Pink Balls

Pink Balls

Delphine is a tall attractive French woman elegantly dressed and with an air of sophistication rather like her name – Delphine, Dolphin how fine! She is the owner of the apartment we are staying in and met us at 9.30pm last night to let us in. The taxi brought us from the airport and went around the block a few times searching for number 1880 on the one way road called Boulevard Maisonneuve as it swung around the second time we caught sight of a pedestrian road completely covered in pink ball-balls like a carnival and full of open air restaurants and bars – all very promising after a seven hour flight.

Delphine’s partner/boyfriend was skulking up on the top level of the apartment when we arrived, the apartment has two floors, on the main floor is the big open plan living room, kitchen and bedroom/bathroom, on the upper level is the ‘daybed’ and roof terrace with a sort of shed/summer room. The boyfriend seemed to be having a fag in the summer room, then made his way down the spiral stair to join us as Delphine told us about the area – ‘yes there is a supermarket opposite and the metro station and if you turn right into Rue Ste Catherine there are bars and cafes…..’ she didn’t tell us that directly opposite the apartment was a bar called Bar Taboo with semi naked men dancing on the bar, we only found that out as we walked past and someone opened the door to leave a slip of a boy could be seen snaking around on the bar.

After the tour and explanation Delphine had wafted out of the apartment with the mute boyfriend following like a shadow. We dumped our bags in the wardrobe had another look around then legged it down to Rue Ste Catherine and necked a couple of Stellas.

The apartment is in a very good downtown location, Montreal it appears is like a larger version of Brighton, full of gay men and lesbians, camping it up and preening themselves, mincing along the road with the pink balls, parading and eyeing each other up and down. Pensioners mixed up with teenagers quaffing sangria and hooting with camp laughter.

Montreal is a city of 1.6 million and they all speak French, a bit of English too, but pretty much everywhere you go you are greeted and spoken to in French. I’m not much of a French speaker, despite eight years of Sister Christine and Miss Cook at Cardinal Newman School I can just about get by, my accent is better than what I actually say. Having said that I am still better than Liam who has suffered from being in the first year of the GCSE examination system.

We woke up at 6am, Liam has a thing about going out first thing and getting coffee takeaway, I didn’t think he’d find any at that time in the morning, but low and behold the Lafayette diner opposite our apartment does a great cup of weak coffee to take out. By 8am we are sat in Lafayette eating pancakes, maple syrup and oeuf poches.

Then we walk back down Rue Ste Catherine all the way to the centre of Downtown – it looks a lot like Sydney – tall buildings from the 1950s. from there we head to Vieux Montreal which is very similar to Gamla Stan (the old bit of Stockholm) and find a terrace selling coffee. You can’t get an americano for love nor money – they only do good old fashioned weak filter coffee, but eventually we persuade the waitress with the long face (Celine Dion) to do us an espresso with hot water – she looks at me as though I’ve asked her if I can fondle her breasts (what do you mean you don’t want the dishwater coffee?).

From here we head to the Mont Real – a park on the top of a hill with amazing views over Montreal. Finally we take the metro back to the road with the pink balls and sit on the roof terrace of the biggest bar where we chat to the barmen who are all locals.

A splendid day rounded off by eating rotisserie chicken from the supermarket across the road.

Mark, 14 June 2013, Montreal, Canada