North Carolina

I bought a revolting pale blue suitcase for 20 quid yesterday because I couldn't stuff my belongings into the one I already had. This one is far too big and everything will be rattling around inside it, but what the heck, you only pack once.
Eh?
I think I've done everything: dollar bills, e-ticket, booked minicab, done jetlag practice (I didn't sleep a wink last night)
I wonder if there are crocodiles and scorpions in North Carolina?
I went to the US when I was 14 with my Gran, to New England and then to Pittsburgh where McDad and McMum had lived for a while, to stay with some friends of theirs in the Industrial Heartland. I went to a YWCA camp with their daughter, which was huge fun. They used to wake us every morning by blaring '76 Trombones' from speakers in the trees- a very crackly version- and that prompted lots of vile foulmouthery from the girls in the shack. It was a bit like a civilised brat camp actually. I played my first game of death-by-winking there, learned how to canoe, ate all sorts of strange-coloured breakfast cereals and drew portraits of people without looking at the page (try it- it's amazing the likeness you get).
Afterwards, the family took me to a drive-in movie and we saw Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory and ate cinnamon donuts. I felt like such a Flintstone!
And then when I was 22 I went to Chicago to visit a boyfriend with a suitcase full of 2000 AD mags that he made me bring back home again. It was minus 27 degrees and every time you stood up, you fell down because the ground was so icy. But I've written all about that before on this blog.
I don't know whether I will be able to get to a computer while I'm away but I will tell you all about it when I get back.
I've listed the U.S. gigs on my Myspace, www.myspace.com/helenmccookerybook

P.S. I thought if I said I wanted to go to Paris, Berlin and New York at the beginning of the year, I might get there. I'm going to North Carolina instead. Bit like in the 1980s when I wanted to be on Top of the Pops with Helen and the Horns, and went on Pebble Mill at One instead. I believe it may be a lateral life trajectory.
Something like that.