… in the coach station at Montreal, having alighted from my bus.

We reached Riviere du Loup in the small hours and had just a half-hour wait until the bus from the Gaspé arrived. But waiting isn’t so bad. It’s in the back room of a big Irvings petrol station and so it’s warm, there are seats, there are toilets and there are food and coffee available for anyone who feels the need. It’s not unpleasant at all.

The bus was quite full but the seats are quite comfortable so it wasn’t too much of an issue, and I missed most of the journey because I’d dozed off before we’d even left the premises.

I was awake though for when we stopped at Ste-Foy on the outskirts of Quebec, and I woke up again for when we stopped at Longueuil. And wide-awake for when we pulled into the coach station. 20 minutes late, it has to be said, but that’s more to do with the amount of traffic on the road at that time of morning.

The 747 bus for the airport leaves from right down at the far end of the coach station and opposite the booking desks there’s an STM (Société des Transports de Montreal or whatever) where you buy your bus tickets. As the airport is outside the limits of the Montreal urban area, you need to buy a $10:00 day ticket (or an $18:00 3-day ticket) to travel on the bus to the airport.

No point in going to the airport yet though, because I’m hours too early. But round the corner from the bus stand is a café that does a very democratic breakfast and coffee, with free wi-fi and power connections available, and so I dug myself in there for a while.

The bus ride was totally painless. 30 minutes is the advertised time but I had no idea of how long it took because I had a comfortable seat and I was reading a book. It seemed like just a couple of minutes and I was taken by surprise when we arrived.

Upstairs to the baggage check-in and I deposited my baggage. And wimp that I am, my luggage weighed just 20.3 kg, hand luggage included. That’s astonishing because I’m always usually pushing it to the max when I come back.

Downstairs again now. First call was to the Immigration Service to enquire about the procedure for obtaining this mythical form IMM 1442 next time that I come back. Apparently, when I present myself to the immigration desk, I mustn’t let him stamp my passport. I have to be sent to the offices behind the check-in desk and ask there for the form. I’ll probably be interviewed and I have to explain things to them and I should be given the form that I need. The girl that I spoke to didn’t see it as being anything more complicated than that.

Second port of call was to the Subway. There’s one of them in the airport and it’s the cheapest, quickest place to buy lunch. And I’ve learnt now that, in order to avoid any confusion, I order a végétarien sans fromage and that is simply that. No confusion at all.

It’s a very good job I came back early from my lunch because you can see more of the pantomime that is now taking place at the airport.

You’ll recall the 2.5-hour wait that we had to enter the country, and now we have a 40-minute wait to pass the “security” gates. On interviewing one of the people who was “controlling” the queue, we asked what would happen if the delay here meant that you were late for your flight. She just shrugged her shoulders.

Strangely enough, there was only an American woman and me who thought that this was objectionable. The other 800 or so people in the queue simply accepted it. I can’t believe just how docile and cowed the Westerners have become over these last 10 or 12 years since the Government started grinding their faces in the dirt. 800 people in uproar over this would change things in minutes but Western people these days have lost their sense of fighting spirit.

I spent most of my time in the queue chatting to a pleasant girl from Manitoba, and then we hit the “security” gates.

Pig-ignorant security guards barking out commands without a single “please” and that annoyed me intensely. I had another stand-off with another one of these very sad people and in the end I got her to say “please” when she asked me to take off my boots. I can’t believe that in modern-day Montreal it’s necessary to go to war to obtain a bit of basic and elementary human decency and politeness.

The plane was late, as you might expect, but it was well-worth waiting for. An almost-new, magnificent Airbus A340-300. Packed out to the gunwhales it was too, with just two free seats – one of which was next to me and so I was able to spread myself out.

The food, as you might expect with Lufthansa, was excellent indeed and the cabin staff was very helpful. Not much on the entertainment system, though, but I was able to see a couple of old Bundeslegia matches – Borussia Dortmund v Schalke 04 and then Bayern Munich v Borussia Dortmund, and then I dozed off while watching the new Asterix the Gaul film.