Hootenanny of Indeterminate Composition

It's hot, today. Yesterday was hot, as well, and so was the weekend. I like this weather. Unfortunately, so does everyone else. The streets are overflowing. It's quite the cacophony, out there.

Two cars are having a beepfight, just below my window. It's been going on for a couple of minutes, now. The more aggressive car, a brown station wagon, has been honking nearly constantly the whole time. It's a lot of quick honks, though, not a single sustained blast. Honk-honk-honk-honk-honk. The other one, which I can't see for the trees, blasts in every ten seconds or so. It's louder. It's very obnoxious--they both are. People are annoyed. There's a lot of shouting mixed in with the honks.

Earlier, there was a lot of hollering from the direction of Granville Street. I don't know what that was, but there were at least ten voices involved. I couldn't make out what they were saying. It sounded like a lot of hoo-hoo-hoo, from up here. (Maybe it was. Maybe they were exercising their lungs, or practicing their wolf calls. Who knows? I peered out the window, but I was too far away to see anything.)

Before the hollering, and well before the beepfight, there was a hootenanny of indeterminate composition. It woke me up. That was about eight in the AM. I tried to go back to sleep, afterwards, but there was too much noise. The whole city seems to be out and about today. There's constant traffic along Burrard, and every so often, someone yells. Something's banging, off by the harbour, and there's a rustling afoot in the trees.

The beepfight stopped halfway through that last paragraph. That's how I can hear the trees, again. I can hear buses, too. There isn't a single bus in the city whose brakes are working properly. Whenever a bus pulls up to an intersection, you hear two things: a gassy puffing sound (I don't know what that is), and the squealing of brakes. If it's an electric bus, you also get the rattling of its grabby thing. Grabby things: long, metal arms attached to the backs of electric buses, which draw the current from overhead wires. Every so often, the grabby things fall off, and the driver has to get out and reattach them. All the buses except the express ones have grabby things.

Augh. There go two motorbikes, and something with a siren. An ambulance, I think. You get a lot of ambulances round here, what with St. Paul's only three blocks away. At my old place, you got more police cars. That's what happens, when you live on the edge of the heroin district.

I hope it all settles down soon. I'm tired. I could use a quiet evening. My new novel isn't going well--the setup isn't quite right. The ending's going to be rushed and rubbishy, if I follow the current outline. There's too much nonsense in the beginning, and not enough meat in the middle. I hate planning. Planning is the worst. Writing is much easier.