Chronicles - Volume 2

Drawing the line

2006-01-11T20:45:00.000Z

Sorry for the lack of writing. I don't have an excuse, except laziness. But I thought I should write today, in order to draw a line under this blog and this year. When I first had the idea of taking time off work, I didn't really think I'd spend 9 months in South America, I certainly didn't think that I'd learn to call Buenos Aires home, and I didn't expect to complete 120,000 words worth of novel. So, looking back, despite my overly pessimistic and melancholy nature, the year has been a great success. It's been unforgettable, full of amazing sights and incredible sites - hanging out with Shamans in the Amazon Jungle, standing over the edge of the world's most spectacular waterfalls, seeing mountains, sky and clouds reflected on the filmy surface of Bolivia's salt lakes, meeting a multitude of characters from soulmate travellers to bug-eyed Colombian drug dealers, from Argentinians on the end of an email who have enchanted me with their generosity to curious staring locals in Bolivia and Paraguay. Being drenched by the the most violent of thunderstorms, freezing on luxury air-con buses, baking in deserts and on beaches. There has been too much to write about here, and so many rich experiences. My words can hardly do them justice, but I'd love to tell you about them all sometime. Like the mad waitress who chased me down the street a couple of weeks back, in order to declare her love and shove her tongue into my mouth...like the random conversations about Pink Floyd and Radiohead in the most unlikely of places...like gazing at a distant storm out of a pub window the other day, and welling with some kind of poetic poignancy as Like Spinning Plates (live) serenaded us on the stereo.

So, any conclusions? Any final words, any summation of a year's worth of adventures? Not really, I'm afraid. Just questions, more questions. And searching, more searching. But maybe I'm in a better place to ask and to search than I was a year ago.

Thanks for reading...see you on the other side.

Big Love,
Oliver

New Year's Day

2006-01-01T20:18:00.000Z

It's all over the streets still, 2005. In a hundred thousand torn up bits of paper, home-made ticker-tape, once love letters, yesterday's headlines and an old utility bill. In dried up misshapen plastic straws, in crushed white cups and shrivelled champagne corks. Behind boarded up shops, graffiti fronts and shadowy silent windows. Piled up in the little squares at the base of trees, or in the blues of the bags and the green of the bottles underneath the kerb, right opposite where I live. In the roads, safe for cartwheels and games of football, and in the sky growling with clouds. In the darkness that creeps out from under the locked up doors. 2005 hasn't gone yet, it hasn't been swept away.

But, I suppose 2006 will get it's chance, it just has to wait and see what history has planned.

But for now, in Buenos Aires, it waits and watches. New Year's Day, the in-between time, when nothing seems real.

Christmas, Argentinian style

2005-12-27T18:34:00.000Z

Christmas has been and gone, and you can hardly tell that it even happened. People are back at work - the streets are full of drillers, the flyover's full of traffic and the shops are all open as usual. What minimal city decorations there are still remain, but I can't help but think that Christmas is a small blip here - none of the week's of build up, none of the light-turning on rituals, none of the ludicrous Christmas merchandise in the shops in October. Few baubles in sight. What they lack in baubles, however, they more than make up in bangers. At midnight on Christmas Eve, the city exploded with a cacophony of fireworks, the traffic paused and the sky above was illuminated by a thousand different lights. It was spontaneous and fun, though a little dangerous - with little verminous kids scurrying around under parked cars to let of bangers, with sirens wailing as the emergency services rushed from one dismembered hand to another, with street bins melting under the ferocity of strategically placed fireworks. God bless this chaotic place, I love it. I love the fact that it always seems to be on the verge of melting down - protestors filled the streets this morning, the inernational debt is being paid off (yet there's still massive uncertainty about the economic prospects of this place), even Maradona is planning on making a comeback. Yes, being a visitor is great - it's like standing on the edge of a volcano's crater without ever feeling you might fall in. Could I live here forever, I am not sure? I am beginning to miss certain things about back home. I am beginning to feel like I am ready to resume my life in London again. 2 weeks to go...and in 3 weeks, I expect I'll be itching to be back here again. Such is life...

Christmas Day was decidely un Northern-hemisphere like, spent on my roof terrace in the company of a dozen people I didn't know a few months ago, guzzling barbecued steaks and red wine, lounging around and in my swimming pool. Up above, the southern stars came out, different to the ones above the heads of all my friends back in the UK. It was different, but it was great - it just didn't feel like Christmas, or it didn't feel like the other 30 Christmases I have had...And I liked it.

I had a good taste of home though - speaking to my family and to his Royal Clive-ness - the same banter. Some emails with work too. Lots of things have changed - lots haven't. The best thing was the parcel organised by Steve & Laura. A rude postman awakening, a trek across town, a typically frenetic and disorganised South American post office, and then the collection of a whole pile of cards, pressies, decorations and a Christmas pudding to boot. A tiny quarter of my small flat has been handed over to all things festive, a mini-nod at everything going on back home.

2006 looms now. My last week will be spent doing a few day trips, stocking up on shopping (I am going to buy toothpaste, deodorant and footy trainers, as it's all about a million times cheaper) and perhaps a little bit of reflection upon the year that is and nearly was. Yeah, it's been great, but bring on 2006 - my great job, my great friends, and, touchwood, a brand new album by Radiohead and the Premiership for Utd.

Feliz Navidad amigos!

The yearning

2005-12-14T17:06:00.000Z

I get this feeling sometimes - inexplicable - but it's a deep rooted thing that starts in the pit of my stomach and I can feel it up and down both arms. It's a good thing, because it generally means I am about to enter a short period of being able to write (vomit style) a lot of words. I've been stuck for a few weeks now, tearing my hair out, unable to enjoy writing, instead staring at the computer and then playing Freecell. What a waste of time. But I can feel that it's coming to an end, and I will just need to write for a while. I am excited about the prospect. It's the absolute flipside of darker wobbles that I have. They are just as inexplicable, render me about as useful as Darren Fletcher and they arrive and leave without much warning.

Aside from my current lack of proliference on the writing front, I have little new to report. It's going to be a strange thing having to set an alarm clock again, having to have a daily routine to attend to, having to fit free time around a job and other duties back home. I worked out that in 365 days, I've probably only had to get up for anything about 50 times or so - it's been great, but equally, it will be great to return to some kind of purpose. I could see myself living here, but not as I currently am. I need a structure around me, and I'm looking forward to getting that back in January.

In the meantime, I intend to keep enjoying the freedom here. On Saturday, I am heading to the Delta at Tigre for an overnight festival. On Sunday, I am off to the Boca vs Pumas match (the equivalent of their European Cup Final). And next week will be all about getting ready for Christmas - making sure the swimming pool is full, buying meat for the BBQ. Sure to be a strange experience.

And then, once Christmas and New year has passed, it will be over very quickly. 4 weeks tomorrow, and counting. 4 weeks till the cold, to five quid packs of cigarettes (I am going to try and quit) and to three quid pints of beer (I am going to try and cut down) and, most importantly, 4 weeks to being with my friends again in London.

Back in Bs As

2005-12-12T19:48:00.000Z

Monday afternoon, a little before five, on a break from whatever it that I do with my days, reflecting on the fact that in exactly five weeks time I will be at my desk at Greenbelt again, with the year as it was a thing of the past. I can feel it in my stomach, an anxious knot of something - not having a house to live in yet, going back (will it be the same, will it be better, will it be worse), re-adjusting to lots of things back home. Yes, I confess. I am nervous. Strangely, I am as nervous about going back as I was about leaving in the first place, 47 weeks or so ago. I wonder what I'll be thinking and feeling in a year's time, as 2006 draws to a close.

Anyway, enough of this introspective rubbish. I had enough of that on the 18 hour bus journey back to Buenos Aires yesterday. Faced with the choice of XXX2 - The Next Level (dubbed in Spanish) or introspective out of window gazing I chose the latter, and felt wonderfully at ease. I wrote it down in my book too. I always seem happiest on journeys between places, listening to music, watching the sky go gold, all those things. Maybe it's because I am powerless, I cannot be self-critical about not doing anything. Maybe it's because I am free, my mind is free to go wherever it wants, whilst my body is trapped in a double decker bus.

A double decker bus, which, incidentally, is as close to heaven as one can experience in a form of transport. I have waxed lyrical about Argentinian buses before, and I shall do so again. I love them! The big seats, the food, the way the seats go back into beds and the fact that I kipped far better on the bus than I did in the hostel in Iguazu.

