I’m having an out-of-car experience

Into the dogged Melbourne drizzle I am tossed like a raw prawn from the cosy, protective shell of my overheated car. I slosh towards the cheerless tram-stop and dubious comfort of a saturated metal bench. At least the rain will have washed off the spew. All the other punters are hulked over on the opposite side of the concrete trench, staring at me to a man. Do they know something I don’t? Do trams only go one way on this stop? I lower back at them from beneath the fur of my black Nanook-of-the-North puffer jacket hood. Yeah, well, anyway, I usually drive a car! Their tram comes. And goes. And now I am alone in the rain on the loser side of the tracks. I plonk down onto the bench, pulling as much of my jacket under my arse as I can, just as my tram suddenly rockets into sight and I inwardly air-punch. It approaches at speed and, oh my God, is it going to rattle straight past? Were those assholes on the other side right? No. My tram is going to coast to the precise, exact spot next the...

Sometimes I wonder if I imagined going to the Russell-Collins tea rooms, that one afternoon in the late 1960s. At the centre of my unreliable memory sits a vast white urn of leafy purple flowers, surrounded by clusters of ladies in hats and gloves.

You descended a short flight of stairs - at the corner of Russell and Collins Streets, of course - to enjoy this most Melbourne of elegant afternoon high teas.

A block and a half, but a world away it was, from Coles Cafeteria, where a buxom woman in a limp apron wiped away a sweaty strand of hair, before hefting a huge metal pot to dispense thick brown tea in a steady stream across a row of waiting cups.
A Hilliers frosted chocolate, in a booth next door to the Regent theatre, meanwhile, put the icing on a perfect night out in those innocent, 6 o’clock-closing days. I spent a year of Saturday nights at Frank Traynor’s folk joint on the corner of Exhibition and Little Lon, where the coffee stew...