Thursday 5 October 2017

Rob rose and left for work in the early morning, leaving Susie, Ruby and I to contemplate the prospect of a cooler, overcast day with light showers. I resigned myself to the likelihood that this was going to be a day of shopping. Ruby held out the option that I could do something else, and leave her and Susie to terrorise the retail workers. But the dream she had related the previous evening made me inclined to soak up their company as much as possible.

We fortified ourselves with one of Ruby’s signature breakfasts: slices of avocado, tomato speckled with chia seeds, blueberries and vegan cheese. They are always a visual treat. We had a couple of obligatory rounds of Bananagrams which Ruby probably won, and then set out for the city.

We found a parking space along the river that would not send us broke and headed for Rundle Street. Before long we were poking around a retro chic shop which was filled with fashions and artefacts from the 1970s. Vinyl records adorned the walls as decorations. I think I had owned a print of each of them at some time or other. When Susie pushed on to an op shop, Ruby and I took time out for a coffee in a cafe that she carefully selected for having just the right ambiance. We sat in a window seat, chatting and watching the city go by.

We caught up with Susie, snooped around a few more shops, and then drove to the suburb of Norwood for lunch. We ordered three vegan burritos in a cafe. It was possible to rescue them from the Land of Boring with a generous dollop of habanero sauce. This experience was to prove typical: vegan fare is quite widely available in Adelaide, but the quality is unreliable.

I chose to mooch around in the café while Susie and Ruby went shopping for clothes. We reconnected in one of the local op shops where Ruby purchased a cup and saucer for the princely sum of $2.50.

We drove home from Norwood and began preparing a huge batch of vegan dumplings. Some of these would be our dinner and others would end up in the freezer for Ruby and Rob to dip into in future.

Late in the evening Susie commenced an epic struggle to watch the Socceroos play a World Cup qualifier. She finally worked out a way to outwit one of the online platforms that was trying either to force a subscription on her that she did not want, or to force her to watch the match at a later time. I drifted off to the gentle strains of her curses. I learned the next morning that she finally hacked the game just as the Socceroos were mouthing the words to the national anthem.