Jordan: Drinking Alone; live free or die, Batman.

I met Chris and Lucy because I was eavesdropping. Long ago I made peace with drinking alone while traveling. In fact, I believe it's actually a good and completely fair activity; alone - at least initially - you are more socially agile and much less intimidating to strangers. That makes you very easy to engage with, thus making it easier to make friends on the run.

Turns out Chris and Lucy are aid workers from Britain whose jobs are predominantly involved with Syrian refugee camps in the north of Jordan. Chris spent some time telling me about how he dodged skunk water while masquerading as a Palestinian in Israel (just to see what it was like) while Lucy went to great pains to assert that her vagina was not an inhibitor for football knowledge and roundly savaged the both of us for not realising that Crystal Palace are in the Premier League.

Decamping from some bar to some rooftop with a view of the city, some American English teachers and a Swiss backpacker snowballed to our cause. I was briefly viewed by the Americans as some sort of traveling genius for responding to their hailing from New Hampshire with, "live free or die, eh?", I got the Brits' details on the back of a Boxing Day Ashes ticket that was the only bit of paper in my bag (a WONDERFUL coincidence that paid dividends through Lucy's potty mouth) and then somewhere between there and later I was locked out of my hostel because I outlasted a perversely early curfew.

... in unrelated news, I really enjoyed reading Batman comics on the plane the other day. Frank Miller is an inspirational story teller.