My few days at Iguazu were good fun. I did get mullered by mosquitoes (a blind person would now be able to read off my left arm), forgot my suncream and got roasted and failed to sleep in an unfeasibly hot and itchy hostel dorm bed. Other than these things, and about 7000 border crossings I had to undertake in a few days (Paraguay-Brazil, Brazil-Argentina, Argentina-Brazil, Brazil-Argentina), well 4, all was splendid. Í'd suggest doing a google search for "Iguazu Falls", as my words probably can't do them justice. They're big, spectacular and spread over the border of Argentina and Brazil, surrounded by a beautiful forest and generating a fearsome noise. Needless to say I was amazed and awestruck, easily the most incredible natural phenomenen I have ever seen other than the size of Nick Cave's forehead.

Prior to Iguazu, I finished up in Asuncion and left without hassle, passing through the biggest Catholic holiday day on route, with thousands of pilgrims gathering for the "dia de la virgen". Leaving the country was more strenuous, and involved waiting around for ages for a bus, helping to unload about 60 boxes of Budweiser on the other side of the border, sitting in a stupendous traffic jam suspended above the no-man's river between Paraguay and Brazil, passing on my warmest regards to Brazil and finally getting into Argentina.

All good, my mini-holiday, but it's good, right now, to be back at my home for the next 4 and a bit weeks.

Buenos Aires - Posadas - Encarnacion - Trinidad - Asuncion

2005-12-07T16:10:00.000Z

Sunday evening, and as I prepared to leave Buenos Aires for the first time on this particular trip, I started to think about the first time I left Buenos Aires, in January. Then, Retiro bus station had seemed to be a terrifying South American shambolic, scrubby, shifty place and I remember being scared and bemused by the seemingly incomprehensible PA annoucements, the baffling timetables, the scurrying, shouting urchin-like street vendors. I remember clinging onto my backpack. I remember being incredibly nervous about leaving the city behind and venturing forth into South America.

Well, the rest is history, my Spanish has become adequate, and I've seen so much worse in the continent, that my return trip to Retiro on Sunday was a doddle. I arrived just before my bus was due to set off, managed to understand most of the PA announcements, and chilled. How quickly a strange place can feel like home.

Argentina is rightly acclaimed for its steak (fat and juicy), women (), football (Maradona) and cheapness, but its buses should be added to that illustrious list. My seat was big enough for at least two of me, an elephant, or four anorexic people. The wine flowed. The seat reclined all the way back to make a bed. Outside, I watched as we passed the River Plate, a huge estuary that stretches out to meet Uruguay, invisible, on the other side. The sky was on fire, and a distant hot air balloon hung on the horizon. The city stretches on for a long while - there's something so un-British about cities here - I can't put my finger on it - the way that the white tower blocks seem to have dozens of aerials on top of them, each scraping at the sky. The huge advertising billboards. The city left behind, the sun dipped and we were on our way. The only downside - the in-bus film. Meet the Fockers. Again. Ben Stiller and Robert de Niro have been following me all round South America. This must be the seventeenth time I've seen it here, and it wasn't that funny the first time. It was always on in Cusco, and on every other bus journey. I drifted off into half-sleep before, amazingly, arriving a good hour early in Posadas, at 5.30am.

Posadas is in the north east of Argentina, bordering Paraguay. Blurry eyed and blurry tongued, I staggered out and injected myself with caffeine before finding the bus for the border crossing. It was a typical South American border crossing - getting chucked off a bus that clearly has no intention of waiting for you, being pointed in the direction of at least 8 different windows and queues, being waved away by curt border staff. Anyway, after a bit of queueing and passport waving, I got my exit stamp and waited for the bus to take me to the promised land of Paraguay.

The contrast wasn't as severe as I had been expecting. I'd been expecting real poverty - kids begging, pavement-less unpaved roads, ramshackle stalls bordering the side of the streets. Yes, it was different, but not hugely so. There was even a Lloyds TSB in Encaracion. How nice of my favourite corporation to be greeting me in Paraguay. It was 8, and the sweat was already trickling behind my knees...

I took a bus to Trinidad - a UNESCO world heritage site - featuring haunting ruins from the Jesuit missions of a couple of centuries ago. I think by this stage, I was beginning to understand Paraguay a little bit. No signs, no infrastructure, just a red dirt road and there they were, the shells of these ancient churches and monastaries. Beautiful. Things took a turn for the worse at this stage. It began to rain. It began to more than rain. It began to be windy. It began to be more than windy. I was wandering around the ruins (inconveniently there are no roofs on these ruins), when the sky turned black, and the palm trees started doing tiptoes, and the rain came horizontally at me. And, smugly, I had packed light - i.e only one pair of trousers - my jeans, and they don't do so well in the rain. After sheltering with a couple of old dudes in hats and with spades, I made a charge for the entrance, got ridiculously soaked and then sheltered in the office where I made entertaining banter about Radiohead and Pink Floyd with the guy there, who wanted to be an international DJ. The rain continued to come and the sky continued to throw a tantrum, as the guy explained why he didn't like Argentina.

Eventually, shivering and dripping wet, with soggy cigarettes and sticky soggy 50,000 Guarani notes, I made my way to the bus stop, back to Encarnacion (and a terminal full of in your face vendors offering me watches, necklaces, batteries, coca-cola, bus tickets, empanadas) and then finally onto a bus headed for Asuncion, the capital. With massive relief, I took off half my clothes, and got changed and then fell into a shivery sleep, only occasionally glancing out of the window at the curious red earth that we passed through.

And now, I am here, Asuncion, the capital of Paraguay, and possibly the most un-capital like capital I have ever been to. Cars and people crawl along under the palm trees, down narrow 2-laned roads. Yellow mercedes taxis pass by the bizarrely contrasting buildings - old school colonial facades that sit underneath stark white jutting communist-esque tv aerial firebomded ugly tower blocks. The river Parana sits at the edge of the city, a protest of around fifty people banging drums takes place alongside a mirrored bank that reflects a number of shanty tents alongside the river bank. Old men lie on park benches, underneath crumbling swimming pool coloured peeling fountains and bizarre green grey statues of dogs and old kings, queens and generals. An old lady with a green, red and yellow headress tries to sell me a little bag, she practically begs me when I refuse. People openly stare at me. There are just no tourists here, just me, and I stand out like a sore thumb. I buy cigarettes for 45 pence, a litre of beer for 60 pence, wander around sleepy and drunk at 3 in the afternoon. The Christmas lights are just going up, and bizarre renditions of Silent Night eminate from an art shop...eminate not into a snowy night, but a 35 degrees heat. It feels like I am back in South America. Not that Buenos Aires isn't South America, it's just that it's sort of like - home. Here has all the halmarks. People staring at me. Internet connections that barely work. An electric shower in my hotel that has 2 heat settings (freezing and boling), which I dip a toe under, then an armpit then run away before going back for another try. Toilets that don't have loo-roll in them. The people are friendly, chatty, curious. Why on earth am I here?

Well, I love it. This sleepy city, where the most happening thing at 11pm is to sit in a bookshop with a generous gin, with it's contrast of ancient and new, corrupt and clean, with armed guards patroling with machine guns, with overhead hum of electricty and insects mingling. I like it a lot, and I am glad I have come.

Well, sorry for the ramble. There's not much to do here, and that's why I like it. You can just sit, sit in the shade, sit under a palm tree and watch the Paraguayian world - slow, smiley, serene - go by.
Tomorrow, am off to Ciudad del Este on the Paraguyian, Brazilian, Argentinian border before spending a couple of days at Iguazu Falls, before returing to my temporary non-South American kind of home.

Confusion

2005-11-28T00:17:00.000Z

Sunday night, 9.17pm and I've been up about 3 hours after finally hitting the sack around 7.30am. To say my body clock is confused would be an understatement. That said, I am determined to be up early (well by noon) tomorrow to carry on with my novel, to start typing, editing, re-shaping. The heat is stifling, like a bed blanket you can't shake off, it clings to me, stops me breathing and makes me drip with sweat. The promise of December is of more. I expect that disembarking from the plane in January might be a strange experience (35 degrees to minus whatever in a matter of days...). I shall try not to think about that too much now.

I had a 24 hour slump of sadness. It came, like a storm, out of the blue, as it always does, rendering me powerless to do anything but let it consume me. I think, strangely, the George Best thing started it. I never saw him play, but there was something remarkable about the universal sadness, the spontaneous applauding at the matches, that struck me. I dunno. It's not that his life was a waste, it's more like the world has become a little darker, a little duller than it was before. Of course, that got me thinking sad things. That combined with the fact that my friends have left, and the lack of sufficient kip for two weeks, sent me down a bit. My mind drifted, as it usually tends to, to feelings of loss, of nostalgia, of endings, of loneliness, and I let the air conditioning hum away as I watched the TV on mute and smoked too many cigarettes. But, all's not bad, and I find myself tired now, but glowing. Like I've just stepped out of a long, warm bath.

