31 May

That mountain has grown substantially since yesterday, and I don’t know how and I don’t know why.

It’s still in the same place, exactly where I left it; although it doesn’t help that I still don’t know where I am: somewhere in or around the many split personalities of Mont Tremblant.

Very easy to get disoriented around here, and I do.

So I take the only action I can: a long, arduous ascent into coldness, almost directly into the grey clouds themselves.

Under the cable cars, the chairlifts, past the random feet-deep blocks of snow which are happy where they are thanks.

Overtaking the man who’s out for an easy stroll, and his partner who is climbing a different mountain, although doing their best to stay together.

The semi-spectacular view arrives unnanounced around halfway up, which is good timing as I’m fast running out of breath and need an excuse for a rest.

Up ahead of me, the retiree effortlessly scrambling over rocks, cantering this way and that, as if this were just a relaxed morning stroll.

The final push is a show for the birds, going up to meet them, via the pre-historic ski lift which hasn’t moved for several hundred thousand years. One for the dinosaurs … they knew how to kick back.

As I clamber over the final ledge at the very top, I stumble into an excavation works, and almost end up being raised up by an archeologist.

I execute a quick roly-poly to the left, into public space, where the totem pole stands at the summit being all-knowledgeable and powerful.

The open-mouth crowds around me are lazy, they arrived here in cable cars and they go to the toilet in the visitor centre and they drink soda out of plastic cups and talk plastic stuff of how they’ve made it but where are they even the map doesn’t know.

They stare and occasionally blink out of the widescreen window, through smartphone eyes. Yet we’re all on the same level!

Of course I’m watching these scenes while scoffing a Danish pastry and slurping a chocolat chaud, with my head in the clouds.

When I leave the visitor centre, I go around the loop trail – the pink trail – to climb further upwards, this time up a wooden structure where a flag flies and two Yanks are yapping away and snapping away without reason. I guess this is as far as we’ll get.

One of them will shortly fly off in a private jet to check up on the stocks and shares; the other will walk back to Manchester (Tennessee).

On the other side of the peak, scores of human beings perched on Canadian government-issue oversized wooden chairs, overlooking time itself down in the valley.

Beyond which, the police caution tape wrapped around the metal tower, to stop us from seeing who knows what. There’s intrigue and stories at the top of this mountain, alright.

But it’s all of the people who send me down, all of the time. I spend this time alone, in a cable car, with no charge, feeling like a bygone joyrider.

Looking down on the pretty colours and the empty wanderers in the pretend town below.

After ten minutes I’m a part of it, I’m back in the thick of the action of Dismaland.

Without hesitation I take a quick and fast escape, forty minutes down the highway, by way of my chariot from South Korea.

And stone me if I haven’t gone full circle – I’m back at Calvary.

Yes there’s a crowd – mainly flies, almost exclusively flies in fact; they’re actually breeding and multiplying in front of this religious scene.

Also in the crowd: a few of the usual suspects (the bowed heads), plus someone crying at a big stone, plus a couple who once declared love to one another, now travelling around in an attempt to rediscover it.

Sightseers who have come to a reconstruction of a crucifixion, and we’re all warmly welcomed here for our troubles, in pebble dash French.

Jesus, they’ll be thanking me for coming next.

And who knew Calvary overlooks a Canadian forest – last I heard, it was on the side of a highway, next to a cheap but very reasonable motel (although crap wi-fi if you believe the reviews).

I think the flies can tune into my godlessly corrupt thoughts … that’s why they seem to swarm around me and no-one else; not even the expiring, ffs.

Respite is in the toilet block, of sorts (turns out Calvary has flushing loos).

To escape the flies with something approaching permanence, I hit the open road, following the herd south along the multi-lane freeway to Montreal.

On the outskirts of the city, a Mobius strip motorway, where we all go up and over and around and under and see each other many times over.

Hot wheels, slow hands.

After a long while, I wake up on the other side of St Lawrence, a martyr; although unsure if I’m on the right side or the wrong side of him. It’s a muddy road, so probably the latter, I figure.

At my hotel for the night, enter sandman, enter marauding bands of fitfully energetic teenagers.

To escape the suffering youth of today – the minor threat – I take a long suburban stroll to a Belgian bar, which it transpires may as well be in Belgium, given the amount of time it takes me to walk there.

Past all kinds of life – some who live in condos, some who could be missing persons, others who are happily playing in municipal parks, and all the time I’m passing my observations I’m also chasing occasional highs, sniffing it out on the breeze like a liberal do-gooder.

I’m put right in my place at the train tracks – where else? – alongside the skateboarding dog.

One mile later, just over the world’s busiest intersection, here is my destination: Belgium.

I’ll take a Tongerlo please, in the tent, with my friend Tintin. No sorry, Snowy couldn’t make it … he’s out with Brian tonight, they’ve skated on down to the whisky bar, and from there to the club.

During the evening, I sail right past my best before date, an event I toast with a strong brew.

I’m so sophisticated I end up face first in a hot ceramic bowl of poutine beef stew, while people around me are on a Night Out, or attempting to have A Date. In a tent.

Once I’ve paid for my produce, I walk back as the crow flies to the Longueil interchange, which thankfully takes slightly less time than the journey out.

A travelator takes me straight to the heart of a misunderstanding and an abandoned bowl of chips at the hotel bar, at which point the assembled cleintele either leave or turn the other cheek.

It’s like street lights going out, all around me, all of the time.

I’m in the outer reaches of a global city.