1 June

College radio broadcasting from right outside my bedroom door at 7am, providing me with a free breakfast for the rude awakening. College radio = Porridge radio.

Give / Take.

Once my morning furies are resolved to as best as my intentions will allow, I long to take a short walk over water, to the imitation island I can see right in front of me.

Somewhat peculiarly, I get thrown odd looks by anyone I ask about my proposed endeavour, to the point where I suddenly appreciate just why everyone drives around in boxes on this continent.

Sullen, I take a subway ride to this nearby island, to find a man who doesn’t understand the world, so has little chance of understanding me.

His colleague swiftly sends me on my way – over another bridge.

Ile Notre-Dame is busy, and yet I find precisely no-one is here for the reason I am: a (mis-)guided tour.

A wiry man with a weathered outlook is smoking a Gaulouises, gives me a Gallic shrug … he doesn’t care.

The woman with the empty push-chair is slightly more accommodating, but will she wheel me to where I need to be – no.

After a good amount of time wandering aimlessly, suddenly I find the tour starting point – exactly where I was half an hour ago.

I meet with the Accountant from Just For Laughs. Which really is about as funny as it sounds.

As we make smalltalk, all the time I’m wondering … can numbers be funny?

Yes! The imaginary ones are a real tease … they definitely had me laughing when they made me realise how crap I am at maths.

And very negative, too!

All those years ago, I suddenly understood: not only is everything very complex – it’s also a total load of baloney.

When my mind drifts back to the present, I’m surprised to be suddenly surrounded by an eclectic assortment of strange humans, almost all of whom have arrived here on an imaginary island in the middle of the St Lawrence Seaway to listen to a man in neatly-pressed European slacks and pastel-coloured pumps talk to us in French.

If I didn’t know any better, I’d say this was a dirty weekend.

When we all get loaded onto the back of a truck, I can see things will take a turn. Will we all end up waking in Europe, after the event? Probably not me – never sure if I want to be in or out.

The more our host Francois talks French, the more excited everyone becomes. At one point, an otherwise sophisticated looking chap from Monaco breaks out into spontaneous applause, presumably just to let Francois know that he’s like totally great.

In a moment of bafflement, no-one else joins him in this ovation, which can only mean we all need a little more persuasion.

This is found down in the pits, from where the only way is up.

Francois and his two mistresses then take to the podium, where we all snap away like hungry paparazzi. And it’s the middle of the day – broad daylight!

Around us, worker bees.

We all like a Big Prize, yet we will have to wait another eight days to find out who has won it.

In the meantime, I follow the Montrealers into a darkened subway station, and onto the debateble metro to the Old Town.

Past the mime artists and the caricature painters and the gibberish preachers and the unknowing tourists to a roadwork alley with no contraflow in operation.

No wonder the City Council has a less-than-perfect reputation.

My friends and I spend an hour searching out bargains in the thrift store, before going over the cobbled street to the reassuringly expensive poutine parlour, which is mostly outside, in a hidden courtyard – where the national dish has historically been served, ever since the 1980s.

The difference being, we’re all speaking English now.

I feign excitement about my chips and gravy. Possibly I could blow Canadian civilisation apart if I explained I was eating this stuff in the Grim North of England way before courtyard cafes were invented, nevermind the invented notion of national dishes.

I don’t do this. Instead, I make the internationally appropriate noises to convey my unhindered enjoyment of said meal, which I take with a soft drink – an event as rare and unlikely as the chances of me actually being here, with two strangers I met only a few hours ago on an artificial island.

Around the Hotel de Ville and the Formula E barriers to the underground multi-coloured walkway to the concrete underground station full of animals and painted people.

For now, it’s au revoir to my cheery comrades for the day.

Dying for a wee, and all I can think about is that overflowing mannekin-pis statue that was outside the Belgian bar last night.

I make it back to Longueuil without incident or embarrasment, swiftly locating a Duchamp, before immediately taking the road out west, joining the hoi-polloi on their road trips to nowhere.

Aftre a few hours, I descend from the highway into a religious experience.

This involves a rowdy crowd at the convent, and a man at a bus stop wearing nothing but Y-fronts.

As always, it’s unclear who’s worshipping what.

Parables and miracles can be had for free here, if you write them yourself.

Stations of the cross all over the park, behind the police lines.

Over in the church of the Madonna, we all get into the groove, to justify our love – a never-ending ecclesiastical number, played out on the mellifluous organ.

But this sanctuary ain’t no spaceship … it’s a prototype Paddy’s Wigwam, is what it is – a shadow of the Metropolitan Cathedral in Liverpool, if you ask me (though no-one does).

And every time I go to that cathedral – always in February, for some reason – I end up down in the crypt, drinking real ale and eating rare cheese and savoury pork pies; it’s all very civilised.

That doesn’t happen here.

Instead, scores of worshippers and pilgrims camped alongside the riverbank, in their colossal RVs and mammoth trailers.

It’s only a short while later I realise that all of these devoted folk are here to worship at the shrine of something entirely different: the All-American barbeque. Yep, it’s Ribfest up the road in Trois-Rivieres.

Instead of going downtown to partake in this, I send myself to my convent room (opposite the chapel), for a nothing meal and the inevitable struggle with available technology.

After this strangest of days, I collapse into the couch, take a long-drag sip of my beer – my evensong ablution – stare up to the ceiling, and calmly conceive … Nothing’s real.