I'm in the process of planning a trip, maybe in a week's time, for 5 days or a week. But the question is - Uruguay or Paraguay or Brazil. I'm attracted to Paraguay - no one goes there. It's the same kind of motivation I have not to read Harry Potter or Dan Brown, because everyone else does. I kind of fancy another slice of real South America, of dusty bumpy roads full of ropey old buses and ancient cadillacs, of kids selling stuff on the streets, of desolate towns full of old sleepy men. We'll see, eh? Another option are the beaches of Uruguay, full of beautiful people, hip bars and flashy hotels. Typically, the Paraguay option seems more enchanting to me. Either way, I'm heading to Iguazu falls, where upon a visit, Hoover (I think) commented "Poor Niagra", because they are so spectacular. That's the great thing about being here in South America. It's so easy just do something really major on whim, just decide one day to go to Paraguay and head off on a bus the same day. Cool, eh? Well, now I'm going to do something else on a whim. I am going to prostrate myself in front of my telly, I'm going to blast the Air con and, for the first time in weeks, I'm hopefully going to get a good and proper night's sleep.

What's going on

2005-11-24T17:45:00.000Z

Apologies for the silence, the result of two friends staying my apartment and all the ensuing fun & games. Andrew and Nik are both mates I met in Bolivia, both from London, and both likely to be friends for life. It's amazing that I had to go to Bolivia in order to meet people who literally live five minutes from my flat in London. I'm going through a bit of re-evaluation process of how I am going to live my life when I get back. There are some givens: I am going back to my job, I need to save money to pay for the year I have just had, and I'll spend time with my friends. However, there are some things that I have thought about. Things that will just have to change, and I'm excited about it. Here in Buenos Aires, I am meeting people literally every day. People in the street (the laundry woman, the bloke in the fruit stall, the old lady who sells amazing sausage sandwiches) wave at me when I walk past. I'm foreign, have been here a matter of weeks, yet already I feel a part of a community in a way that I've never felt in my street in London. Going out to bars is the same. You just sit there and, inevitably, by the end of the night you've met someone new. I don't know if it's because I am foreign, but it's incredible and at times really moving. In London, you just sit there, cocooned with your group of mates, doing the same old things. I love it in London, my friends especially, but I need to use my time differently. I am determined to work on my Spanish and get a language exchange partner. I am determined not to throw 50 quid down the drain on another night out in the same old bar. I am also determined to use my time to do things I like, to say no to things I don't, to even stay at home, to work on my writing. Anyway, we'll see how it all pans out.

The last two weeks have seen little writing, but lots of fun. The temperature is now around 35 degrees, I am considering shorts and t-shirt (but doubt I'll go that far), and the situation is made all the more strange by the fact that a huge Christmas tree has been put up on the main road. The backdrop isn't a black wintery sky. The foreground isn't heavy coated people in a rush. No, the backdrop is a blue sky with an eye watering sun and the foreground is a bunch of scantily clad beautiful girls. Yes, it's pretty surreal. We've found a load of great places to drink (the sort of bars that involve a cab ride, and a ring of a doorbell, followed by entry to a jaw-droppingly cool candlelit bar). I've been to my first Boca Juniors match (constant singing, chanting, arm waving, little kids and women bellowing the worst obscenities, jumping up and down for about fifteen minutes, cheerleaders, ridiculous diving and cheating, bottle throwing, hammering on the tables in the bar afterwards in celebration of victory, grown men hugging and kissing, Diego Maradona getting the whole stadium to sing, like some twsited orchestral conductor waving his shirt around his head and puffing on a fat cigar from his private box, ice cream and coke sellers somehow squeezing through and selling to a sweaty mass of people gathered on the terraces). Amazing, very different to a match in England, an experience (at 2 pounds a ticket) I'm going to repeat very soon. I've eaten some quite incredible steaks. The kind of steaks that they give you s blunter knife to cut with, because they're so tender. Yes, 2 weeks of all the finest things in life - great meat, great mates, great match, great mental parties (you think you've had a quiet night, and you check the time and it's 6am). Need to get back to work and routine soon I think.

I'm planning a trip in a week or so. I think I'll head to Uruguay and then up to Iguazu Falls (on the border of Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay). Soon it will be Christmas, and a BBQ on my roof terrace.

So all's great. Maybe that's because I know it will end. Maybe living here permanently would bring with it the usual onset of stress and boredom (I looked in the window of an estate agent - FOR SALE, 9 bedroom house, roof terrace, in San Telmo - 100,000 quid). One day...maybe? Who knows. But for now, one eye is on London and the chance to try and change things a bit there, to meet new people, to carry on my Spanish, to save money, to do things I really want to do.

I've also discovered a really good way of learning the lingo too. I met a girl who likes me...

Slowness

2005-11-16T18:50:00.000Z

It's hot now, hot in a sleep affecting, sweaty feet ensuing way. And I'm promised that it's going to get hotter and hotter until I take my leave of Buenos Aires in January. So I sit under my air-con and wait until the night, when it's possible to saunter around. Sauntering, a difficult way of moving, when you're used to the London way of doing things. Queuing as well. And waiting for a bill in a restaurant. But I can understand why life is slower here, it's not possible to move much faster.

The city is exploding with noise and colour. A near-daily protest takes to the streets, drums banging, traffic stumbling, leaflets wafting in the air. The trees have burst into life. In Plaza San Martin, fireworks of purple fizzle above the square, as people take shelter from the sun. On every corner of every street they're digging and drilling - roads, walls, pavements - you name it and it gets dug up in Buenos Aires, and the dull thud of work punctuates my sleep long before sleep has finished with me.

Last night a Porteña friend came out with us to the bar. She didn't know the way, and I took great pride in directing her this way and that, round the perpetual one way system, across mega 12 lane avenues and into narrow dusky calles (streets) that clash violently with the mini chrome canyons of the micro-centro. And as we drive, the city begins to empty of the employed and fill with a ragged collection of drunk tourists, seedy club managers, scavenging bin sifters and sad silent doorway sleepers. I still haven't got to the heart of what's going on here, I love the city, but there's something about it that seems to be desperately sad. An identity crisis perhaps, best exemplified by the all black converse trainer clan sipping their cocktails, whilst outside an industry of poverty and desperation stumbles into gear. Is this place rich, is it cool, is it arrogant, is it pretentious, is it desperate, is it beautiful, is it ugly, is it pleasant, is it seedy? It's all of these things. Like any other city, I suppose, with divides and contrasts and haves and have nots but cloaked in a special kind of sadness. A full moon sadness, the sadness of tango floating with the clouds, of people too proud to admit they're not perfect, of old men reading yesterday's headlines alone into the early hours. 20% of people here classify themselves as "unhappy", or so I read.

I guess that's why I like it. London, for me, is a city to lose yourself in. Your sadness can be washed away in the dirty puddles and lost in a sea of faces on the tube. Your wealth can sparkle amongst the glassy buildings. Your happiness can become one with the cool bars and great parties. But here, in Buenos Aires, you can't help but feel at one with the city, that it has a special personality all of its own. A yearning for change, for transformation, for acceptance. Duende (in Spanish) or Saudade (in Portugese) are good words that sum it up - the people, the place. There's no good English translation - something that encompasses nostalgia, melancholia, homesickness, yearning, lacking something. Good words none the less.

Anyway, I am well. Work has kind of grinded to a halt. Friends staying have seen to that and, guiltily, I have resigned myself to a week without my pen and my computer. But I did take a sneaky peek (at random) at some of the words that I have written. And I was relieved. I was expecting something absymal, but it was all right. It was all right.

And what else. One of my best friends called me today too, from home. And that was really great and very much appreciated. Okay, it's 4.11pm. I am getting out of the habit of eating, and smoking instead. Not really a good plan, so I might try and go and fill that gap. That's easy and cheap to do. The gap in the heart of this city. That's not that easy to fill, I don't think.

And now I will close my eyes

2005-11-13T21:01:00.000Z

It's Sunday, 6pm, and the sky out of this window is mercifully grey, with dabs of white and ash like birds hanging over the big apartment blocks overhead. All's well, really well, and time is rushing by in the way that it always seems to nowadays. I have to think and count the weeks I have been here. It seems like no time and forever all at once. Time definitely didn't used to do this when I was young.

On Friday, I finished. The book that is, well the handwritten, million changes need doing first draft. I tried to write and tell you on Friday. I was gripped by one of my melancholic hazes, and the colour of all the buildings and sky was sepia, and I'd bashed out a moany old entry about the various woes of my existence, the things I lack in life, the dull ache of existence, how I can't cope with 30 years more of feeling like this. And, now, I feel different, and I feel glad that the computer crashed and erased my melancholic meanderings. I don't feel overjoyed or delrious, or anything, I just don't feel desperate and I'm really delighted to have got through this 1st draft. I think it's about 120,000 words long, I got to know the characters as I wrote, I was surprised by what happened, there were days when I sat there and said "YES". I hope I feel the same when, on Monday, I read the whole thing for the first time. I hope I feel the same when I start the laborious process of re-writing and typing. But now, I can say that I am glad that I've done what I set out to do at the beginning of 2005. I've travelled, I've written. I still need to find love and a way out of the pits of melancholia I seem to hurl myself into. But I still have November and I still have December, so you never know.

