Day 18 – W hotel, Union Square
This was definitely a morning of two halves.
Firstly, the hotel. The W chain is a trendy bunch. I had an appointment near Union Square at lunch so it seemed a good choice. The hotel sits on the north east corner on Fifth Avenue and its public spaces are done in the green-brown-silver colour scheme that seems particularly prevalent at the moment. Not offensive by any means but one can pretty much foresee how tired it will look two years’ hence.
For some reason I ordered red velvet pancakes. See photo. They were approximately the size of my iPad. They were beautiful to behold but were sufficient for three meals, rather than one. The writing seemed hard going for some reason (yesterday the muse had struck fast and prodigally), and then things went from sluggish to a grinding halt as I was more than momentarily distracted.
45 minutes into Roger’s latest adventures, 6 girls walked into the lobby. They were all dressed alike in white sneakers, cut-off blue jeans, white shirts, pink scarves with their (long brunette) hair curled within an inch of its life. They sat down not far from me and then a minute later another 6 appeared, then approximately 20 more, then more and more until roughly 40 matching girls sat squished around me. They giggled and chatted loudly and took photos of themselves and commented how nice my red velvet pancakes looked. Being the gentleman I am, I said, “help yourselves” for I’d had my fill and never thought they’d take up the offer anyway. Well, they did. And with gusto. With my mouth open I watched as one after the other devoured what was left of my breakfast. They passed it around, giving me the thumbs up, while I kept a firm grip on my coffee cup.
It was impossible to work under such circumstances. Each time one would say, ‘I hope we’re not disturbing you’, I’d simply smile and look back at the screen and try to concentrate. Which I had trouble doing, particularly when a small group of the lovely ladies who hadn’t managed to find a seat started dancing to the funky music that was piping through the lobby speakers.
It was not an unpleasant morning by any stretch of the imagination, but once they all left, it took me a good 30 minutes to refocus and resume relating the adventures of a 14 year-old, very chaste schoolboy.
Lowest hourly word count ever.
Today’s word count: 1321
Word count to date: 45,151
Oh, just in case you were wondering what was going on, they were filming an ad for a TV series starring Andi McDowell called ‘Cedar Cove’.
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