Washing away the birthday blues down in the basement of my hostel – where else? At 8am, I find a few shots of liquid detergent does the trick.
Once that wears off, I sneak around the corner when no-one’s looking, to check into a hotel with a bellhop and a concierge, just so that I can sip fizzy wine stuff out of a tumbler … and I’ve not even made it to lunchtime yet.
It’s a high-rise life, and when I tumble back to earth it’s to hit the Vieux Port, there to introduce myself to a lobster roll, down by the waterfront.
We exchange pleasantries by abstract sculptures, opposite the Corbusier building blocks; and then I eat it, whole.
Wandering around the docks and the narrow cobbled streets semi-aimlessly, like A Tourist, it suddenly occurs to me I could be sat in an air-conditioned microbrewery with a fresh beer, watching Canada score seconds before half time.
Baby it’s hot outside …
By mid-afternoon, I’ve made an executive decision to go somewhere I’ve never been before, so head straight into a second-hand record shop, browse the racks, before heading through to the back room where dozens of retro games machines are all lined up, waiting for their turn in a movie.
Out of a secret rear door is the mountain and more tourists and hungry raccoons and we all head up the wrong path towards the telegraph pole. Folk will take photos of anything.
At the summit, there’s the starstruck crucifix I saw yesterday, the thing we’re all searching for. Holding itself together in neon lights. Whoever was on it is no longer on it.
Around the bend to the lookout, the cityscape, and as always here’s Leonard bloody Cohen keeping us all in check. He sends me on my way – down.
Past all of the joggers, tackling the sheer drop in the unfiltered heat of early summer, which arrived belatedly last week, all apologies.
Through university streets in a strange kind of rush hour, past the art deco buildings and semi-gothic structures to my upscale concrete hotel.
In the darkest of bars, a luminous beer. I figure the sit-down restaurant here is for the real grown-ups, so I take my evening meal in situ.
It’s a solid plate of food – cod cheeks with asparagus, leeks and such – followed by a sunken chocolate dessert and a pot of Earl Grey tea … just because I can, and just because, well, life’s begun.
When that’s done, I have no inclination to go to a city bar, so I wash it all down with a cannette in my room, a double.
Watched over by pictures of beauty queens, I don’t just stand there, I get to it … I strike a pose, there’s nothing to it.
An Outside World 