So, what else. A friend that I met in Bolivia has shown up penniless in Buenos Aires, and is currently residing on my floor. It's fine, he's a mate and I am glad I can help, but I've been getting a bit used to the privacy and the routine that keeps me alive and sane. Still, touchwood, he'll be in gainful employment soon. Last night was Creamfields (dance festival with Prodigy and others). Not exactly my cuppa tea, and not exactly a highlight of my time here, as I managed to lose my friends and subsequently spent the rest of the evening wandering around like a lost sheep. Still, it did give me a buzz of excitment about my job, and that returning to London (though strange, cold, expensive and not here) has a big silver lining. Work that I love, people that I love working with, friends that I want to see. I am expecting things to change. I wrote once that this year hasn't been life-changing. Maybe now, it isn't. Maybe by the end of 2006 I will be able to say that it has been. The way I approach existing and the other human beings I co-exist with.

And, of course, 3-2. All good stuff, and plenty of harmless banter with the locals to boot...

I think they're closing here now. Tonight I might try Manolo's (apparently the cheapest parilla in town), sleep off yesterday, before the reading and notetaking starts tomorrow.

Oh yeah, and I've got a title too. My book is going to be called And now I will close my eyes. I quite like it a lot.
Okay, chau, hasta luego (until later) y escribame (write to me).

They've got brains

2005-11-07T20:43:00.000Z

In my local supermarket - Coto. I was sniffing around for a good lump of steak and there they were, pale pink, squidgy and brain like. Aside from the queues that never end & the impossibility to obtain change from a 100 Peso note it was nice of the supermarket to provide me with a reminder that I am a long way from home.

Keane's on. The band that is. They do like all this crap out here. Duran Duran and Simple Minds are playing in December as well. I've got to write a piece in Spanish for my teacher about music, and what I like. If my Spanish was good enough, I would definitely deliver a lecture on the comparative merits of Kid A and OK Computer plus a detailed analysis of Dylan's 60's trilogy. As my Spanish is not really at that standard, I expect I'll end up writing "me gusta Radiohead y no me gusta Coldplay. Para me, Coldplay es Radiohead para chicas." Or something like that. It was nice to see Keane applauding Fletcher yesterday. That's Darren, probably the greatest midfielder in Europe. Yes that was good, but I sort of felt it's all a bit papering over the cracks like. We'll see, anyway.

Writing continues to go well, though quite often it feels like I'm making really great process on a boat rowing down a river in the bottom of a ravine. I'm not sure if I'm going to end up in a beautiful lake or topple over a waterfall into some perilous rocks. In the meantime, I just keep writing. Four days, and I hope to be done with the first draft, and then it's the weekend - friends from earlier in the year arriving, Argentina vs England in the football and Creamfields Festival (not sure how much I'm gonna like that one).

Let me tell you a bit about San Telmo, where I live. I'm really glad I live here, as opposed to Palermo or Recoleta. The latter 2 barrios feel a little bit too "try hard". People dress to impress, girls look down and into the air, and streets are lined with Western shops and services. Don't get me wrong, it's good fun there, great for a night out. But there's something about San Telmo that I like. It might be the old cobbled streets and crumbling old buildings; the arty graffiti on the walls (anti Bush, pro Diego, sloganeering, pictures); it might be the cheap and cheerful restaurants with ancient whirring fans giant on polystyrene roofs; it might be the bars that play the Rolling Stones and are full of people leaning and chatting and laughing; it might be the kids that play on the street; or the whiff of history that blows in from La Boca, from the place where this place started one day; it might be my little shaded place and my desk and the couch where I read and the tunes I can listen to all the time; I don't know...it might be that not all the people wear black clothes and have mullets; it might be that old bloke at the Kiosk who's probably been sat there since 1956. I don't know what it might be, maybe it's just home. Or maybe it's just the brains...

I predicted a riot

2005-11-05T18:13:00.000Z

Well, the writing was on the wall, so to speak. George Bush in the country for the Summit of the Americas, and the Argentinian people are disgruntled with their economic situation of the country as it is. Result - trashed McDonalds, banks, the odd molotov cocktail and street fires. Most of the action took place in Mar del Plata (about 5 hours south of here), but you could sense it during the day in Buenos Aires. That's when I predicted a riot. The subway was rammed full of banner toting, chanting "Fuere Bush" t-shirt wearers, and I had a sense that something was going to happen. Some friends had decided to take the day off work, to avoid getting caught up in the action. I didn't get directly involved, aside from the crowds choking the subway, and the slow train of marchers heading up from Plaza Consticion to the centre, I caught most of it on tv, watching with the sound low as sirens wailed through my window off in the distance somewhere. When I left the flat about 10.30pm, there was little to see, just hundreds of anti-Bush fliers flitting in the breeze and clinging to the sticky streets. Later, in a bar, my local friends just smiled, raised their eyebrows and do what people in Buenos Aires do best - smoke, drink and shrug their shoulders. People are frustrated and angry here. Most of them take it calmly, I guess some (particularly those that make up the 50% of the population that lives under the poverty line - don't).

So, that was interesting. They love a riot in South America, or a march. I've seen a few - tear gas in Bogota and riot shields, blockades in Bolivia, and I'm going to see Boca Juniors vs Velez on 20th November. Guess I might see another one then. Speaking of football, it's brilliant watching the Premiership on Argentinian telly. Not only do they sing whenever there's a goal (when Henry scored today it was to All you need is love by the Beatles), but they have great nicknames for all the players, including Baby Rooney, Ronaldito (Cristiano Ronaldo, means little Ronaldo), Frankie (Frank Lampard), Jar-Jar Binks (Ronaldinho), Ben Stiller (Darren Huckerby), Lucy Liu (some player from Lille), El Musketeer (Robert Pires) and, if they can't come up with a nickname they go for the tried and tested racist approach (i.e el Negro Campbell, el Koreano Park, el Turco, el Chino etc etc). It's all good entertainment.

What else. They're obsessed with Fix You by Coldplay and that song by Green Day here. It's annoying. Oh yeah, I'm doing Spanish classes now, and upon meeting my 8 year old neighours yesterday, I was humiliated by the infinitely superior English to my Spanish. Oh yeah, and this ugly old couple are snogging next to me now. It's making me twitch. So I'm going to go and do some writing. Yes, byeseebye.

La vida nocturna

2005-11-02T18:37:00.000Z

It's been a great few days, as my number of friends seems to have multiplied since the weekend. With them, comes a social life, and fully embracing the fact that they don't do things like they do back home. Especially at night. I have to restrain myself from eating before 10pm. It's just not done here, as exemplified by the queues outside my favourite restaurant El Desnivel at 11pm. It's a great place, knife wielding blood stained Joe Pesci-esque waiters and the hugest slabs of cows hanging over a gargantuan barbeque. I also have to restrain myself from not getting to the pub before 11pm, time for bed usually. And, when I'm there, and this is a lesson I am painfully and slowly learning, I mustn't drink the drinks at the same speed I do in England. And, finally, at about 3am, you either go to a club, or you drink an espresso before heading home and starting at the ceiling, knowing that a good 49.6% of the day will be lost tomorrow. At night, when walking home (and this is around 2 or 3am) all the cafes are still open and pretty full, and the main thoroughfare throngs (9 de Julio, the one with 16 lanes and a big Obolisk in the middle) with taxis and an army of bin sifters, searching I guess for glass and cardboard that they can sell to the recycling people. Meanwhile, the more monied sit and watch, uneasily I am not sure. So it's a lot different here. The festival with the Strokes and Kings of Leon was cool, but as it was an under 18s event too, there was no alcohol. I found myself twitching slightly at the prospect and the sensation increased as a bloke behind me insisted on sing along (word perfect, but with a very very heavy Argentinian accent) to ever song. I gave up finally, went to the back of the crowd and danced to the last few songs. I did notice that the lead singer chappy - Julian - cannot (a) remember his words and (b) sing them in tune. Nonetheless it was fun, and the Prodigy are playing a week on Saturday too. Andy Warhol's at the museum, and I've discovered a bunch of people who have good books, so I can swap with them.

And, I'm still writing, getting nearer and nearer the end. Getting excited about the end too. I kind of know how it ends, but not exactly how, if you know what I mean. Well I have nothing more to say. Tonight I am going to eat bacon (yes I found some) with Heinz Ketchup (yes I found some) and chill a bit, and watch my absysmal excuse for a football team depress me further...

With no alarms and no surprises.

