TomBlog - the day-room

Ambling about this musical world. Rarely stopping in any town for more than a few hours. Sleeping or its fitful approximation is achieved only on the tour bus in your small and eminently bumpy bunk. Our daily ablutions are maintained only in the common or garden day-room. The day-room being a single room occupied by 11 men, mainly for its bathroom and, in turn, its shower. Nominally the 'day-room', because, in the UK, the rooms can be rented on a day-time only basis and then turned round for later new arrivals in the evening. In the US it's more blurry. It occurs to me how wasteful it is to pay for a room and then not sleep in it. In fact, I've toyed with ideas about how to recycle these day-rooms, to perhaps let touring musicians know where there's a room lying dormant where they can lie dormant. Dayroom.com. Maybe.

Your average day is filled with at least a couple of hours of watching bad cable as everyone wanders round in their underwear, telephoning the front desk for more towels. Often the wait for towels is your universe. The source of all attention and conversation. Its remarkable how people's priorities change when they've been on a sweaty bus for 12 hours.

Every hotel room is the same. Two double beds with matching ugly bedspread, divided by some contraption that purports to be a wall-fixed bedlamp. There's a veneer desk with matching veneer chair. The fat old television sits aboard a low chest of drawers. The bathroom is tiny with thermoformed plastic bath and mind-boggling tap/faucet arrangement. You could write a book about the different formations and qualities of hotel showers: being the only real variable, but suicide might be a better option.

As hygiene is once more maintained the room falls to tatters. Bags, computers, ironing tables, men, wires, gatorade, wash-bags, phones, suitcases, clothes and empty pizza boxes strewn abouts. A Jackie Chan film. A dark sense of deja vu. The gig awaits.