss. Joss Stone. Oh well. Went into the beer garden, and had a few beers while performing the dual task of chuntering and soaking up the atmosphere. Headed over to what looked like a school hall, where we moshed to Kill Hannah (only jessing – no moshing was allowed) and drank more beer. After having an excessively munchy tea, we ended the night by honouring our friend Paddy and going to watch Steve Earle.
As we were catching a very early train the next day, we decided to call it a night at the rock n’ roll hour of 10pm, going back to the hotel via a shop so I could feed my gossip-mag addiction and CB could buy some coffee beans for her male creator. Unfortunately, the latter task went somewhat wrong when CB misinterpreted how to unleash said beans from the dispenser, thus spilling a significant portion of them on the floor. This problem was compounded when I crashed over to see what the Dickens was going on and subsequently helped to crush them further into the carpet. Being British and hence a little scared of confrontation n’ all that jazz, I suggested we make a hasty escape. Which we did.