2005-10-28T19:54:00.000+01:00

Well, on conclusion, yesterday was one of the most useless days of my life. Once more, I fell foul of the liberal measures they pour in bars here and the even more liberal opening hours. A few gins, some good chit-chat, and suddenly it's gone 3 and I'm attempting to walk in a straight line right down the middle of the pavement, conducting my own police test on myself. All rather amusing, until I woke yesterday unable to move, think or do anything of value. So, I didn't, and spent the day in the confines of my flat eating re-heated spag bol and having a staring match with my pad that I write my novel on. It won, I retreated and flicked through the TV channels and lay there hoping the day would end. I'd have felt bad if that had happened back home, but I felt worse here, as if a day wasted in Buenos Aires is somehow a more precious thing than a London day? I concluded that was the wrong attitude and that days are as unprecious or precious wherever they're spent. My next project is to attempt to ascertain just how precious or unprecious days are, or should be. There was one good thing. Amazing, for me at least. I listened to OK Computer (for what I calculate to be between the 250th and 350th time), and I noticed the bass line in No Surprises. I'd never noticed it before, it was like seeing someone you see every day and realising you love them.

Today's been good. I woke with a clear head, I did some scrubbing in my flat, I wrote well, and later I'm off to see the Strokes and Kings of Leon.

I know I'm hardly in a position to talk, being a resident here for a mere two weeks, but... why is it that things like supermarkets and catching buses intrigue and excite me so at the moment? It as if the great moments here occur in finding normality and routine, moments where I can relax my shoulders. At home, it's the opposite. Moments of boring normality need to be avoided, outwitted, conquered, superceded. Maybe I need to embrace the glib more. I like that word. Always I'm trying to attach poetry to these glib things. I might stop. In front of me is my notebook, an ashtray with a half a smoked cigarette, a clunky old PC, a set of headphones and, outside, buses stream past, ordinary old buses carrying ordinary old people off to their ordinary homes, jobs and the other ordinary people they spend their lives with.

100 down

2005-10-25T20:24:00.000+01:00

Just finished my 100th chapter, my 3rd pad's nearly run out, so I'm just having a breather from it, round the corner at one of the several thousand internet cafes that lie a block or so from my flat. It's nearly there, kind of within touching distance of me finishing it and I'm nervous about when that moment will come. Never having written a book before, I don't know whether what I'm doing is right, but the plan is to sit down and write the whole thing again (albeit this time on a computer not with old fashioned pen and paper). What I find weirdest and almost repugnant is that when I look back at things I wrote a few months back - things that I thought were good - I find myself disliking them, as if I'm hearing my own voice. What worries me, I guess, is that I'll never reach a place of being satisfied with it, or maybe anything I do. Maybe that's not a bad thing, I don't know anyway.

I'm in a lull at the moment. Not much going on, and I'm having to generate my own energy to do things, like get up. This is so different to travelling, with its lure of new places to go to; the task of planning a trip, booking a ticket; the daily bombardment of new people (interesting and annoying) yaddda yaddda yadda. Being proactive is different, harder. Sometimes I can't be bothered. I both crave and dislike company. Ditto, being alone. Maybe if I clone myself, I'd be happier. Doubt it. No, I'm not miserable - but this experience is strange - it's like being alone in London with a handful of friends (some of whom you've only met once, others of whom are so busy working that it's hard to see, most of whom don't speak much of your language). All rather strange.

Well, that's mostly it. I went to my first Asado on Sunday - got a real glimpse into non-tourist front Buenos Aires. A district called Vicente Lopez that tourists don't go, a table full of hand-waving Argentinians talking about politics (an important election took place on Sunday, which meant you couldn't get a beer after 11.30pm on Saturday), more meat than the Clapham Grand on a Saturday night, a drive back past banks of Villas (not the nice holiday homes, but BA's shanty towns, the things the tourist doesn't get to see) and ecstatic Argentinians waxing lyrical about their visits to London (Cobent garhen, Leester Skweer etc). A good experience, and hopefully one I can repeat soon.

My tummy's rumbling now, I aint eaten since brekkie...I'll see you later.

Friday afternoon

2005-10-21T20:16:00.000+01:00

Life is well and truly settled, and for an obsessive-compulsive such as myself that's a relief. I'm managing to synchronise my own to-ings and fro-ings with the rhythm of a city that gets up late, eats out late, drinks late, stays out late. It works for me pretty well. Outside, it's too hot to walk at the moment and the stifling heat is only confounded by the cacophony of workman drilling and dust wafting between lanes of black spewing traffic. To counter this I smoke, and I stay sheltered in my apartment and sticking my face in front of the air-con. Work is progressing still. Sometimes I write until my arm falls off; other times I sit there, have a quickie (game of minesweeper), walk around, smoke, listen to music and sit back at my desk where I extract words as if they were bugs in a dirty kid's hair. Socially things are happening slowly, and what time isn't spent looking plaintively out of cafe windows is spent in the company of new friends - a mixture of curious locals (Carlos, Ines), intense foreign traveller types (Ulrike) and a tip of the iceberg peak at the extensive network of ex-pats here (Charlie and Stephanie, 50 something Aussies who were sick of life Down Under and moved across here; an Iranian bloke who I can't figure out, but he got kicked out of Brazil; plus the requisite Yanks, including a psycho-therapist who I decided not to bare my soul to). I'm looking forward to making some indents into the lives of more locals - but it's hard, like London I guess. Still, I've got a few japes planned this weekend, including my first invite to a family Asado (basically a big Sunday gathering of a whole family that involves a BBQ of lots of meat), which I'm excited about. On the downside, despite my considerable efforts, the blokey in the Kiosk down the street says "Thankyou" when I order something in my best Spanish. It's not there yet, but I've got classes coming. It will get there, I guess. I hope.

Right now, I am on the corner of Defensa street and Avenue Brasil - five blocks from my flat, right on the corner near the park that marks the original foundation of the city of Buenos Aires. It's only a stones throw from La Boca, where you're not supposed to go, but it feels safe, comfortable here. It feels a bit like Hackney I guess.

So I was sitting at Plaza Dorrego yesterday, having my afternoon Quilmes (staple Argie beer) and wrote this. Have a good weekend...

He's sat in the square. There's a couple sat at the adjacent table. They don't look like they're from around here. They're American, he guesses. He drinks and smokes in a way that he hopes won't give it away. That he's not from round here either. To his left, an impossibly cute girl sits on the steps with a pink backpack on. She smiles and laughs at the pigeons as they cluster around her, pecking at the bird food that you can buy in that little stall. I don't suppose she realises that pigeons are disgusting vermin, he thinks to himself, whilst blowing his smoke into the sky. I don't suppose she realises that I'm writing about her, he thinks too.

I see him from across the square. I'm alone writing. I guess I could go over and say hello. I finish off my beer, smoke another Malboro. I must give up soon, maybe next year. I get up to leave and fold everything away. I go home. I suppose I should call someone.

My Buenos Aires

2005-10-18T18:51:00.000+01:00

Been here a week, and wondering if the city has started to get to know me yet? Whether it's sussed me out to be the Englishman that I am, or whether I carry off the porteño thing well enough.

Just started to develop a social life to complement my solitude life. The latter I enjoy (especially in the days), got a coffee maker at home so usually get up around 10 and stretch breakfast over a couple of hours of reading, smoking and multiple caffeine hits. My current reading is Raymond Carver - his complete short stories. He might just be the greatest writer I have ever read. On the back of the book Salman Rushdie says "go out and read everything Carver has written". I'm doing my best. A backdrop to my mornings is provided by my Ipod and freshly acquired speakers that give it a bit of oompf. Dylan (current fave Positively 4th street) and Radiohead (I want none of this is the new song on the War Child album) dominate proceedings of course. Around 12 or 1 I try and do writing...that phase lasts anywhere between 30 minutes to 2 or 3 hours, depending on whether it comes or not. Sometimes it's like staring at a painting you just can't get in a gallery. Sometimes it's easy. I try and write at least 1000 words a day, and my first draft is now touching on 80,000 words and near to the end. With any luck I'll have a draft finished in about three weeks, and then it's time to rewrite on the computer...and to do what I haven't done yet, read the thing in its entirity. That fills me with dread, but also a sliver of excitement that it might actually be okay. So that's my day of solitude, nights are harder. I guess they're always harder to be alone in. At least days end...they become nights. Nights rarely end.

But, things are looking up. Thanks to me whoring myself on a couple of travel and ex-pat forums, I've got a few chums to see. I've never done this or needed to do this before. Meeting random people in random places in a random city feeling quite random about the whole thing. Perhaps online dating will be the next stop on my return to London, though the thought of that makes me ill.

What else? Well, bits and bobs. The fun of putting together a city. Adding this street to that one, seeing how it all joins up. Some Spanish lessons up and coming, and the Strokes and Kings of Leon a week on Friday.

