different names for the same thing

Last night in the Hobo Hideout I managed to fall asleep though there was a room party going on nearby with chatter and terrible sub-sub-ambient, sub-Chillout-Moods music. What did wake me up was the man outside my door bellowing "Guys, turn it off and go to bed. I have a fuckin´ busy day tomorrow."

It´s the real backpacker hostel deal. Poky with shared bathrooms and dog-eared posters for local activities. But not what I hoped for, lots of other travellers hanging out in the common room. I was on my own in Lima and Pucallpa, intimidated by the chaos of the places and the sense of danger into posher hotels where you don´t meet people, and now that I´ve found my feet I want to talk to someone who´s having the same experiences as me. But very few seem to be on the move at the moment. I´m spending a lot of time at the Yellow Rose, the travellers´ hangout down the street from my hostel, slouching in their comfy chairs and drinking beer in the heat of the day, but it´s hard to break into people´s twos and threes and randomly say hi.

I was there earlier, having breakfast and watching a gecko clambering around on the wall, when I saw a mini-play unfold. Two older white guys were sitting near me. One with a white buzz-cut and jungle shorts and a petulant, slightly squeaky voice; the other big and paunchy with jowls and mournful John Kerry eyebrows. The squeaky one really didn´t like Bill Grimes, who is mentioned in the guidebook as someone who runs good jungle cruises. He kept saying "in this business..." so I figured he was a rival. He monologued for easily 20 minutes about all the things Bill does wrong on his boats and at his wildlife lodge. What happens if you´re showing someone the tame anaconda, it gets skittish and you´re sued for negligence? What happens if one of the monkeys bites someone and they have to get a rabies shot? What happens if your group meet a jaguar and you haven´t got a pistol? With the shared bathroom on the boat, what if someone needs to take a screamin´ shit? The word 'irresponsible' featured a lot. He got squeakier and squeakier as he went on and on. I wondered what Bill had done to him, what petty infighting went on in the clique of macho jungle men, and reflected that he wasn´t putting me off doing one of the tours at all, considering the amount of bias wafting off his words. The other guy fidgeted and sighed, repeatedly let his eyes glaze over and then caught himself, and now and then said something equivocal which suggested he thought Squeaky was overstating matters. Quite suddenly Squeaky stood up to go. "You have a good day," said the other guy. "I will," Squeaky said emphatically. I wondered. He appeared to be the sort of person who liked to exist in a state of outrage, so it seemed unlikely.

After various men engaging me in conversation in netcafes, I have discovered that the moment when a conversation becomes creepy is when they ask where your hotel is. Saying "So you don´t want friends?" when you refuse to tell them, then saying they want to come to your hotel because their cousin works for the company you´re booked on a tour with and they want you to deliver a special letter, does not make it better and is a good time to go and do something else. This is irritating when you´re in the middle of a post.

But unlike Squeaky I do not live in a state of irritation. I love it here. And though I thought it was just a pre-storm thing, it turns out the birds flock at dusk every day, presumably to catch insects. Which is cool.

A UPS delivery guy came to the house to deliver a router today. I signed for it, then he asked me to spell my name.

When I'd finished, he said "Well done."

Scene: Cold December evening. bluedevi is cycling along Blackbird Leys Road. A group of LADS are walking along the footpath on the far side of the road.

LADS: Show us yer tits!
bluedevi: Okay.
(She stops the bike, gets off and parks it. She removes her hat, the bag slung across her, her full-length coat and scarf, then takes off her big woolly jumper and her T-shirt and unhooks her bra, putting everything in a neat pile on the grass verge.)
bluedevi: What do you think?
LADS (nodding): Yeah, they're tits all right.
(bluedevi puts everything back on and cycles away.)

In other news, I've pretty much given up on Nano. I've been working late most evenings of the week, but it's not just that. I seem to have lost the knack of fast writing. I'm planning every bit before I write it, especially with the Choose Your Own Adventure story (working title Traffic Lights). And planning doesn't count towards your word count, but I don't want to dive in and write confused, badly-thought-out stuff. I remember the sheer tooth-pulling agony of turning The End of Words from a Nano-novel into a proper final draft this summer, and I don't want to knowingly write stuff I can't use.

But I've got 27k of words I didn't have before. If I could do 30k a month, I'd be finished a draft of another book by February. Maybe I'll try to do that instead?

*

A man on the tube yesterday, wild-haired and unshaven and holding a can of strong cider, was addressing the whole carriage in a thick Northern Ireland accent, barely moving his lips so that I was looking around for a long time wondering where this Ian Paisley blare was coming from. He was saying 'No' a lot, which added to the Paisley impression, and 'I'm not running away. I'm facing up.' The girl opposite him fiddled with her water bottle and looked around and shielded herself with her pink handbag. Two others moved away. He said something indistinct ending in 'words', but it wasn't till he stood up to get off that I worked it out. He was saying 'You think I'm talking to you because I want something. I don't want anything from you, just words. Words, that's all."