A Yellowbrick River

I must admit to feeling disorientated in this city. I haven't been here long and haven't had much of an opportunity to fully get my bearings, but it's more than that. It's the lack of a river as a reference point. Ok, obviously there is a river. A big fuck-off river at that. But Montreal's an island in that river. What I mean is that there is no river dividing the city. Having previously lived in two cities (Melbourne and London) that have distinct north/south divides created by a river it was always very easy to use said rivers as a reference to orientate myself. When walking around Montreal I am completely unaware of what direction I am walking. It's very disconcerting. This could be deemed rather pathetic of me, but I never went to Scouts (I was in Cubs, but I left after Barloo made me cry), and thus never learnt any orienteering skills. This is actually an attempt at metaphor, but it's rather clumsy, and also is lacking cohesion due to my lack of (personal) direction in both Melbourne and London as well. But one needs to start somewhere, and so my current mission is to find reference points in the city to use to (hopefully) gain my bearings. Hopefully it will lead to something of interest and substance.

Always one for killing two birds with one stone (and not killing one bird with two stones, as a former work colleague of mine preferred) whilst executing this mission I will also be looking for winter clothes. The cold is fast approaching and I am ridiculously under-prepared. Aside from two pairs of jeans, I have about 7 t-shirts and a rather flimsy jumper. Not really suitable clothing with the average temperature in January being –10.4. I must admit to looking forward to the coming winter. Although I was disappointed when informed that, unless one is at school, there isn’t really such a thing as a “Snow Day”. All the same, I doubt the novelty of snow will wear off too quickly. Unless, of course, I'm caught in a blizzard or something. I don’t think that would be particularly pleasant.