I like my nightime walks. Last night I walked from where I went out (Palermo) all the way home (San Telmo). I tried to write a poem about it this morning and got bored and played minesweeper again. But here are some words and, for now, farewell until I write again...

My Buenos Aires, do you know me yet? I ask on my long walk home. It's 1am and my feet do not yet ache. Yet surely they will. Still, I will see this through.

The sky is empty, except for the moon, and the buildings reach up in vain, like little children and kitchen cupboards. I keep a close eye on them, the glass hotels full of sofas, the dim garages full of silver cars, and I am watched too - by janitors that clutch at bars like monkeys and policemen that guard corners with radios and cigarettes and the hawk eyed cats that come out of their dungeons with fistfuls of plastic cards. Gradually, the polished streets and the graceful parks give way to my Buenos Aires. I share it with old ladies on late night walks with their dogs and the silent ones that lie crowded in doorways beneath the glow of the theatres and the Obolisk. This is my Buenos Aires, of cracked pavements, of shabby fond playgrounds, of men sweeping in slowmotion, of two dogs asleep in the middle of the pavement. Of non-stop cars, of half deserted cafes, of the people staring out, of neither rich nor poor but something in between, something combined, something as yet undefined.

My feet ache now. They ache a lot. I decide to write this stuff down, but I fall asleep before I start.

My walk last night

2005-10-14T01:01:00.000+01:00

Wandering the streets alone, whilst Uruguay play Argentina, with cafes and kioskos full of men old or nearly old in blue caps with litre bottles of beer, gazing as if to heaven, the televisions hoisted in the corners full of hope for this evening at least. Girls in packs of twos and threes they make eye contact and withdraw it as hurriedly as they offered their glances. Vendors outside their kiosks, unpegging the day's magazines. Buy some smokes through a hole in a metal grill and some bum sees my change and asks me for cash. Makeshift kids hang off makeshift lampost climbing frames and shout down at me. I shake my head and walk away down the chipped paving stones, glorious perhaps in Borges' day. Was everything better here before, I wonder. Workmen working late on the sidewalks, as shop girls crouch and clamber out of dark shops, next door a 24 hour place with beers and men lined up at the bar, equals. Theatre lights neon over orange policeman smiling waiting at a street's edge watching a camera crew fiddle with the machine and stick down a tattered old red carpet. We (me that is, and one other bloke on the pavement) stop and look. He in Spanish, me in English. My feet are tired now, and I look for something, something anywhere...in faces of the people, in open shop doorways with shelves stacked full of books on both sides, at a befuddling mass of pink plastic magazines, on road signs, in street lights, flickered long since, bright now since the sun has dipped and the traffic dawdles on eight laned boulevards, once grandly lined with trees, now lined by sad facsimilies of former trees. Obolisk glowing white over the thinning traffic, people at home, in bars, with families, I keep thinking of Wordsworth or is it Keats or is it Richard Ashcroft. I also need a wee badly, and I am hungry. I hurry back, 20 blocks at least, good for carbs or abs or something ending in bs is this walking. Occasional people pass with dogs. Occasionally they greet each other, and ignore me. Does that mean that I look like one of them, Argentinian that is. Or, do they just ignore English people. I don't know. Traffic lights taking an eternity to shift, a girl sits in a doorway with an A4 pad and earphones in, as others gather outside a college and smoke at each other. The city's roar subsides, now the city hums. Down the shadow that is my street, an old beard in a roadside bin. Rubbish bins lined up, like in a parade. I pick at my teeth, the fat drips off my cheap burger onto the carboard onto my hands onto the floor via my shirt. I am home now. It is late, and I am going to go to sleep. Nighty night.

Walking the streets

2005-10-13T00:53:00.000+01:00

Forgive me the stream of consciousness, wasn't planning to write, but then I passed this place on my left as I headed out for a stroll. The lights were on, and it looked kind of inviting in a strange internet-cafe type way. As a result, I have nothing planned to say, except that yes, I am here - back in Buenos Aires, here for another three months. A week ago, I was in Derby, sitting in Clive's front room, drinking Stella I believe, watching Jerry Maquire, listening to Howl by the Black Rebel Motor Cycle Club. And here, several thousand miles away, I feel a world away.

I am safely ensconsed in my flat - a cool split level place, my handful of clothes and books don't do much to dent the space that I have, and I've found myself twiddling my thumbs - waiting for a bed to be delivered, discussing a contract that I don't understand with Diego my landlord, flicking through TV channels in a jet lagged fatigue. Nothing too exciting to report. It feels different to before. The language, which I had wrongly assumed I'd gotten on top of, now seems faster and more obscure than it ever had been in the first place. The streets seem more cluttered, full of potential menace with orange garbed coppers and haphazard traffic distracting my senses. Maybe it's because I am alone - no fellow backpackers to talk nonsense with, or to sit in bars or share meals with. It's a different experience - living alone in an strange place - and one that it's a little early to judge how it's going.

Then there's my writing...like anyone who's ever tried to write, it's the blank page that haunts me and I find myself trying to haul the nightime in, kill the minutes. My flat is all set up for writing - coffee and wine aplenty, ashtrays and half finished packets of cigarretes, books and papers stacked, Dylan on the wall and on the stereo, yet, as always I procrastinate. I veer between telling myself that I can't write, and what I do write is crap; and then minutes later, that I am the next Kundera or Carver. The glass isn't usually half empty with me - it's either full or empty - maybe that's my problem. I keep thinking that the next 3 months somehow holds the key to the rest of my life - that at the end of it I would have discovered or achieved or realised or maybe forgotten something, and that I will look back at it and refer to it as pivotal. Yeah, whatever.

Outside it's hot, and the bars and streets are expectant with the imminent Uruguay-Argentina football match. Meanwhile I'm going to walk - up and down these streets that seem familiar, yet strange at the same time.

Oh, admin notice - I have a phone! It's 00 54 11 4361 1062, if you ever get the urge to call me (we're 4 hours behind currently). I have an address too. But I won't tell you that yet. That's because I don't know the postcode. But I'll put that here as soon as I get it...y'know in case you want to write, send presents, visit etc

Last Derby days

2005-10-03T15:31:00.000+01:00

Well, after a 4 month break, I find myself back here on blogger.com, counting down the days as I usually do - days until Christmas, days until Greenbelt, days until I go home and, in this case, the days until I go away again - back to Buenos Aires. I am not sure whether I'll write as much as I did before. The first time, when I travelled up and down South America, from Argentina to Columbia and back, I used the blog as a kind of substitute camera - words instead of pictures. Next time, though, and the plan is stay fairly put - I have a flat lined up in Buenos Aires (nice sounding - roof terrace, swimming pool, cable TV etc) and I am planning on spending as much of the three months as I can writing, and wrenching a completed first draft of a novel out of the experience. Well, I'll try, though I don't want to set myself up for failure.

So, a week today, and I'll be getting ready for Heathrow, the curious joy I feel when I am in a public transport hub will no doubt return, as will a healthy dose of the FEAR - being away for my first Christmas, the prospect of some isolation out there. Sure I'll be fine.

Here in Derby, the trees are still manfully clinging on to their summer colours, but the sunshine has given up the ghost and the sky is white like a nuclear winter. I can't say much about Derby, except that I have had a great time - read more books than I've done in my entire life, written virutally every day (book now stands at around 70,000 words), recorded an EP with my associates in dfg (see www.thedfgcorporation.co.uk), spent time with my best chum Clive, had a great and relaxing Greenbelt no working experience, approached and passed the dreaded 30 in relatively smooth fashion and generally had the best Summer I have had for around about 10 years. A weird experience for me, the season that I normally associate with long hours and stress has been as relaxing as it could get.

But, all things come to an end. Autumn is sweeping in, so I'm about to jump ship - back to Buenos Aires, the emerging Summer, the odd semi-acquaintance, space to myself, time to think and write and maybe have the odd adventure. Should be a good experience.

