What I cooked last night.

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After the film was over, we walked out into a curtain of Ballarat darkness. I was reminded yet again of when I  had been taken to a cinema at age nine in the city on a hot, sun-drenched afternoon. Afterwards, we had exited after 174 minutes of The Sound of Music into a darkened 1966 Collins Street streetscape lit only by the yellowish headlamps of ranked taxis. I had felt somehow cheated, as if the sun outside should have held still while I was in the grip of the film’s illusive progression of time. We walked back to the railway station where the enormous canteen was still open. Shelves loomed behind tall counters and bain maries, and a swirl of round tables and attendant chairs on the floor overlooked Platform One through vast glass panes, designed in the early twentieth century to allow partakers of morning or afternoon tea to see the Melbourne train arrive - as if they hadn’t heard the engine’s shrieking whistle from miles away. We ordered chicken schnitzel rolls and sat at one...