I'm flying to Canada in less than thirty days time to spend Christmas over there with my girlfriend and her family. It's the fourth time I've been to Canada, but it's only the second that I will have met her extended family. Hopefully it will go a bit better this time. Don't get me wrong, Her family were fine, nice people. They also seemed to like me, which is a bonus. It's just that I had, what I like to call, a bit of a Ben Stiller moment.
Everything was going great, and I was having a good time. I'd landed in Toronto a week or so before Christmas and I was greeted by my girlfriend (Sara) and her Mum. I picked up a hire car and Sara and I went back to her house while her Mum took her own car. Driving over there gives you an intense feeling of freedom. I love jumping in a car (that's invariably better than my K-Reg, one litre, rust bucket Clio, without even power steering) at the airport, driving East on the 401 and seeing the skyline of the city on the edge of Lake Ontario through the window with The CN Tower, the Worlds largest free-standing land structure jutting into the sky, looking like a phallus with a weird lump near the end.

Sara's extended family, on her Mother's side, live in Montreal. Generally Sara celebrates Christmas at home, and then she and her family make the 330 mile car trip North East to Montreal on the Southern tip of the Quebeccan province. And so, this was the journey we made in the car I had hired. It's about a six hour drive. Numerous Timmy's later, arriving there is not unlike arriving at the other end of the Channel Tunnel. It's quite like arriving in a different country. Shame it has to be like arriving in a different country called France…

It had snowed in Toronto on Christmas Eve, but it had melted from tarmac due to a combination of road salt and the heat of the day. It continued to survive only at the side of the road, on grass and in places covered by shade or where it had been shovelled into piles. Although Montreal doesn't look much further North on a map, the weather was noticeably colder and any untreated roads were covered in snow. It was a winter wonderland for me, the kind of scenes we haven't seen in England for many years, and probably only once or twice in my lifetime. Quite how their cars manage to stay on the road, travelling around a tight bend on an on ramp at 40 miles per hour in snow and ice, I don't know but....much fun.

We eventually arrived at the house, a typical North American house which seems to consist mostly of wood but still manages to stay unfathomably warm, and also turns out to be at least twenty times bigger on the inside than it appears from the outside, thanks to the tendency for furnished basements. I got on well with everyone, though I was nervous. Sara's family have form for mocking new partners with the kind of severity usually reserved for whoever the new guy is at Belmarsh. Either they have grown placid with age, or they decided to go easy on the English guy.

That first day passed without incident, and thankfully, 95% of the conversation was played out in English. It wasn't until the next day, after we'd spent a night in a local hotel, that I had my Meet The Parents moment.

Again, everything went well to begin with. Well, apart from when I was approached by a distant relative with “Bonjour”. I replied “bonjour”, knowingly. Unfortunately in Montreal, “Bonjour” doesn't just mean “Hello”. It means “Hello. Why, yes, I can speak French thank you for asking!”. What I should have said is “Hello”, which would have meant “Hello! I am a funny little Englishman! Humour me!”. Except in French. Assuming, then, that I could speak French, he then introduced himself with his name as if to ask me what mine was, which is easy for someone with a GCSE in French. But in my blind panic and with my unfamiliarity with the Canadian French accent rather than a Parisian one, I just stared dumbfounded at this most basic of questions until Sara rescued me.

Since they didn't speak any English it was enough to keep away from them and accept that they would consider me a bit ignorant andor some kind of weird introvert.

We had New Years dinner. A very good roast, but also with some sushi entrées, too, as Sara's aunt hails from Japan. I had a light hearted argument with someone who deludedly believed that American Football is better than “soccer” (I let him win), and then we went into the basement and had a few drinks. Sara's family work in the film industry in various guises (most recently they worked on The Covenant), which was one of the topics of conversation. It occasionally slipped into French, of which I understood about 2%.

At one point, I excused myself to use the bathroom. There was a toilet in the basement, but it wasn't the most intimate of locations, so I went upstairs to the bigger bathroom. I walked over and noticed that the toilet water seemed a bit high. Anyone that has been to North America will know that the bowls of toilets are bigger and have much more water in them. At the risk of becoming crude, the toilets tend to suck and pull away the contents, whereas ours have more of a pushing motion.

