Non-existent mornings will not be consumed by any amount of so-called travel schedules – even if they’re on a spreadsheet. The day starts when I tell it to.
Safe and warm in my harbourside condo, I spend this anonymous dull grey morning wrapped up in books, drinking endless cups of tea and eating biscuits and every so often looking up, just to look down on the regular coach tours sputtering into the tiny Bonne Bay harbour in a series of disjointed gear changes, the general huffs and puffs of oversize vehicles trying to manoeuvre in small places rising through the grey drizzle.
It’s a steady flow of buses dropping off their tourist cargo, for a pleasure boat trip in a stiff breeze to Shag Cliff, in the damp morning mist.
If love is in the air, it’s wearing waterproofs.
Yes, these are legitimate tour operators, is my thought. Their cargo of glacial rubbernecker sightseers all come well-protected, all in the best gear. And in rainbows of bright colours!
After the midday point, I realise this is fast becoming pure laziness on my part, so I take a shower and then a roly-poly down the hill into the Aquarium.
I’m amazed anyone is in here – from my hillside vantage point I swear I’ve only seen three, maybe four people max, enter this building all morning. And yet here inside are several dozen.
This is weird … not only that – it’s goddamn fishy, is what it is.
The price of admission includes the requirement to leave suspicion at the entrance, and I do this without question.
We the misguided tourists are gathered here in our brightly-coloured waterproofs to Learn Things from an unshaven student, who appears to be approximately half the age of the youngest person here (if you discount the thoroughly bored child, that is).
Before we can Learn Things, a minke whale appears through the square window, directly behind us in the bay, at which point we’re all suddenly behaving like excited dogs – tongues hanging out, tails wagging; no words, no barking, just staring with a kind of doubtful awe … as in, yeah right – this is the start to every tour of the Aquarium, right?
Our host struggles to follow this – he knows this, and tells us as much, upfront.
He’s peaked too soon, and we’ve barely even started.
As he starts back up on his watery soliloquy, our minke friend does the only thing possible under the circumstances, and comes leaping back through the bay in the opposite direction, making a right old thundery splash.
Thanks for the show, dude – that was worth the entrance fee … see ya! Ah what … we still have to shuffle around the boring Aquarium still?
To be fair to him, our host retrieves the beach ball from that cheeky whale and does a reasonable job of running with it for the next hour or so.
He keeps our attention – just – and I figure, he’ll go far in life. But today, only to the canteen, and then upstairs to his student digs.
The minke whale will likely go further.
We learn that algae is great, but we’re not quite sure why.
And that underwater, there are no rules when it comes to eating your prey.
Pulverise it in it’s own shell, then slurp it down like a slush puppy if you want. Extend your whole stomach outwards and wrap it around your filet ‘o’ fish, it that’s what takes your fancy.
Or, if you’re a whale, just open your cakehole wide and proud, and take literally Everything on board – your baleen will filter out all the shite and the supermarket trollies.
Yet it’s not enough to be Shown Things. Us sightseers have a desperate need to touch, so we end the tour by throwing starfish about, and catching crabs from each other.
I don’t think these people arrived here on a tour bus.
I have a sinking feeling we’ll all end up on the other side of the Tickle later, without waterproofs.
For now, we leave the freezing Aquarium to warm up in the too-cold outside breeze, whipping itself around the harbour.
I need air, so I start walking. I’m getting wet, and yet I keep walking – stubbornly refusing any kind of salvation.
Half an hour later, it’s the cake shop which turns me – unsurprisingly.
But why have I ended up walking a mile through town to buy a macaroon I didn’t want. Who buys these things deliberately?
I went in that roadside cafe looking for a comforting slice of cake, and left carrying my disappointment in a paper bag – covered in coconut shavings.
A further half hour later, my sweet calamity is soon forgotten by cracking open a cold one, back in the warmth of the gaff.
Following which, I follow the herd down to the Cat Stop, to see Angus Stewart singing songs I don’t know, but it seems everyone else does – they’re all warbling along, in various states of tune (mostly out of it).
Angus is taking requests, yet I figure this is not the kind of man who looks like he’s going to play Love Shack anytime soon, so I keep quiet.
He finishes the set off, somewhat appropriately, with Dirty Old Town – at least I know that one. I’ve been witnessing it most of the day.
With Angus departed, Mark and sister Wendy and husband Jim and I drink beer together upstairs, which is not a newsflash by any stretch of the imagination.
Wendy tells me the story of the night before exchanging contracts on her house in Toronto: a scuffle and a shooting directly outside, all of which ended up with a large police presence roaming in and around her house and garden, fully armed.
As I’m listening to this, I can see out of the window, in the shadow of Shag Cliff, a Police boat slowly entering the Tickle, and the cops whipping out their rubber dinghy for a scouting mission along that smooth body of water.
And I wonder … is this a good time to tell Wendy that we’re being surrounded by the fuzz?
And that they’ve moored directly next to the luxury RV trailer where the three of them are hiding out?
They don’t know what they’re looking for, but then I guess neither do we.
When the pub rings last orders, at 9pm, we go to that trailer for more drinks. The police now in their civvies also want some, from the pub, but that’s closed – too late my fuzzy friends!
In the pouring rain, on one of the longest days of the year, in the shadow of a large police vessel, of course it makes sense to fire up the barbeque.
Jim throws on some halibut and some pork fillets, while I get the history of barbeque cooking from Mark, which if recall correctly seems to be the history of cooking in general. Maybe less the chapter on 1970s dinner parties.
We drink more beer, before retiring inside the trailer, for another beer again.
Wendy disappears off, leaving Jim, Mark and I to wonder if we are classed as criminals now … and if so, what crimes have we committed?
Being several drinks under, this impromptu diversion seems the funniest thing ever … I’m a 1700s highwayman, Mark is a prohibition-era bootlegger, and Jim is a corrupt 1970s politician … we’re all rolling around the winnebago trailer laughing and holding our sides.
Until a copper knocks on the door – armed, and with truncheon.
Do we know where Sister Wendy went?
To the other side of the Tickle, we all shout.
An Outside World 