So, I’m back, and glad to be out of Belleville. This is not to
say I’m glad to be back per se; I started missing Arlene
on the bus. I don’t know what poet said “parting is such
sweet sorrow”, but whoever he was he was an idiot. It’s not a
“sweet sorrow”, you effeminate English fop. Nobody ever spent
three hours on a goddamned Greyhound coach, or whatever the
spatial/temporal equivalent was, thinking about how sweet
and yet simultaneously sorrowful those parting moments
were, unless they happen to be a self-absorbed ponce who’s just
parted company with the sound of their own voice. It’s not sweet;
it’s lonely and miserable. It’s the moment at which you go from
being in the company of the woman you love to being weeks away from
seeing them again, it’s the gleeful anticipation of carrying a bag
of laundry back to an empty room and spending another month running
up your long-distance bill. If that’s in any minuscule degree sweet
then I’m the fucking Stay-Puffed Marshmallow Man.
So anyway, let me tell you about my weekend; I have, perhaps,
misspoken.
In a previous entry, I referred to Toronto as a “blighted
wasteland”. This was, of course, sarcasm; there is certainly always
something in Toronto to do, see, hear or consume, once you’ve figured
out where to look for it. I have however, as you might have guessed
from above, just made a trip to Belleville to visit Arlene, whose
residence rotation has brought her there. My mistake, as I see it,
was in treating the term “blighted wasteland” so lightly.
In my defence, all I can say is that I had no idea.
For those of you not in the know, Belleville is the worst possible
consequence of giving white people franchise licenses and acres
of cheap real-estate. It is a strip-mall writ Leviathan large,
devouring the souls of unwary travellers who venture too near;
big-box stores, franchise eateries and garish illumination as far as
is worth the effort to look. If this sounds like a bit much to you,
consider this: people who live here, if you can call it that,
claim that there are no more than four passable restaurants in the
area. One of those is the Ramada Hotel. If you want to go
to Belleville, and may God have mercy on your soul should that be
the case, save the effort; you can efficiently achieve the same
effect by eating four Big Macs and blundering nauseously around a
Wal-Mart parking lot.
Fortunately, all is not lost. We took a tour to some surrounding
communities, specifically to Picton and Bloomfield, and that turned
out to be pretty good though also pretty clearly two months late
for tourist season. There are a number of good little cafes and
restaurants in Picton and we shopped around for a bit while we
were there. I’m hardly an expert judge of these things but “quaint”
seems to be Picton’s primary export. The fall colours surrounding
the place helped them out in that respect but it turns out late
fall is seriously off-season; most of the attractions in town
weren’t open. I found it bizzare, for example, that the town’s
tourist information center would be closed on weekends. Really,
when else do folks go to places like Picton?
And believe me, people must go to Picton, because every
second building there is a Bed And Breakfast. They’re everywhere. You
can’t swing a cat without hitting three of them, and you’d have to
hold an all-pro international cat-swinging tournament to find them
all. My theory is that this is because the merest acts of sleeping
and eating are best performed anywhere that isn’t Belleville, but
I suppose the truth is that tourist season is enough to keep that
segment of the economy flourishing.
We stopped for lunch at Bloomfield on the way back from the
disappointing-in-the-off-season Picton, and in a typical fit of
unplanned wandering found a place called the Bloomfield Brasserie,
which turned out to be an only-competent place for pubbish food. The
true highlight of the trip was just across the street at Carruthers,
billed as “Purveyors of Fine Chocolate”. They sell a variety of
condiments as well, but the chocolate was apparently made locally,
and it was indeed some fine, fine chocolate that we were purveyed. If
you happen to be in Belleville and need Fine Chocolate, this is the
place to go. Indeed if you happen to be in Belleville and just need
to get the hell out, this would be a good place to end up.
One thing I feel I should warn you about, particularly if you
happen to be Mehmet, you might pass a store in Bloomfield with
a big sign on the front that says “The Cookie Store”. It’s a
ruse, to lure in hapless cookie-seekers. Go in, and you’ll
find tea leaves, assorted crockery and do-it-yourself Thai
food. It’s a safe bet that if you’re in the market for a big,
country-made oatmeal-and-chocolate-chunk cookie, DIY-Thai (serves
four!) is so far off the scope that the SETI people would be lucky to filter it out of
the background noise. This is why Carruthers got some of our money,
and The Cookie Store got Arlene into a deep and cookieless funk until
I fed her one of Carruthers’ chocolate mice on the drive home.
Sunday, after a few false starts in which we carefully navigated the
fine line between “lazy” and “catatonic”, got a little bumpy when
we went looking for lunch. It turns out that precisely one of the
aforementioned “passable” restaurants is open on a Sunday. Fine,
whatever. You already know how I feel about Belleville: screw
them; if they knew any better, they’d load up their pickups and
drive their miserable cracker asses an hour down the 401 in the
direction of their choice to somewhere with decent scenery and real
food. But there is one single, precious jewel in the midst of this
desolation that, were there any justice, would be lifted intact
onto a wide-load trailer and settled gently somewhere that it would
be better appreciated; Paulo’s Trattoria, half-empty despite being
the only working kitchen for miles in any direction, turned out to
be a really good place to eat. It’s in the middle of Belleville’s
“downtown”, though it really does deserve better.
Arlene and I split some bruschetta that arrived oven-baked on a
homemade flatbread and was promptly enjoyed. Arlene had one of the
wide variety of pizzas that also come out of that wood oven, which
was pretty good but probably not the best possible selection. My
great delight in this was that the eggs Benedict turned out to be
the best eggs Benedict I’ve had in years; thin-sliced Black Forest
ham, french bread and homemade Hollandaise that was rich, thick
and thoroughly satisfying. A very, very heavy-duty way to
kickstart my digestive system, though; between the Hollandaise,
the Bruschetta and the salad, my meal had enough parmesan cheese
and garlic in it to give a lactose-intolerant vampire the worst
experience of their un-life. I’m going to be sweating the stuff
for at least another day, and it was totally worth it.
Arlene is, as you might have heard, angelic. She makes visiting
Belleville worthwhile, is how great she is. Some people, I hear,
like to “look around” even when they’re involved with somebody,
to see if they could “do better” than their current boy- or
girl-friend. To those people, I reveal to you the first two line
items on my Saturday morning schedule:
- Unconscious.
- Breakfast in bed.
Booya, suckers. You can’t do better, because I’ve already got
her. Boo-ya.
Peace out. This is midterm week, and I’m back to the
grind. All work and no play makes Mike want to demolish the
opposing team on Wednesday night. Wait for it.