IT is the morning of England’s World Cup qualifier against Ukraine in Dnipropetrovsk, and I am waking up almost 500km away in a hotel room in Kiev, nursing an extremely sore head. It is not a good way to start what is going to be a very long day.

I’ll come back to the sore head, but let’s start with the whole Kiev thing. When the date of the game was confirmed it seemed pretty safe to assume that it would be played in the Ukrainian capital.

Feeling pleased with my forward planning, I duly booked a hotel within a stone’s throw of the Olympic Stadium in the city. I threw that stone on Friday night – and it hit a crane.

The stadium is currently being redeveloped ahead of the 2012 European Championships, so the match was switched halfway across the biggest country to lie solely in Europe. So much for planning ahead.

MIND you, there are worse ways to spend a day-and-ahalf than getting acquainted with Kiev. The city was always one of the grandest and most opulent in the Soviet Union, but since Ukraine gained its independence in the early 1990s, it has followed the lead of its country’s political elite and turned its attention away from Russia and towards the welcoming arms of the West.

The tree-lined streets are reminiscent of Western European cities like Paris and Barcelona, while the bright buildings and varying architectural styles have more in common with the Baltic states than Ukraine’s neighbours Russia and Belarus.

Their desire to be seen as European was most memorably expressed in the ‘Orange Revolution’ of 2004, a popular uprising that led to the nullification of a flawed Presidential election.

All of which brings us to Saturday morning’s headache.

TWO of the chief architects of the 'Orange Revolution', a series of demonstrations that saw thousands camping out in Independence Square, were Yulia Tymoshenko, Ukraine's current Prime Minister, and her daughter, Eugenia.

Eugenia is a well-known political figure in her own right and, bizarrely, is the girlfriend of Sean Carr, a Yorkshireman who is the lead singer of The Death Valley Screamers, one of Ukraine's leading heavy metal bands.

The Leeds United-supporting section of our group were keen to sample a bit of Yorkshire hospitality in Sean’s favourite boozer in the middle of Kiev.

So, on Friday night, we found ourselves sharing a bar with Ukraine's leading rocker and one of its most celebrated politicians. And, most incongruously of all, a giant flag bearing the white rose of Yorkshire.

The only thing lacking was Tetley’s on draught.