The most weird start to a day: a hot breakfast in the disco, dancing around each other for bacon and eggs and bagels and cheese.
When the music stops, we all choose a breakfast item to steal.
Funny how no-one leaves with anyone, but then we do all need to check out and be somewhere.
After my four nights in the wilderness of Parc d’Aiguebelle, I’m bewildered by the presence of televisions, showing news and events and weather and things.
Consequently, breakfast in a nightclub is doubly surreal.
Moving further away from myself on the long drive south, a halt at the double / triple / quadruple waterfalls …
… but no other rest stops as I have no fishing permit or hunting licence, no boat and no gun … more fool me.
And there seem to be no hiking trails for the more innocent visitors.
Cruising down the highway with my cheap shades on, with Sirius XM quietly blaring … and once again it’s Tom Goddamn Nightwatchman Morello as DJ, who only ever seems to spin tracks that he’s wielded an axe on. So … no chance of any Belle & Sebastian, then.
After a solid few hours, I catch up with myself at the other side of the giant nature reserve park, in Lac-Saguay.
Beyond the main highway, over the secret bridge, is the blue motel by the hidden lake.
I think I startle the owner somewhat by lifting the telephone handset and sounding the buzzer which says ‘Press me – someone will answer’.
The innkeeper is busy chopping up timber around the back, but makes time for me as he cheerily breezes in like the lumberjack who got all the logs.
For I am the first visitor of the season, by all accounts. Tonight, the grounds are mine!
A late-afternoon beer followed by an early-evening walk, down the winding island road, lined with large detached houses – some with semi-irate dogs – blocking out any further access to the lake.
At the end is a turning circle with no view of what I thought there might be – ie, water.
I’m probably being followed by CCTV cameras and other nosey parkers (animals).
In a meek retreat, I beat my way down a forest path which seems to trail in and out of existence itself, the track blurring many times into the murky undergrowth, frequently submerged by the fallen bracken.
Somehow I make it back to the road, yet only 200 yards further along than where I left it.
Over the rickety bridge connecting my private island to the Canadian main, pounding on foot along the shoulder of the big rig interstate to the Resto-Bar.
Where inside, the scene is as expected – Francophone regulars with important facial hair propping up the bar, long-distance truckers popping in to devour towering burgers, 1980s perm-rock on the stereo.
I go underwater for a sandwich I didn’t order, but no-one else is going to eat it so I sink the lot, including the plate.
This is all very funny, until I leave – regretting the fact that the Resto-Bar has no disco.
An Outside World 