What I Cooked Last Night

August 1969 : I am on my way to a scout camp near Gisborne in my father’s near-new blue HK Holden Belmont. A song comes on the radio. It is a new Rolling Stones song called Honky Tonk Women . I turn the volume up to almost maximum. My father turns it down again. 17 February 1973 : the Rolling Stones play at one in the afternoon at the open-air Kooyong tennis centre in 105 degrees Fahrenheit. No-one in Melbourne that day will ever forget it, whether they were there or not. 16 February 2013 : I am driving to Lygon Street for an early lunch with the family*. During his program Off the Record , 3RRR’s Brian Wise plays back to back Rolling Stones tracks, recorded during that 1973 tour. Rocks Off is followed by Honky Tonk Women . I turn up the volume. My passenger turns it down again. * Pasta fagioli, pasta with tuna and napoletana sauce, calzone rustico with ricotta, mozzarella, parmesan and hot salami, and short macchiatos for the parents; margherita pizza, spaghetti and strawberry...

It was the coldest Saturday morning I can remember. I walked out to get the paper and it felt like Sir Ernest Shackleton’s third expedition. I must buy a scarf and a hat. The sun came out mid-morning but made no difference to the temperature, and then it disappeared again, probably to sulk behind a cloud. It stayed cold all day. We went out for lunch, to a warm place with hot food. The warm place with hot food had brown brick walls inside, and we walked through to the back and past the kitchen and under a brown brick archway and sat at a dark-stained timber table in a dining nook far from the wind and the rain. Pictures on the walls showed a house by a sunny lake in Umbria, and cottages of many colours cascading down to a small bay of electric blue water. Either would be nice right now. * Writers are ambivalent about Lygon Street. The first line of Michael Harden’s Lygon St. - subtitled Stories and Recipes from Melbourne’s Melting Pot - reads ‘ Lygon Street is one of Australia’...