NON-WORKINGMONKEY IN CANADA, DAY 8: I Go To The Country With A Pathologist

"We are going to an inn on a lake", mutters the pathologist, hurling a haversack in the back of his 4x4 iceproof Subaru estate. "And from there, we will go in a canoe".

"Me? In a canoe?", I bellow. The pathologist laughs and tosses his self-cut hair back over his manly scientific shoulders. "Your hair's grown", I observe.

Some time later, we arrive at our inn. There, we insert ourselves in our full body-covering wetsuits in order to practice swimming in the hotel swimming pool, just in case we fall into the 3ft deep water of the swamp where, the next morning, we will be going out in the canoe.

The swimming pool, however, is slightly less than 3ft wide.



We flip-flap disconsolately back to our hotel room, whereupon the pathologist spends up to and including three hours tugging me out of my wetsuit. I am disappointed about the pool, but not for long: for the pathologist has other entertainments tucked inside his latex gloves! "Let us go and see the local shops and people", he suggests. And off we go!

But what is this? Before the pathologist and I had even clapped eyes on each other, we discovered that we had been at the same chateaux in the Loire within two weeks of one another, admiring poorly adhered facial hair on the face of dioramas. Indeed, this kind of poor-quality 'entertainment' has been a feature of our "special friendship" since we first met. It therefore came as no surprise to find the following gentleman guarding the doors of a shop:























Used as we are to this appalling kind of 'entertainment', we ignore the partly-handed fisherman and his stupid beard and enter the shop, whereupon we astounded to witness an open act of porcine husbandry:























But still we remain unperturbed. It is only the local "British" shop that causes me any alarm; it contains products I have never heard of:



... and products that no British person in their right mind would voluntarily eat:
























And yet we purchase some heather flavoured bath oil and a 'throw' made of genuine Scottish cashmere (made in Turkey); the pathologist forces me to eat some genuine Welsh chocolate containing maple syrup mousse (made in Montreal).

Time passes, and with it a seven course dinner containing mainly aniseed-based flavourings. But none of this detracts from the fact that I am going in a canoe the following morning. That night, so excited I can hardly breathe and with thoughts of Arthur Ransome running through my child-like mind, I sleep in my wetsuit. The pathologist sleeps on the floor.

The next day we go in the canoe. We see muskrats and turtles. We also see something so exciting that I can still barely think of it without weeping. Can you tell - from looking at this series of photographs that prove I was in an actual canoe - what it was that excited me so? I bet you can, particularly if you know how I feel about beavers!













































And now we leave on another trip, this time to an inn with a spa! Whatever next?!