Transiting Through Time in the 5011

I can’t think of a better way to prepare for a trip celebrating your inner child than to return to Ma and Pa Hock’s for a sleepover in your old bedroom. FYI – the inside of the cupboard still features miraculously adhesive Keanu Reeves and River Phoenix stickers from an old TV Hits, circa 1990.

I grew up in Woodville South, Adelaide, SA, 5011. Mum and Dad have always lived here. The once-dubiously named Pecker’s Deli is now a yiros shop. (There was a garlic sauce joke here and I am only obliquely referring to it now …) The Kool Kat Deli on the other corner used to smell like white Freddos – now the Burek Lounge wafts the heavenly scent of rosemary and chargrilled coronary.

When it came to the travel bug and my Dad, somebody called in the exterminator. Streaky Bay is long haul. But the spirit of Scrooge lives on in 10c deposit cans in the back shed.

This is the final checkpoint on my way out. I am here to save time and an Uber to the airport tomorrow. Plus it’s Mum’s 70th birthday and there is a Western suburbs Seniors meal somewhere with her name on it. (Random thought – should Maccas start doing Seniors meals? They could be like kids’ Happy meals but with toys for boomers like a TAB ticket, orthotics or a large print instruction booklet for iPhones.)

I digress …

Everything’s packed, my OCD list of things to do has been followed, luggage pre-packed and packed, pre-weighed and re-weighed. As the old Harris Scarfe slogan went, ‘like it, charge it’, so I’m maxed out 100% on all chargeable electrical goodies. The spirit of discovery today was re-discovering the horror of the shower. Failure to follow the careful standard operating procedure will result in third degree burns or a full epidermal face peel normally reserved for those with Endota vouchers, then snap to an Arctic frost within a microsecond. Mawson may have eaten his dogs under similar conditions.

Time to call it a night. I will reserve my photography for some dodgy powdered eggs or an unholy union of gristle and fat claiming to be a breakfast sausage.