22 May

Breakfast like a miner, in a room without a view. Talk about coal black mornings.

After my blotted morning burdens, out into the bright light, to encounter a staff of one from Nova Scotia, a character well up on her lobster.

Followed her partner to arrive here, the lost town, and surely misses the scenery and the fixtures and the fittings of that faux-Scottish landscape.

In a mild panic of being caught out, I make up prices for a lobster dinner on the spot … I’m a fish fraud! I’m a crustacean evader!

It’s all I can do in the circumstances to call for an ouster, to snorkel out of the guest house via the back alley, escaping surreptitiously under a dark cloud and into downtown, where the big old Canadian Pacific steam engine lives, next to the vacant visitor centre.

I climb up the metal steps which aren’t part of the original design or the initial appointments, to peer into a cabin which is overrun with knobs … and I wonder, how did they ever know which ones to use?

Full steam ahead … choo-chooooo!

Ultimately I’m only going places here in my fantasies, so when I land back down in the real world seconds later, I wander over to the voiture and escape town in the same way I arrived – on wheels.

To travel approximately 200 clicks, along the monotone 101, to somewhere that does exist – Timmins, Ontario.

Easy to surmise that, in comparison to Chapleau, this is an Important Place; if for no other reason than it has a giant WalMart on the outskirts of town.

Reassuring that I can finally buy a ski mask and a baseball bat and a chainsaw. But I’ll struggle to buy anything with a ‘Parental Advisory’ sticker. Thanks, Tipper Gore!

In amongst the traditional North American franchised welcome, flooded pitches as evidence of that harshest of winters. And it’s a busy place, this.

I’m greeted at the secret hotel suites by Sinful Sydney … reassured to discover later that this relates more to a gluttonous love of cake rather than any of the other major sins or anything illegal, or the beginnings of a sequel to Seven.

Although as a lawyer I wouldn’t put anything past him, and don’t.

I get the full tour of his underground lair, all levels of it, when all I’m thinking is, show me the goddamn laundry and then leave me be to stake my claim to the lemon meringue pie that you’ve told me is free to the next person who wants it.

Before that can happen, I need to have an adult conversation with a pregnant Brooklyn about the legal state of my ride, or otherwise – and get shot of it.

And I suspect Broolyn is seeing me for what I am … a fugitive on the run from averageness and normalcy.

I leave this lawless scene around 4pm in a Hyundai, something which has never happened to me before, or ever even occurred to me. The best thing being: I couldn’t be more anonymous.

As rain descends, I dump the motor at a parking meter (I’ve no need to pay) and stick on a fake beard just so I that can hang out with the locals in the nondescript brewery tap. But there’s no-one here.

In the absence of anyone to be a witness, with Justine’s help I become a Bearded Prospector, with a Lion’s Mane, descending the Miner’s Shaft, before finally becoming a Master of Beta.

Recommendations then come think and fast for places to visit once I get rid of this comedy beard.

A man called Brian signs his autograph for me, for no good reason – maybe he was famous in a former life. He seems to be surrounded by tongue-tied disciples, which in itself is odd – and I say so, aloud to myself.

In resolute spirit, I head back to my hotel suites, to launder items I’m unwilling to share. It’s a criminal endeavour, is all I’ll say.

Suitably cleansed, I head out to the local dive bar, the Moneta. I’m given a warning about visiting here before I set off; I’m not sure why.

Regardless, it lives up partly to it’s billing – everyone piles out as soon as I dive in.

A singer called Melanie and her accompanying cellist have just finished the first half of a set, whereupon the crowd sees fit to abandon this bawdy ship.

I perch at the darkened bar alongside the semi-grizzled locals, our industry and diligence illuminated only by dim neon signs, ordering a plate of food and a hard beer with an uncertain swaggering confidence.

“How are your perogies?” is a question I know for certain I’ve never been asked before, these words floating through the shadowy air from someone who has landed next to me at the bar.

With a raised eyebrow, of course my response is “Very good, thanks!”, which is partly a fib – it’s a bit shit, and not exactly the full meal I was intending or hoping for.

I wolf the remainder down, then my newfound friend and I go to sit at a real table close to where the real action is. We laugh semi-hysterically about the shitness of Chapleau.

This is Millie, who only earlier this evening was in a Full Beard mood herself, in her lumberjack shirt and white Converse.

Millie seems to Know People, as in quick time we’re yelled on down to the front row where all my friends have set up camp.

As is becoming customary, everyone wants to hear about my trip – my temporary fall from mediocrity – and always excited for it (way more than I am, which seems amiss; I will berate myself later for being too aloof).

It’s almost as if they’ve never seen a traveller before.

Maybe no-one visits the only dive bar here. Or perhaps no-one comes through Timmins.

There is another voyageur here though: a French-Canadian, who in my sudden dipsomania I foolishly think is from Europe. Ha!

The headline act is Melanie, a player from South by Southwest, and an entertainer, who goes way off-piste when her main set is finished to keep us semi-drunken peasants in a state of singalong cheeriness.

And the nightbound zombies of Timmins sing / shout, as one: ‘We are your friends; you’ll never be alone again’.