9 July

I’m waking up in the Governors Hall – back on campus, living a student life; bizarrrely, surrounded by biker gangs. Feels like I’ve wandered onto a filmset again … there’s even a damn golf buggy at the main entrance.

Outside in the car park: scores of Harley-Davidsons at one end, rental cars and tired-looking sedans and MPVs huddled together in the middle, and at the other end, right next to my motor, an immaculate Ural motorcycle with sidecar.

It demands a closer inspection, even though I’ve no real idea what I’m looking at, other than a way cool motorbike.

I take off for a quick wander around the deserted campus and, just because the gate is open, onto the running track … all the time, signs everywhere telling me to smile.

How odd would it look if I was walking around the university campus on my own, grinning wildly and endlessly.

Maybe that’s what I’ve landed in … an oddball utopian society, run by an amazingly cheery mob of Hells Angels, constantly smiling.

Makes me apprehensive.

Rushing back to load my car for a quick escape from this alien life – everyone beaming, glowing – and here is the owner of the matte sand-coloured Ural.

It’s no surprise that he doesn’t fit in here, either – he’s not smiling, for one thing … he’s bloody miserable, in fact. Lobotomised from a heavy night in Antigonish, is my thought.

Tells me all about his pride and joy, bemoaning all of those Harley charlatans and their overpriced hogs, bragging that it’s his bike which always steals the attention and plaudits.

After ten minutes, we both realise we’re holding each other up from fleeing the school grounds and the sham surroundings.

I head up the peninsula to Arisaig Provincial Park, and a beach full of fossils (some of them human, here on holiday).

The rocks here are anywhere up to 400 million years old, maybe 500, according to the information boards. And I wonder … how on earth does anyone figure that out … what’s the margin of error … 100 million years either way?

Dinosaurs only bothered to turn up here a few hundred million years later, the lazy scoundrels. They’re not smiling now! Buggered off a few hundred million years later again, leaving fossil litter all over the shop for us beachcombers to sift through, and a hole in the rock.

It’s difficult to comprehend the enormity of all this, the vast extent of life on earth itself, and the associated colossal timescales.

Especially when my rental car has to be returned by 4pm.

After getting lost around the inland network of paths through the thick forest, I swiftly get rid of a cheese sandwich and head off along the coast, the Sunrise Trail, following the train track to finally meet up again with the Trans Canada Highway.

Onwards, on fumes, to Halifax … temperatures rising. By the time I hop out in a suburb to fill the tank, it’s into the 30s.

I arrive to a city which has grown in the space of four weeks, and now has a confusing array of streets and a financial district dropped in for good measure.

Everyone in suits.

Checking in at at the Waverley, going the full Oscar Wilde – nothing to declare but my genius, which will follow on shortly.

My room is taken over by an imposing four poster wooden carving, with strange scenes, and a loud ventilator unit.

Dumping my belongings, I lift my car and ferry it the few blocks to the agreed drop-off point – on time but worse for wear – on a shady side street near the vintage boozers infused with tall tales, down the hill from the historic Citadel.

It’s easy enough to frame the star-shaped fort here in a scene of decades-old debauchery, even though I’m assured it was all very civilised. Except when the soldiers wandered off into town and spent their allowances on beer and women, arriving back plastered to be promptly placed in solitary confinement.

Touring the fortifications, cannons trained on the harbour, over the city streets below. Office blocks now obstructing the course of those theoretic shells … turns out these cannons have never had the opportunity to be put to good / bad use.

Falling through town to the harbourfront walkway, a parading ground for national and international tourists in the latest designer gear, logos everywhere.

A strange mix of boats moored up here … tall ships, catamarans, holiday yachts, police stealth cruisers, Boaty McBoatface’s cousin … grinning like a Cheshire Cat; university-educated, no doubt.

Maud Lewis, a framed artist, a skaterboarder, an island with derelict houses, the lighthouse. Water taxis, ferries, seaplanes, activity. A hectic seaside city, this, with a busy boardwalk edging it.

Of course I end up at the Garrison, the brewpub, with all the other thirsty troops.

I’m on a backstreet in a striking old warehouse, yet there’s a disappointingly modern aura to it … and disappointingly modern prices, too. Postmodern, actually. Very quaffable ale, though.

Suitably refreshed, skulking through the city streets, a constant stream of unlikely people parading up and down in the early evening, eyes aloft on stalks, carried along on weary legs.

Mine take me to a dimly-lit basement, the lower depths of Henry House, where murky deals are done over jugs of old English ale, and bowls of bangers and mash.

After all those signs I saw this morning imploring me to smile, it’s fitting I end up in a shadowy cellar, drinking bitter, alone.

When I need air, I go to sit on the terrace upstairs, for more ale and some stodgy beer cake, surrounded by a curious mix of clientele.

Everyone’s a dandy here, leering at passers-by, tapping on vintage pipes and pushing around tables, demanding more booze. It’s the kind of bawdy tavern where I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see Withnail and I.

When this becomes too much, it’s all I can do to get down and dirty at Bearly’s House of Blues & Ribs, over the road from the Waverley.

It’s open mic night, with some insanely good rhythm ‘n’ blues, followed by some mediocre but impassioned grunge, followed by the goddamn son of the Prime Minister of the Blues, who owns the stage and now I can’t escape.

Forces me to take not so much one for the road, as one for the garrison, one for Oscar Wilde, one for the tortured artists, and one simply to salute the whole of Nova Scotia.

The folk around me are doing likewise, downing weekday shots behind grizzled eyes which have seen too much and not enough.

Up on stage it’s all double dutch blues, is what it is. Garrett Mason gets some loud cheers, even in the extended prog / noodle bits.

My last night in Nova Scotia ends on a high note.

Which stays with me as I retire at midnight in a smoking jacket, ad-lib guitar licks hanging around my four poster bed like musical ghosts of notes past.

As I drift off, it’s with a sly smile.