Hope so, hasta pronto amigos!

and in the end

2005-06-19T21:39:00.000+01:00

the love that you take is equal to the love that you make. Not sure what that has to do with anything, but I like Abbey Road and I'm in a thinking about the end and about love and lots of other things. It's my last full day here in South America, a woman is bellowing her ciaos in a phone kiosk behind me, my head is under attack from a self-induced hangover of epic proportions, I just saw a feisty middle-aged woman smack her hubby as I sat and watched a crowd of locals and tourists browse the Sunday San Telmo market - vintage pin badges, tango dancers, old pocket watches, gramophones, a hot chocolate, leather jackets, a bloke selling George Bush loo roll, breath in the autumn air, clunk of footsteps on cobble, orange glow cafes full to bursting. Yesterday I told myself and people in the hostel that I wasn't sad to be leaving. I said that because I was returning there was no need for sadness, but today I am awash with it. I love this place - the sites, looks, smells, streets, music, sadness, seriousness, smoking, dark eyes, blue and white flags, plazas and parks, antique shops and second hand clothes shops, the new White Stripes CD for a fiver, strong coffee with a free plate of mini-biscuits and a glass of fizzy water, steaks as fat as Jose Mourinho's ego, speaking of egos - confident, arrogant, flawed, longing, melancholic, arty people, black clad hip types in sunglasses standing around in nightclubs, gin tonics with three quarters of a glass of gin, a man being pulled around a park by his handsfree cigarette, another woman being dragged along by a gaggle of kids in designer Stoke Newington garb, yet another being dragged along by 5,6,7 dogs, the philosophy in spanish section of a bookshop in the centre of town that has been converted from an old theatre and a brief daydream about a girl there, racks of designer clothers and young designers with mullets and severe fringes and stripey tops reclining on pool tables with cigarettes, metal chairs on the metro with a packet of stickers on my lap that were placed there by an unemployed sad person doing my best to avoid my guilt conscience by trying to eye up a pretty girl or seventeen that are in the same carriage, 1,2,3 no 16 lanes of yellow topped black cabs in a race across 9 de Julio and I run for it doesn't make much difference they don't seem to observe lights or human beings, water seeping into my shoe tips, a man on the corner of San Juan with a blue beret and a leather coat and a fashion cigarrette hanging, emerging from Callao tube stop as if it's Paris all blue sky and trees and lanterns hanging, rows of tables slabs of meat bottles of red wine stacked, a mother with a two year old in one hand and a cigarette in the other, people chatting on their mobile phones holding the mouthpiece like a walky talky to speak and then putting it to their ear to listen, health conscience don't want cancer I guess, older men like Italian football managers, Jorge Luis Borges graffiti and poetry labyrinths and more than I can take in.

So, it's good here - vibrant, full of music, colour, emotion...the people sing as they speak...they speak differently to everyone else here in South America - pollo (chicken) is pronounced poschzo rather than poyo...it's like Europe in South America. Start and finish of my trip and my favourite place. But now it's time to leave, and I am not sure that I will write anymore - after all my next destinations are Croydon and Derby.

But we'll see, despite bathing in a mud volcano, seeing my reflection in the cloudy salt flats of Bolivia, hanging out with hip-hop crew coke dealers, seeing a million stars in Lake Titicaca, sampling a crazy LSD potion in the Amazon jungle, watching condors soar over my head, driving up and down the Andes, sandboarding on the dunes, seeing the ancient brilliance of Machu Picchu, eating KFC in Miraflores whilst listening to Knives Out, staying in huts, 5 star hotels and squeaky bed dorms, pushing a bus out of the mud at midnight, being nearly killed by cabbies in Columbia and Bolivia, being hassled by bizarre obsessive South American girls, ending up in brothels, waking in a valium haze at some random dusty town in the middle of nowhere, being followed around city centres by large and disturbing men, seeing penguins, sea lions and eating lots of fried eggs, being in a markets with every penis extension tablet, llama foetuses, wriggly bugs, delicacies made out of tree barks, the odd kitchen sink and a dead turtle, being hassled by shoe shine boys, seven year old cigarette sellers at 2am in a La Paz bar, little girls with a hand full of finger puppets, desperados on buses selling potions and their life stories, sitting around in countless bus terminals and on buses next to some of the smelliest, fattest, bizarrely attired-ist, friendliest, coolest, most beautiful, most annoying people ever, having at least 30 cold showers and one severe stomach upset, getting altitude sickness and nearly killing myself climbing the streets of La Paz and Cusco, writing a million and one sad poems, listening to a million and two sad songs, worrying myself sick about my money, my book, my friends, my future, being 30 soon, sharing a bed with six on a beach on Isla del Sol, dancing in a bizarre woolly poncho hat combo with a bunch of native indians on some strange island, having twenty seven thousand conversations about where I am from, where I have been, where I am going and what do I think of George W Bush...well despite all these japes, adventures, coffees, cafes, conversations, thoughts, things...I have learnt, well, kind of not much new. People are the same wherever I think...yeah money and things make a difference, but at the end of the day we are all the same - we all want the same things, need the same things, we just go about it differently. And, for me, importantly, I think I am the same as I left. Maybe a bit more confident, able to hold my own more with strange people. Maybe a bit richer, having made some amazing new friends and learnt about people from other parts of the world and other walks of life. Maybe a bit hairier. Maybe a bit smellier and a bit clothes-holier. It hasn't changed my life, maybe though it will one day in the future. Perhaps it won't. Who knows, and now, who cares?

Tomorrow, at 5.30 I'll be on the plane to Paris and this bit will be behind me. I am excited about seeing friends. I am excited about my sister's wedding. About writing. About dfg stuff over the summer. About the future. I am worried about my money situation. About writing, can I do it. About the future. About love, a lot.

About whether Radiohead's new album will be any good or not, and whether Utd can get their trophies back.

So, maybe I will write some more. Maybe I won't. Thanks for reading...loved having yr company for 5 months, those that have read silently, those that have said hi, those that write my emails. It has meant loads hearing from you and being with you for 5 months. Now I am going to go and do what I do the most here and at home - sit, think, dream...maybe with a cigarette, maybe a coffee, definitely a big slab of cow, hopefully someone too to share my last night with.

Adios y hasta Martes! Gracias amigos!

Autumn in Buenos Aires

2005-06-13T22:19:00.000+01:00

Back here again, just yards from where I wrote my first post from South America. I've just been sat in a cafe on Plaza Dorrego, in San Telmo, watching through the window, watching myself 5 months ago. Then, the sun was shining and I sat amongst the pigeons and drunk a beer and bought a Big Issue type magazine of a blokey there and then completely failed to understand a single word. Now, I look out of the window and see a paler version of myself, nervous and excited all at once, uncreased Lonely Planet guidebook open at the Buenos Aires page, my small rucksack manacled to my legs, my moneybelt fastened to my waist. How things change, I think. How things don't change.

Since then, winter has been and gone in England and summer has been and gone in Argentina. It's 6.30pm and the sun has dipped. Porteñas still glide by, wrapped this time in black overcoats rather than skimpy denim. A pile of Quilmes beer chairs are stacked in the centre of the Plaza, rather than surrounding full tables of boistrous laughing tourists. In the hostel, the friendly owners no longer need to speak in a slow deliberate Spanish or a faltering English, and we understand each other a little better. I stand on the balcony where I spent my first week lounging on a hammock, turning a generous shade of red...this time I wrap myself from the cold. But some things don't change, I think. The melancholic tango floats around the cafe, soundtracking the 1920s. The coffee still small and strong like in Italy. The girls still amazingly beautiful, the city still alluring and seductive. And, me. Not sure if I have changed. I am definitely more confident than I was 5 months ago - but maybe that's because I know 17 words in Spanish now. Maybe it's because I have come through (touchwood) adventures in 6 countries completely unscathed. Maybe it's because I have met more new people in 5 months than I normally would do in 5 years. Not sure, guess time will tell - but I am not sure that travelling here has cast a beacon of discovery on myself, rather a shadow of uncertainty, of questioning, of yearning. (All in a good way, mind)...

Being back here is brilliant in all the ways being back in Lima wasn't. I loved the people in the hostel in Lima - friendly and warm. I liked sitting in the cafes and walking round a corner without having to refer to my Lonely Planet map. I liked the comfort of the familiar. But here feels like a surrogate home in a way Lima with it's pan pipe toting youngsters and glitzy neon casinos and a smog of an ocean never could. Not sure why, I've just taken to Buenos Aires, I love it...

So now. A week here, and hopefully the foundation of some plans for the Autumn (UK, Spring here I guess) and some fruitful writing. The shape of my book is forming nicely in my head, and I am excited about the challenge of writing. I am excited too about the future, knowing that the world is, well not quite my oyster, but possibly my shrimp.

On returning

2005-06-10T18:38:00.000+01:00

There's nothing that wasn't sad about entering Lima in the morning after a long bus journey. The sky masked by the grey in between, the ground silked by morning drizzle and billboards gigantically sadly contrast with the littleness of the people below - people shuffling over yellow concrete and metal footbridges and men in orange overalls sweeping around traffic cones like footballers training. Two lorries stalled and stuffed with old cardboard, for recycling I guess. Half finished or half destroyed roofless windowless houses with washing hanging, limp and without prospect of drying. TEKNO. Red brick blue signs, vota idiota. Bollards and concrete barriers and patches of grass with people sat around under graffitied slogans. Garages and toilet shops and cheap hotels with aerials like broken limbs and names like BUENO and MAJESTIC and all sorts of services proferred all EJECUTIVO the market place tattered like the peruvian flag. A batallion of JCB diggers and a bank of sand. And even the reds and greens and yellows that I see are shrouded by this greyness and there's nothing that isn't sad or is beautiful about this place at 7.30am in the morning.

