An Irishman abroad

Canadian Road Trip - Part 3

CANADIAN ROAD TRIP, NOVEMBER 2002
PART THREE

Upon arrival at the library, a more than happy aunt Daphne greeted me and we went back to her apartment 2 minutes walk from the library. The irony of our two situations is not lost on me. I live in the tiny country of Belgium and have a commute of about 1 and a half hours and she lives in the huuuuuuuge country of Canada and has a two-minute commute, by foot.

During dinner, I casually mention that whilst Daphne is working on the Friday, I was thinking of driving up and taking a look at the Niagara Falls. Before making these sort of comments – I should really consult a map. Niagara Falls is a 6 hours drive away in good conditions. As it turned out the following day was nowhere near good conditions. A heavy snowfall (well heavy by my standards) hit the town.

After dinner, Daphne was going to a meeting over her local writer’s club, so I decided to go along to see what writer’s do in their spare time (just in case I ever become one). After taking care of general business – one of the ladies present informed us of a little exercise that we could all take part in. Apparently she had visited a web site that randomly generated objects and scenarios. The idea was then to write a story, based on what had been randomly generated.

She had a big box from which we had to draw out our story lines. We have until mid-January to create the story. Mine read:
“My main character / protagonist is a male. My main character is an undertaker. An archetype present in my story is Damsel. A key object or symbol is a teapot. My story will be set in the Arctic. My Story is about sibling rivalry”
Any suggestions folks?!

After the meeting, a few of us went to a bar on the same street as Daphne’s apartment in downtown Cornwall. I sampled a couple of the good local beers – bottles of Becks! After our drink, my aunt went back to her apartment and I headed on to Rosie Magoo’s for the aforementioned karaoke night.

When I walked in at 10:30 there were a few more customers inside than compared with earlier. But not by a helluva lot more. In fact, two of the customers sat at the bar, were Mr. Canada (still with his coat on as if he was about to leave) and Toothless Danny, who was grinning even more maniacally than before.

Mr. Karaoke man was in the process of setting up his equipment.

There was a stool free on the other side of the bar, so I went over and sat down. To my left were two scary women and to my right were two drunk, but less scary men. I started talking to them. They were in their early forties. One was incredibly drunk, the other was moderately drunk (this was to be explained later when I found out that he was the driver in the double act).

They introduced themselves as Marcel (‘but you can call me Marce’) and Bob. They invited me to go out on a pub-crawl with them as they were going to “go out and party!”.
Those of you that know me will know that whilst not being against the suggestion of a party, I have never been a big fan of the pub-crawl. Find a nice bar and stay in it, is normally my motto, as the owners of the Dubliner have found out to their great personal wealth. Imagine, therefore, how I am when I am faced with a choice between staying in one bar or walking a few blocks to another pub in sub-zero temperatures.
I politely declined their invitation and they decided to stay as well.
So we started having a few beers. Bob’s volume control had stopped working as well as his ability to keep all his saliva in his mouth. Which was unfortunate because he was sat immediately beside me. He then started animatedly talking about the two strip bars in town – “The Gentleman’s Club” and the imaginatively named “Body Shop”, he started to salivate even more.
I declined their invitations to these establishments as well and settled down to the karaoke night. Marce and Bob decided to do likewise.

For the first twenty minutes the karaoke compeer, blasted out a few songs on his own. Just as I was thinking business seemed to be going quite slow for him, a couple of customers walked into the bar. I couldn’t tell and still don’t know if they were a couple or not, but they made a strange one if they were. He was a potbellied, hair-dyed guy in his mid to late forties, sporting the latest in cowboy shirts opened a few buttons, which offered a good view of his ample chest hair. He could have shaved ‘Welcome’ on it. She was in her early to mid twenties and the best looking girl in the bar. (This is by no means a compliment). She had long dyed blonde hair with the roots showing and had a rather large hooknose, which was convenient because she had a very scary smile, which seemed to be permanently tattooed on her face.. Immediately she grabbed one of the books and began frantically filling out forms with songs that she wanted to sing. Meanwhile her friend smiled understandingly and ordered them a couple of drinks. She dashed up to Mr. Karaoke and handed over the pile of forms.

