Ash’s parents graciously made the two-and-a-half hour drive from Peterborough to pick us up from Hamilton. “It’s nothing,” they insisted, and I suppose when your province (let alone your country) is 1000 miles wide, they’re right. It took an hour just to cross the hybrid urban/green belt of the GTA, which coincidentally has rather a strong resemblance to the landscape of the other GTA — glass cube office blocks, featureless warehouses and intricate chemical plants. We rolled into the Peterborough countryside a Harvey’s burger* later, and we collapsed for the night.

We spent the next few days at their big house on the prairie just outside of town, making expeditions into Peterborough each day to meet up with long lost friends, drink at storied watering holes (in the case of the Pig’s Ear, the emphasis is firmly on hole, but more on that later), listen to some of the bands from Ash’s misspent youth and to generally get (re)used to the place.

The highlight of the week was a boozy afternoon spent at the Bareknuckle Records Garage Rock and BBQ Jubilee, held at the aforementioned Pig’s Ear. We knocked back a few pints while watching Peterborough’s mild mannered inhabitants slough off their day jobs and rock out with varying degrees of musicality. As a case in point, as soon as we’d settled in to our ringside seats at a rickety old picnic table on the patio, the horrific Wine With Everything proceeded to brutalise our ears and sensibilities with “fake blood, real blood, exposed genitals, drills, mechanical robots and blatant sarcasm”.

Guys: it’s only sarcasm if you are not intrinsically crap.

We staggered inside, stunned, to the miners’ social surroundings of the bar to hear Ash’s brother Adam’s band Last Men on Earth play. I was amazed: these guys could have been providing the soundtrack to a Tarantino film, so good were they. We left after that; better to get out on a high note rather than run the risk of more ‘sarcasm’ coming our way.

The rest of the time, we’ve been lounging around the house at what would probably be classed an estate back in Blighty; the grounds are bigger than some parks I’ve run around. In fact, I’ve been moved to go running a couple of times already so the country air must be doing me some good. The sheer scale of the landscape in general is notable here: the tendency to build outwards rather than the necessity to build upwards means there aren’t many man-made structures to draw the eye, while the mostly featureless sky and the distant horizon just increases the sense of expansiveness. One particular night we caught the sunset as we drove back from town and it was a beautiful sight, unblemished by clouds, buildings or pylons. I can see why Ash is homesick.

* Harvey’s is a rarity — a burger chain in which one can actually purchase a tasty burger. Apparently their menu recently underwent an In-N-Out decimation to eject all of the non-burger, non-fries crap, and that’s alright by me.