And I'm here again. Same internet cafe, same hostal, same breakfast place, same kids wanting to shine my shoes, same old lady selling fags on the corner, same cheesy latin pop shit, same. Same, it's strange to be back. No need for the guidebook anymore. Lots of people just starting their trip, feeling slightly self-satisfied I've been to Columbia. I've been here 5 months. Yes, Spanish, I get by. Vota idiota. And, I wonder whether I have left a footprint or a scar or steamy breath on a mirror on this continent and I wonder what mark it has left on me.

So, sightseeing - maybe, but there's not a lot that I haven't seen here in Lima...On Sunday I go to Buenos Aires, I caved in and bought a flight...the bus journey might take up to 5 days the travel agent told me. Worry about money, but what's new. Anyone got any work that needs doing for a week or 2 lemme know when I get back. I've started doing that thing where I work out how many days and hours I have until I get back, and then working out what exactly I was doing the same time in the past. I was still in Columbia, in Popayan wandering around a humid colonial square...in the same distance of time in the future I'll be back home.

In a very hot boring town, on a break of a 22 hour journey with only 14 to go.

2005-06-08T22:39:00.000+01:00

Wednesday, and another step nearer home. The equator is now a distant memory, and I am sat in a cybercafe in Piura, on the north west coast of Peru, 14 hours by bus tonight to Lima. There's not much to note about this place - the town is surrounded by arrid scrublands for miles and miles, littered frequently with all kinds of rubbish - plastic bags, bottles, glasses, boxes - one of South America's least pleasant (though quite commonplace) features. There is a main Plaza de Armas (main square), surrounded by the usual plethora of ice cream, magazine and strange food sellers and sketchy looking characters sat around on park benches mumbling in my general direction. I've got two hours to kill before continuing on my way, I've been on the road for 10 hours already today but feeling fairly fresh and looking forward to a restful weekend in Lima.

I didn't give Ecuador enough time to really do it justice, but it seemed to me to be a beautiful gem of a country. Towards the South, the winding roads continue on, flanked by tree lined hills and immense valleys - to one side lies a vast expanse of jungle, and to the other the Andes loom magestically. Occasionally on the bus journey, we stop off in little towns seemingly plucked from the set of some period-drama. The old man sat next to me looked as I'd hope to in forty years time - a lined face topped by a panama-style hat and wearing a shirt just like the ones I do. Old ladies and old men wrapped in ponchos, little kids skipping by in the indigenous home kit of South Americans - big purple or pink skirts - these are some of my most enduring memories of this place. And here, in the Andean parts of South America, I feel a tourist attraction myself. It may be my stupid hat, my overgrown mop on top of my head, or just sheer good looks, but people stop and stare, some laugh, some smile, some little kids turn around and turn around again.

Outside each town, signs emploring people to vote are sketched on to large stones in red and white, and nearer the towns faded photographs and pledges are plastered on every available bit of concrete. Strange moustachioed characters offering these people the world - the world, I think, that is a different place to the one that we're lucky enough to live in. Again, another enduring and recurring image of this continent. And I ponder what life might be like if I lived in Macara or Chiclayo, Ecuador - tiny little places in the shadows of the Andes, where a Latin beat eminates from the open-fronted cafes, where ladies carry huge baskets full of bread, where the men paint the churches white and where some Señor offers a world that isn't corrupt, that isn't desperately poor, that offers a future. And I am snapped out of it - Passport control (again), a shove and a poke at my bag, filling in another form, another country, another stamp on my passport, another place left behind. I wonder if I will ever come back.

I had ten hours on the bus today, didn't read, write or listen to music. I just watched the world slope by and had the occasional mini power-nap. And again, I thanked my lucky stars for being able to do this trip, for taking a year off my job and taking this chance. It might leave up the financial creek without a paddle, but despite the melancholic moments, it's been brilliant and I've got memories and inspirations and new friends which should last my a lifetime.

So, overnight bus - luxury one I think, seeing how I paid $37 for the privilige. A sleeping tablet later and I'll be in Lima - weirdly, the first place I will have returned to on this trip, and sort of half way back to Buenos Aires. Doubt I'll get up to much tourism this weekend, but I might get lucky again in Lima and hear Radiohead's "Knives Out" in the burger joint. If I do, I'll be sure to let you know...

2 weeks and counting, 4 countries to go

2005-06-07T03:13:00.000+01:00

2 weeks today and I'll be sat on a plane bound for Paris. I can't believe how quickly it's gone, and I can't believe how quickly I have to move across the continent before then. With any luck I'll be on the bus from Lima-Buenos Aires this time next week, fast heading for Santiago Chile, before it climbs up and then skips down the Andes. For now, I am in Ecuador, albeit a lot further south than I was this weekend. Cuenca is the third city in a week that I have arrived at after dark after an epic bus journey, but on first glance it looks gorgeous - the domes of the churches poking up over the market square in a Florence-esque manner, magnificent old colonial streets and grand squares. I've got a few hours to explore tomorrow, and then it's onto another bus and step nearer the Peruvian border.

Quito wasn't as bad as many fellow travellers had warned me - I had fun for three days. The Old Town was full of all the usual South American stereotypes - buses belching, pigs heads stuffed with apples, policemen frantically whistling on traffic, a drunken deranged man beating himself and his partner in the middle of the main square, smudged shoe-shine kids and chewing gums sellers hassling us. Aside from these sights, there was a chaotic market street and street after street full of gorgeous colonial architecture, keeping a stately eye and ear on the cacophony below - a cacophony that gave me a La Paz like buzz again. The New Town was full of all the usual traveller stereotypes - it was strange to be back in a place full of backpackers after so long in Columbia. Israelis haggled over prices in restaurants, Brits staggered drunkenly in football shirts and Americans...Americans, haven't seen hardly any for ages, but there were thousands in Quito, drawn to "Gringolandia" like UN weapons inspectors to Baghdad. I guess it might be the currency, or that Columbia is supposed to be dangerous, but the sound of the American accent round every corner was slighlty concerning especially as none of them made any effort to speak anything other than English. And now, sat in a cafe in Cuenca, a couple of Germans are chatting away to the backdrop of Simply Red. It's strange indeed being back on the beaten traveller track, but despite all that it was pretty nice to sit around and watch some films and play pool and go for drinks with people, particularly after a week on the road.

Saturday saw Ecuador beat Argentina 2-0 in Ecuador, and it was great to be in the city for the game and part of the general hugging, beeping, shouting and drunken air of exuberance. We ended meeting one of the city's most carried away supporters - Enrique - who insisted on giving us a walking tour of the dodgy parts of town at 3am and taking us to the some of the less-wholesome establishments in the city. After making some hasty excuses we ended up in another bar till 7, and then up for the Equator at 12. Maybe it was the hangover, but the theme park at the Equator didn't really do it for me. Reminded me of a poor version of Thorpe Park, minus any good rides and including some truly absymal Latin-pop. What was probably worse was the fact that the whole complex has been sited wrong. The yellow line that we gleefully hopped to and fro across is, in fact, two hundred metres from the real Equator. We did find the real one though, and did a few experiments to prove the point. Not an earth shattering experience, but I thought it would be rude not to say hello to the centre of the world, as the Ecuadorians proudly call it.

Today's been about the bus. 10 hours of it today. Another windy (as in curves not the thing that blows a lot) hilly road in the clouds. Another bus with violent Hollywood garbage on the TV (Fast and the Furious). Another bus with vendors cramming the aisles and people giving their life stories from the front. Another bus with Latin dance music so unfeasibly loud that I had to drown it out with Kevin Tihista's Red Terror's 2004 opus "Wake Up Captain". Another bus when I started thinking about all the CDs I would have bought if I had still been in England, and how much I am looking forward to some new tunes. An elbow battle with the bloke next to me and a screaming child kicking and a two day tiredness hangover not quite shifted. A stale packet of crisps and a plastic cup of 7UP that a lady with a moustache in a pink Indian style dress gave to me. The countryside was very Yorkshire-esque. Rugged hills, miserable looking people and lots of drizzle. At one stage, we were completely covered by cloud, and the trees and roadside looked like they had been painted on to a white theatre set. As darkness descended, getting a glimpse of the Southern Cross for the first time in 6 weeks, just as the Pyramid Song reached its glorious crescendo, and despite being rigid for 10 hours, being moved by the beauty of the setting and the song and my good fortune at being able to be on this trip.

Well tomorrow's about moving too - not sure where I'll end up - probably not quite in Peru, I'll save the border for Wednesday and head down to Lima on Thursday. But for now, I am in a chilled mood - got a nice peaceful hotel, a big bed, an en-suite bathroom with hot water, a balcony overlooking an old market and Cable TV. Big luxuries...good night amigos, see you in a couple of weeks.

PS The German girl next to me has just really badly broken wind. I will skip checking the important news on Edwin Van der Saar for the time being.