10 minutes later and her time had come. She was called up to the stage. Her name was Estelle and she was a bloody French Canadian. In fact, the song she proceeded to ‘sing’ was a bloody French song. Dear Reader, I don’t want you to start thinking that I have something against the French, I mean what would ever give you that idea?, but I mention this because the whole notion of singing a French song in this pub did not seem like the best of ideas. Granted, I had only just arrived in town, so it was wrong of me to jump to any conclusions, but this was a real border town. The town’s biggest employer is a paper mill. This pub was a real Country and Western bar. Most of the people in the pub did not look very happy. Even more of them looked really drunk. To have this environment shattered by a French Canadian banshee-woman was not really what was needed.
I stared in utter disbelief as she started to dance along with her ‘singing’. She even went as far as to place one hand over her ear in a “We are the World Stevie Wonder-esque” kind of way.
Tres Bizarre indeed.

Still, it seemed to waken the rest of the customers from their slumber and Marce decided he would sing a song. It was a country and western number but I really don’t remember which. This encouraged much whopping and a-hollering from Bob, who was still stood immediately beside me taking it in turns to bounce off the wall, his stool and me. The woman sat on the stool beside me looked despairingly at Bob, but he must have seen at as a sign of encouragement causing him to announce to me – “Isn’t she a beauty?!” Beauty is of course in the eye of the beholder, but suffice to say that old Bob’s beer goggles were well and truly fitted and in perfect working order.

Next up was my could mate and Bob who had convinced himself that he was Neil Diamond for the evening, giving us his interpretation of Forever in Blue Jeans. It was monumentally terrible, second only to Marce’s screeching of the song beside me.

After a while, the lady to my left (Dee-Anna, if you please) asked me if I was going to sing. I jokingly said I didn’t think the songs I know would be appreciated round these parts. Bob and Marce howled their derision at this comment and said “all you Irish boys can sing! – get up there young feller”. “Yes”, Dee-Anna said, get up there and sing”
Now, Dear Reader, you probably already know that I am a bit of a monster when it comes to the old karaoke – so suitably fuelled by alcohol and buoyed by my ever increasing ‘fan club’ and also by the fact that Bob was absolutely terrible – I put myself down to sing the best song ever sung about a serial killer, the Bobby Darin classic “Mack the Knife”.

When I got called up I made a remark to Mr. Karaoke. He then announced to the rest of the bar that we had somebody from “Outta Town”.
“Where you from?” says he to me.
“I’m not from round these parts, partner” I wittily retorted in an accent that I had heard in so many B westerns.
The silence from the crowd was deafening.
I cleared my throat. “I’m from Ireland” I added, in my normal accent.
This was greeted with more deafening silence (that is if you ignored Bob and Marce whooping and a-hollering in the corner).
I waited for what seemed an age for the song to start. Not being the best at ab libbing I filled up the silence with “Did you hear the one about the Irish man that walked into a bar in Canada?”
The crowd were looking at me, not quite sure what the hell they were witnessing.
Dear Reader, here follows another priceless tip.
Do not start a joke without having a punch line, no matter how awful it may be.
Having started the joke, I felt compelled to make up a punch line although, in the words of Dave Mustaine, the lead singer of popular thrash metal combo, Megadeth says – hindsight is always 20:20, and my hindsight tells me that I should just have left the joke hanging in the air. Leaving the crowd begging for more so to speak. But what I actually did say was:
“He asked for a bottle of Labbatts Blue”.
This was greeted by more silence (including the two whooping eejits stood at the bar). Obviously ironic humour had not reached this place. Granted – the joke was terrible but by any stretch of the imagination - this was not going well.

Thankfully the music started and I was able to take everyone’s mind off the worst joke ever by murdering the song. When I finished, I received a lot of whooping from my two newfound mates and polite applause from the two women, Dee-Anna and her mate (a boy named) Sue sat at the bar. Apart from that no one else did anything.

When I returned to my seat the barmaid (Trace) said “That was really good!! But I’ve never heard that song before”
I made a mental note to not sing again.
But these things are sent to test us, and with the goldfish memory inducing affects of alcohol, I took to the stage again another two times doing “House of the Rising Sun” and “Your Song”. Much the same response followed these two performances so I decided it would be better to sing something more appropriate, so I plumped for “Ruby, don’t take your love to town” by Kenny Rogers but at the last moment, I chickened out. I couldn’t risk insulting the whole bar by murdering a country and western classic!

So, for the rest of the night I had drunken conversations with Bob and Marce, the two ladies and two guys that arrived to chat up Dee-Anna and Sue, Ron and Steve.

As the bar closed at around 02:00, I made my excuses and headed into the cold night air. As I bid them all farewell I said that I would see them the following night if they were in Rosie’s, thinking that I wouldn’t go back for love nor money. But Dear Reader, when you are faced with a walk home in the snow in sub zero temperatures, you really do choose your bar for location rather than inspiration. The following night would be no different…..

to be continued....