Memories of Quebec

The last time I was in Quebec was about 7 years ago when I was backpacking around Canada with my friend Dee just to see what it was like. We stayed in a small and cluttered hostel one night and didn’t sleep much because some guy in the dorm was snoring loudly. These days I’d throw things at him but I was a bit more timid back then. We couldn’t find an alternative place to sleep the next night so we ended up staying out as late as the bars would let us, and then trekking up the promenade to the park at the citadel and sleeping on a bench up there.

I hadn’t really thought about any of this until I checked into my hotel room in the middle of the old town in Quebec last Thursday. I had a gig with Fish on the Friday. Some places you return to after a few years often seem a bit different – the dimensions are wrong and things seem closer together than they were the first time you saw them. Quebec, however, was precisely as I’d remembered it. I knew my way around and could find everything really easily, so I thought it would be a laugh to go and see the place where I’d kipped in the park all those years ago. 

It was strange making my way along the wooden promenade and up the steps to the citadel. Thoughts that had only briefly crossed my mind once years ago came back as if prompted by little scenes and views. This was where we took that photo; that was where I thought that bloke was gonna mug us (what was he doing out so late?); this is where those kids were huddled on the bench getting high; and so on. 

I reached the top of the stairway where the circular viewing platform was that I’d slept on before. Its like a bandstand with a bench curving around the outside so you sit looking into the middle. I remembered that we had reasoned it safe because it was elevated so you could see the deserted parkland all around, and it backed onto the cliff top so no-one could surprise you by creeping up behind. We were still a bit scared though, and it took a little while to fall asleep cuddling our rucksacks on our knees.

But I remember waking up a few hours later when it was still dark and there was a person sat on the bench opposite us. It was too dark to see if the figure was a man or a woman. I didn’t move or make any noise or anything, but I must have fallen back to sleep after a while. The next time I awoke the person was gone.

I had totally forgotten about this encounter until now. I even forgot to ask Dee the next morning if she had noticed the figure, but coming back here I remember. What unnerves me a bit is that I now remember other occasions in my life when something similar has happened, that I haven’t consciously acknowledged until now.

Sat on that bench in Quebec reminiscing and suddenly I’m 16 again pissing it up in Acomb having just finished the final exam of my GCSE’s. Me and Richard Maddison sat on a low wall by a deserted garage with a few tins in the early hours of the morning. I lean back and lie on the floor with my feet on the wall, dizzy with booze, and doze off. When I wake up Richard has gone but there’s an old woman in a white nightie facing away from me sat on the wall next to where my feet are resting. I sit up and she looks into my face and just says “Help me” a few times before I get creeped out and wander off to find Richard wrestling with the swings on the Green. As soon as I find him I forget the old woman. Until now.

There was another time years later after a gig for the York Uni summer ball when I stayed up all night and fell asleep, still in gig clothes, on the flood-bank by the river at about 6am. It was sunny and I had my shades on. I woke up at one point then and someone was sat calmly next to me, looking away from me. I didn’t say anything and it didn’t strike me as odd, but when I woke up again my boots were gone.

Who are these mysterious visitors I get when I sleep outside? What do they want? Are they real or just characterizations of elements of my personality made flesh by exhaustion and booze? How come I had completely forgotten all of them and how come it was Quebec that brought them all back? 

And what if I wake up one day and they’re all there, side by side, looking down at me from the bottom of the bed?

I want my boots back.

~ by martiandog on July 3, 2008.