Allo, allo

Hi all (hopefully)

Being as I am, computer illiterate, this may or may not reach you all. I've attempted to create a group (or category) in an effort to save me having to 'check' everyone's names before composing a message. A major reason for this is that I've only just realised that all my contacts lay on 2 rather than 1 page(s) and therefore I think a lot of you have been missing out (a relative term, I suppose) on the continuing adventures of me on my intrepid travels. Don't hate me for my ineptitude, those of you with names beginning with R or above in the alphabet, nothing has been deliberate - or has it? No, it hasn't. Anyway, do let me know if you get this one sooner rather than later, so that I can stand hands on hips and open-legged in front of the PC booming, 'Where is your God now?!' And all that kind of thing.

Anywho... I think last time we spoke I was telling you about the wetter than a fish's wet bits singing of hippy chicks and the happy-clappy types on my tour of the east of Canada, with its progressive cities and insightful locals. Well, things have changed a little since then. After a hellish night in the Toronto hostel, involving noisy Spaniards and terrifyingly smelly Israelis, I decided to take a fellow traveller up on an offer to stay with her friend a couple of hundred miles south of the big city, in a place called Sarnia. Sarnia doesn't have talking beavers and unicorns, but does share a couple of things with CS Lewis's mythical land, Narnia. White is very much the dominant colour here and the Christians bloody love it. I've actually had someone freely admit to me that they're a neo-nazi and you get the unnerving impression that pillow cases aren't just for putting pillows in here. My favourite line of unerring ignorance so far has been, '...so she went off with a coloured fella, not that there's anything wrong with that, but I am prejudice.' I feel like I'm in the middle of a Louis Theroux documentary.

Just like a Louis Theroux docu, there are two sides to the story. Along with the intrinsic racism and fear of the different comes a geniune interest in life on the outside and enormous generosity. The family I've been staying with are called the Remingtons and they have been unrelenting in their offers of food, trips out and a general refusal to let you pay for anything. The said neo-nazi took me and a couple of locals out in his sailing boat onto one of the great lakes one evening (even admitting when Bohemian Rhapsody came on the radio that, 'he may have been a queer, but Mercury had a great voice') and we took some Seadoos out into rivers and lakes the next day - all for free, you understand. Here are some snaps of that great white adventure:

That's me steering the sailing boat, showing my love for the unbelieveably fast Seadoos (0-60 in 2.5 secs, if anyone's counting) and being shuttled around and trying to pretend I wasn't a bit worried about falling off. All good fun.

I even considered sticking around for a little bit, but yesterday the nazism just got a little too much for me and I'll be returning to Toronto to start looking for a place to stay and a rubbish job at the end of the week. Sarnia has definately been interesting, but it makes Norwich look positively enlightened, a term rarely used for my pointy-headed motherland, and I don't think there's a place for me here. I do love the Lord, but I'm not in love with Him.

Do write back soon and let me know if I've achieved a small victory against the machines, would you?

Thanks then,

Andrew/Mills.