Leaping into the car we drove straight to Semaphore. It’s a great location to wander and discover. It was mid-afternoon on Saturday.

Having rediscovered vinyl albums Mr V Music is our first stop and it bursts with a huge and broad range. In recent weeks there I’ve found the Rolling Stones’ Get Yer Ya-Yas Out! and Beggars Banquet (why no possessive apostrophe?) and Claire left me to it and moseyed next door.

I grabbed Jackson Brown’s masterpiece, Late for the Sky and anticipated getting home and popping it on the retro record player, recently relocated to the patio. My listening pleasure would likely enjoy a beer as its own sunset soundtrack.

Suddenly my wife rushed back into Mr V’s emporium and said, “When you’re done, come next door. They’ve got records too. Even ELO.”

Trashville is tremendous fun.

It’s a retro boutique but does offer other 60’s and 70’s ephemera and yes, they have old vinyl too. Imagine my delight at buying a Best of Glen Campbell for only $5! The cover had been loved with clear enthusiasm, but the record plays perfectly. How excellent to have ‘Galveston’ and the soaring existentialism of ‘Wichita Lineman’ spinning under our veranda as the piping shrikes hop about on our lawn.

Our afternoon in Semaphore was unfolding with simple, sunny joy. Time seemed to be both languid and accelerating.

Trekking east shop-by-shop saw us next venture through the door of Semaphore Pets and Garden. This is a vivid space, and out the back it stretches enchantingly like a jade and lime cave. It’s vegetative and intriguing; warm and lush; engaging and sensory. One could get lost like Bear Grylls.

We especially liked the intimate outdoor dining of Sarah’s Sister’s Sustainable Café, jutting out among the ferns. How great that these adjoining businesses share a fetching aspect.

We left with a rustic birdfeeder that now stands by our pond.

After all this indoor action we decided upon a late-afternoon jetty saunter.

Yet again I was reminded of the elevated ideal that a jetty is an umbilical cord to our better, more mindful selves. Ambling out on the ancient timbers- how awful if these were built only from steel and iron- we yakked about cruise ships and those times the Queen Mary swam past the shoreline like a horizontal skyscraper.

We then moved onto crabbing and also how we casually describe our oceanic activity as ‘swimming.’ Rarely do you see anyone thrashing about in the shallows with a spot of butterfly or backstroke. Standing in knee deep water is generally the extent of our swimming.

Our car was lurking in the shadows next to the Semaphore pub and neither of us had sampled their beer garden, so as courtesy dictates, we swung by. We located a high table and stools and luxuriated with my (quite good) Big Shed Pale Ale at 3.5% and Claire with a friendly glass of white.  

If a story can be defined as a routine interrupted, then an investigation of Semaphore is a splendid weekend narrative.