… to haul myself out of the stinking pit. But then, what do you expect at 04:00 in the morning? at least I beat the morning chorus of the air-conditioning and the fridge compressor.

But having made my butties and packed my bags last night, a quick wash and a few other things and I was ready for the road.

I hadn’t gone more than 100 yards when I was totally drenched in one of these sudden storms for which Montreal is famous. But it went just as quickly as it came so it wasn’t too much of a problem.

And it’s a good job that I was early at the bus stop. The advertised time of departure is 04:54 but at 04:54 we were already half-way down the Boulevard Rene-Levèsque, doubtless to the annoyance of a few people, I should imagine.

The airport was the usual Dorval chaos. As Alvin Tofler predicted 40 years ago in his classic book “The Third Wave”, it’s all self-check-in stuff now. The passengers don’t have a clue half the time as to what they might be doing, and it’s all very well for the staff to tirer la tronchewhen the labels are stuck on the suitcases incorrectly or something like that, but what do they expect?

While “security” might ordinarily have been somewhat painless, I was still marked out for more personal attention – probably because they found the tube of Aloe Vera, for which I had paid a small fortune yesterday, in my backpack. They even closely examined the peak of my cap.

As I have said before … “and you’ll say again” – ed … I’d much rather take my chances with the freedom fighters than the airport “security” personnel.

They had a call for hand luggage to go into the hold, and just for a change I sent mine down, having removed the laptop and the book. I remember that I was rather overwhelmed with stuff on the journey over, and it’s only a couple of hours on the plane (said he, having forgotten about the two-hour time difference).

Today’s aeroplane is an Airbus A320-200, and it’s been a while since I’ve had a flight in one of those.

Unfortunately I wasn’t able to see its serial number so I can’t tell you anything about it.

But what I can tell you is that, much to my surprise, there wasn’t a meal offered on the flight – and it was over 4.5 hours too. That was bizarre.

Plenty of coffee though, so I fuelled up on a couple of occasions. And being stuck in the middle of a row (no aisle seats available yet again) I had to disturb this rather nice Oriental girl sitting next to me.

But as for the hotel itself, I’ve never ever seen anything like it. It even puts the one in Tunisia to shame.

The staff are overwhelmingly polite to the point of being obsequious and I found that very disagreeable.

But there’s absolutely everything that you could want here, even down to an electric iron and a shoe polishing kit.

I’m right at the top, on the 8th floor to be precise.

And on the side that has a beautiful view right over the terminal building and the runway too. I could sit and watch the planes come in to land all day, but I have plenty of thigs to do;

Like reorganise my luggage.

But first things first.

With there being no food on the aeroplane I need to organise some lunch, and one of the advantages of having a good internet connection is that these days one can call up a map of the area to see what’s about.

And just about one kilometre away across the car park is a Subway sandwich bar.

These days they offer falafel so I braved the biting wind and went over there for a falafel and salad butty. And it was hard work trying to persuade the rather elderly “sandwich artiste” to make me what I wanted instead of what she wanted to sell me.

But when I finally received it, it was very nice. And with it being this week’s special offer too, it was very realistically-priced.

The walk back through the car park was very interesting indeed, and for a whole variety of reasons too.

Do you remember all those years ago when we first started to come regularly to Canada and we saw these electric plugs dangling out of the engine compartments?

We decided that they were engine block heaters and, sure enough, here on the car park at Edmonton Airport are the sockets in which to plug them in winter.

No what about this car?

This is one that I’ve never seen before, and yet it looks kind of familiar, doesn’t it?

It’s actually a third-generation Nissan Quest, made between 2004 and 2009 and in my opinion it bears more than just a passing resemblance to the Dodge Grand Caravans that we used to have in the good old days before Strider, doesn’t it?

And here’s something else that we Europeans won’t ever have seen.

It’s a Genesis, and in case you are wondering what that might be, it’s really a Hyundai but quite a luxury one.

With the Hyundai name being usually associated with more plebeian vehicles, it was felt that offering a luxury car under that name was not such a good idea – hence the branding exercise.

I went for a walk around the terminal building.

I was intrigued by the fact that, for the domestic flights at any rate, the baggage carousels decanted themselves right into the middle of the Arrivals terminal.

That’s not such a good security idea in my opinion – anyone could grab your suitcase and walk off with it without any check whatsoever.

Another good advantage of having a decent internet connection is that you can watch the football. In the Welsh Premier League today, the televised match was Cefn Druid v Llandudno and I managed to catch the second half.

Llandudno had most of the play but weren’t as well-organised as the Druids, and the 2-1 scoreline in favour of the latter was about right.

But judging by the style and quality of the play, it’s clear to see why these two clubs are at the wrong end of the table.

I had a shower and a wash of the clothes that I had been wearing, and then I had to go to a meeting to discuss our future.

There were 170 of us in this little room all told, including The Vanilla Queen – a nice young girl whom I had noticed on the aeroplane coming up here. The presenter of this meeting gave us all some very bad news.

Not the news that I was hoping to hear, I have to say, but it can’t be helped. No-one can legislate for the weather at all and you get what you are given and like it.

As a result, all of our plans have now changed and I am really disappointed. And what didn’t help was missing my aim and biting a huge chunk out of my lower lip. It’s swollen up like nobody’s business right now.

But there’s always a bright side to everything. I had a long chat with she named The Vanilla Queen. She’s a hairdresser, so it seems, and lives on Baffin Island. And she’ll be on my aeroplane with me (and about 50 other people) at … gulp … 06:00 tomorrow morning.

And so yet another early start. I’m going to bed.:!!