If something good happens twice in my sometimes ridiculous but mostly effervescent world, I declare it a tradition. Claire finds this bemusing.

The latest is Sunday afternoons when I put on an upbeat vinyl album like Breakfast in America by Supertramp. It now serves as pre-match entertainment before 5.27pm, when we settle in with refreshments — white wine for Claire, a Coopers Sparkling Ale for me — to watch Hello SA, the local travel program and unabashed advertorial.

The hosts gallop about assorted wineries, restaurants, and other attractions prior to gesticulating frantically behind a cafe table groaning with gloriously calorific foodstuffs. Yes, of course, this is pizza and burger porn.

My biggest ritual of all is gathering up traditions like the type of tatty hoarder A Current Affair still airs twice a week.

Among my most treasured traditions is my annual writing retreat to Port Elliot.

Driving down to the Fleurieu I listen to Eagles Live. It transports me back to my teenage years of wonder and despair. It’s possible that the band members weren’t the nicest chaps with whom you could share a Bud Light (Lite), but they could certainly write and perform a tune.

Their song New Kid in Town is exquisitely pretty. Someone once asked Glenn Frey why he didn’t sing lead vocals more often. He replied, ‘Because we’ve got Don Henley in the band.’ Fair answer but Frey’s execution on this song is masterful. I hear the hurt and endless regret in his voice. We’ve all been discarded when that new kid in town arrives.

While this trip is itself a tradition, numerous traditions unfold inside my four-day escape. Tonight, after an afternoon of writing I’ll pop down the Royal Family Hotel for exactly two pale ales. These are my favourite pints all year. Weather allowing, I’ll sit in the beer garden under the massive pines and contemplate my twinkling fortune.

The best tradition is Friday at 5.08pm when I collect Claire from the LinkSA 1251 bus.

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En route, I visit a new bakery and buy a standard sausage roll, gobble it, and then on this very platform, provide my colossally uninformed opinion. As Victor Lewis-Smith nearly asked in his magnificent restaurant reviews, ‘What made me happy to eat this sausage roll?’

Here we go.

I’m a man of limited formal faith but I do adhere to a rigorous regime regarding tomatoes. Soup? Yes. Sauce on a BBQ sausage? Yes? But that’s it. No tomato in a toasted sandwich or a tossed feckin’ salad etc. Sliding my sausage roll from its brown paper bag, my eye caught the insulting reddish smear instantly.

Tomato sauce staining the pastry. My pastry. Not a tiny dot. A thumb-nail sized, bloody looking gobby, like a Ghostbusters ectoplasm.

My choice was clear. Private pain or public humiliation?

‘Excuse me, miss but my sausage roll has been poisoned. No, it has. Can you see the sauce? No, right here. At no point did I or would I ever order sauce on my baked good. Correct. Thank you. It’s sort of a pact between me and my minor god. I can’t deviate from this. Sorry, but I demand satisfaction.’

This was the speech I didn’t make. I went for private pain, of course, so I shut my eyes tight, exhaled like a Bond villain, and bit, decisively, into the roll, stupid sauce and all.

I survived and recovered briskly for which I was uproariously happy. The non-stained segment of my lunch was wholly adequate and understated like the off-spin bowling of Tim May. Eating this food, I wondered if the flavour was so minor as to be gravely minimal, but I determined that it was correctly engaging.

With Supertramp and the Eagles waiting uncomplainingly in my car, I pushed back through the bakery door.