10 May

Day wakes me up before night has buggered off. Even the birds aren’t chirping yet.

I spend the dead time rearranging non-existent things and thoughts, until the sun decides to rise, merging through a greyness of cloud and curtain, all of which will be rustled on occasion but will otherwise barely shift all day.

A stroll to the waterfront – it’s still there – followed by a meander over to Barrie’s Homestead for my first-morning breakfast: an Earl Grey and a filled croissant. They saw me coming, and now I sit here watching everyone leaving – after being robbed at tillpoint.

It’s all so Mexico that even The Smiths are soundtracking this criminality in bone china crockery, in the only open-plan bakery in town, where the bare-brick walls give away nothing.

Where the businessman sat in the window turned up to his breakfast meeting on a BMX; where toddlers are brought here in a buggy the price of a car, here for their soya milk and their daily bread (raven rye). Right. I need air.

Out on the trail by the lake, the darkest grey curtain has been raised, to reveal another drape of a slightly lighter shade. I suspect Barrie is going to go through the full 50 shades today, the whole back catalogue.

Dogs are walking their owners – they know the score. Get the humans exactly where they want them. If the trail wasn’t by the lake, this would be a very dull walk. A man can’t even trespass around here!

Up ahead, two council workers and a fake copper are busy searching for the body, struggling to locate exactly where they dumped it in the dark of the night.

And here are the elderly pedestrians in gangs, threatening to take out the solo runners and lycra-clad cyclists with their flailing limbs and unconventional movements.

Beyond all that, I can’t get any higher today than a high five from the city mayor, of all people (the one whom everyone rubs up the wrong way).

The sound of water lapping around the rocks absorbs all things, to the point where I suddenly backtrack into a comfortable nothingness. The quacking duck paddling forlornly around the fallen mis-shapen tree barely even stirs me.

The sky now a different shade of grey again, with a sun occasionally breaking through to provide some temporary sparkle on the water. In the distance, high-rise buildings have landed in the swamp, and they’re stuck fast. There’s profit in swamps, so I’ve heard.

Abandoning my rocky perch to return to the path, to quickly discover that not much has changed in the space of five minutes. Joggers still jog, elderly gangs still loiter, cyclists still cycle, toddlers still cry, and sob, and wail, and cry, and sob, and wail.

We take comfort that the Spirit Catcher is around the bend, there to wipe away our tears and consume our dreams, packaging them up to send them as one to the Creator, who will no doubt have nightmares when he finds out what the hell we all dream about. Fish knives for arms? That’s not a dream, that’s right in front of me – I really am seeing things.

Somewhat inevitable that shortly after this I end up joining a private members’ club. All I’m there for is a fluffy pillow and a goodly spork, honest. When I’m done with throwing my credit card around like I just don’t care, I rush back down to the scene of the crime, the lake.

Obviously I take the closed pathway, up to the 1980s retirement complex. Past the obligatory leaf-blowers and over the junction through the stop-start roadworks to Barnstormer, a bar on a strip mall, where I’m grounded by a Flight Delay.

I’m winging it now, preparing myself for take-off. My ‘flight’ will take three months, with or without goggles. And no-one knows I’m here, in an aircraft hangar!

For my delay, I’m served up beer in a chalice, and meatloaf with garlic mash and sprouts and gravy. It’s so agreeable, I decide to pay for it (cash).

Given the circumstances, unsurprising that most of the co-conspirators around me are on a flight of their own. Chocs away, as no-one says, ever.

The pitstop in the shop for tins, followed by the early-evening schlep around the lake, flying past comatose double-decker commuter trains and sleepy resort hotels, the wandering path delivering me back to downtown.

Hooters has opened up a branch in front of the church, a place for worshippers. Somewhere to go for a debrief after Mass, I guess. We turn a blind eye.

I’m due for a meltdown in Flying Monkeys; a Chocolate Manifesto, my 12 Minutes to Destiny – blowing raspberries in an adjacent game of Cards Against Humanity. This is how far we’ve progressed as a civilised society.