Melty unctuosity: chicken and cheese polpette, following a neon sunset.

We sat stretch-legged and stunned in the front row of cinema ten at Pentridge, and I emerged over two hours later, mid-evening, with my mental chronology rearranged like a typhoon rearranges a village.

The boys didn't even live though the Bowie era but they still enjoyed the 154 minutes of Moonage Daydream, a neon-soundtracked cakemix of glam glitter space arthouse new romantic post-disco punk-survivalist rockumentary. Talk about your life passing before your eyes: that pre-year-twelve January day in 1974 when Sorrow oiled its way out of the radio on the spirits shelf behind the bar at the Windermere hotel and snaked across the pool table while I played snooker with friends on a camping trip. The hot March of the previous year when Space Oddity's discordant fade-out chilled the charts four years after its recording. That October Friday night another year earlier when newsreader Peter Hitchener was still on radio hosting a weekly pop show and back-announced Starman segueing out of Chicago's Saturday in the Park. The wet day in winter years later when Bowie looked faraway and bedraggled like a fluorescent flamingo on a ridiculously tall stage at the MCG.

The boys were silent on the way home, reverential awe being reserved for having been in the presence of cinematic and musical greatness in one giant multi-coloured hyper-decibelled reel.

We ate late. Earlier I had thrown together a batch of meatballs in tomato sauce: chicken and cheese, the cheese adding a melty kind of unctuosity to counteract the potential dryness of the minced chicken breast.

Chicken and cheese polpette.

In a large bowl, combine 500g chicken mince, a cup and a half of grated cheddar or similar cheese, a cup of bread crumbs, half a cup of finely chopped parsley, a finely chopped garlic clove, an egg, and a splash of milk. Flour your hands and form the mixture into golf balls (IBM Selectric; not the ones you hit) and drop them into a simmering pot of tomato puree cooked with garlic, salt, pepper and a dash of white wine. They will take about fifteen minutes to cook through. Serve over your preferred pasta: I used bucatini just because it was there. Shaved parmesan. A scattering of parsley. White bread to mop up the sauce. White wine. Or red.

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Moonage Daydream Directed by Brett Morgen, Universal Pictures, 2022

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Look out your window, I can see his light/If we can sparkle, he may land tonight