There was some “material” at the bottom of the toilet, which I assumed was just down to someone being a bit lazy. So I did my business and flushed. At this point, the toilet filled to about three quarters full with water and other contents I will do you the service of not describing. This was bad. There were few options open to me. There was no bog brush I could beat the contents away with, flailing it around the room like a demented advert for a cleaning product. There was no plunger. People outside the door were drinking merrily away and there was me, in a strange toilet, in a strange province stood next to a toilet brimming with shit. In retrospect, I should have just asked for help at this point.

But I decided to double my money, if you will. Would another flush shift the cauldron of detritus? Could the bowl contain the contents of two flushes and whatever unholy event had been performed in this room before I had entered? I was under deep pressure. I was acutely aware that I had been in the bathroom for some ten minutes now, and was being closely judged by Sara's family. Would Sara's family, who were patiently waiting downstairs with drinks, be sitting there soberly, listening intently for involuntary bum squeaks on which to judge me as her future potential husband?

It's possible that Sara hadn't warned me “By the way honey, when you flush the toilet upstairs, the house foundations vibrate and rock the building from side to side. Everyone downstairs will know exactly what you're doing”. Two flushes of the toilet under this proviso would be deeply embarrassing, and could mean some kind of digestive complaint to them, that would never be mentioned in my presence, but would quickly knock valuable points off my (up until now) impressive husbandry score. On the third flush, as plates and glasses crash smashing to the ground and a magnificent moose head complete with antlers departs its wall fittings and lands square and plush over the head of Sara's mother, it would be a disaster.

It was all or nothing, only on this occasion I wanted absolutely nothing. With the deepest sense of foreboding I have ever, ever felt, I braced myself tightly, buttocks clenched, and flushed the toilet hoping that there would be enough pressure to burst the stinking dam of poo, now at least ten inches below the rusty shit water.

It felt like crying. I just stared in horror, as bum water filled the bowl with a startling swiftness and began to pour out over the rim of the porcelain, under the plastic toilet seat. A mixture of shock and awe filled me, and then a feeling of desperation. I was desperate that the turds didn't some how squeeze through the gap under the sodden toilet seat and plop onto the floor and come swimming manically towards me.

This was like a horrible, horrible regression for me. When I was seven years old, I was bathing with my younger brother who was about five. He SHAT in the bath without any kind of warning and with no remorse. I used to play with a big red duck and I distinctively remember pushing the plastic duck along in the water when suddenly I was faced with a big brown submarine surfacing menacingly in the bath water, and crawling towards me like Chucky from from the horror film Child's Play. I threw myself out of the bath petrified that the bum tod was flying out of the bath, too, hovering inches away from the back of my neck. I have never forgiven my brother for that. And now I felt like I was going through it all over again.

I left the bathroom hurriedly, and reported the situation to Sara's cousin. I was burning with embarrassment. He didn't quite get the severity of the situation when I told him the toilet was blocked. “Just use the one downstairs”, he suggested. This necessitated a descriptive explanation for what was actually unfolding in the bathroom at this time.

I was still hoping to God that the evil turd wasn't stood arms folded in the middle of the bathroom, with a glint in it's eye as it sharpened knives in anticipation for my return. Sara's cousin got a plunger while I guarded the door against entry, feeling pathetic, but still fearful that a Eugene Tombs from The X-Files style arm of a turd was going to reach under the door and grab my ankles. Sara's cousin returned and cleared the toilet as I forlornly mopped up the stinking water with whatever material could be found.

I went downstairs some fifteen or twenty minutes later and confessed it all and tried to make humour of it. It was a little while later, when it was time for us to leave, that Sara and I noticed several towels covering electrical equipment in one of her relative's rooms, directly below the bathroom. I averted my eyes and left with urgency.

Sara's cousin told me that nobody needs to know about it, which I appreciated, although they probably found out after a few days of wondering what caused the flood. And if they read this, they certainly will know. Please forgive me.

Merry Christmas to everyone, and remember, if you're visiting anyone new this year, go to the toilet before you set off.

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