Tag Archives: patio happy hour

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Merry Mystery Pub-mas from Club Marion

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1. The Club Marion website declares:

Happy Hours

Sunday – Thursday’s: 4:30pm to 5:30pm

Friday’s: 4:30pm to 5:30pm

Aside from the rogue possessive apostrophes, mistakenly inserted because of pluralisation, I am wholly unable to fathom this. Speaking with Stephen Hawking through a Ouija board, he was also at a tremendous loss to explain this. I cannot differentiate between the two separate listings. My mind’s going, Dave, I can feel it. Anyhow, pleased participants in happy hour we were.

2. For visiting Queenslanders the dress code with its variation upon ‘no shoes, no service’ is dispiriting, likely antagonistic news but not so bad for those of us from the shoe-wearing states. And while I’m at it, at what point did wearing footwear guarantee good manners and necessary courtesy towards bar staff and one’s fellow consumers?

3. And there’s an additional gaming room dress code. As I now understand it poker machines, highly sensitive machines that they clearly are, take deep offence at humans resplendent in head ware. Not just a ‘Damn Seagulls’ cap with white splatterings or a West Wyalong Rugby League Football Club beanie but any functional or fashionistic item you may pop on your ungainly bonce.

Funny, isn’t it?

4. Club Marion has a fetching deck overlooking the oval (upon which play the Marion Rams Footy Club) providing a vista east to the Flinders University and Hospital precinct and the low, chestnut Hills. As the regular, welded-on patrons are all huddled inside at their legally designated spots (howdy to Bert, Fred and Sid), we’ve the entire sprawling, outdoor area to ourselves. Neat.

5. In the foyer there’s a book exchange. The novels appear untouched since 1986 but nevertheless, it’s a good idea. Somehow there wasn’t a single John Grisham text present.

6. The club features seven bars. Seven! Club Marion really is Vegas adjacent to the Sturt Creek.

7. Weekly meat tray raffle. In a world surely gone irreparably mad, we can all take comfort from the earthly stability and spiritual nourishment offered by a weekly meat tray raffle (WMTR). Not courtesy of actually buying a ticket or five but by knowing that if we wished to, we could.

8. Club Marion is Adelaide’s home of korfball. I know.

9. The bistro offers Australian salt and pepper squid. As Claire asked, is the salt and pepper Australian or maybe it’s only the salt? Or is it actually Aussie squid? Or are all of the ingredients from our wide, brown land and deep, blue oceans? Regardless, I’m confident it’s superior to the squid I recently had which was sourced exclusively from that global seafood capital, the Czech Republic.

10. In the late afternoon sun, and with my working year now in the rearview mirror, Claire and I had a genteel time on the quiet deck. As the final Mystery Pub episode for the year, it was a welcome chance to pause and contemplate our good fortune.

So, we did.

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After isolation

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In the driver’s seat and turning the key I notice the windshield is dusty. It’s nearly a month since my car went anywhere. It’s been in quarantine too.

Having reversed out the garage I change gears. Crunch. Like a dawn golfer on the opening tee-block I’m easing into my routines.

Up the end of our street I see a girl, bent down in the driveway, admiring her chalk drawings of pink and blue on the grubby concrete. Home-schooled, her Art lesson’s done.

I’ve not been outside in Australia since early March. April 1st is a fitting date to tiptoe out. Over the past fourteen days the mostly imagined, newsfeed horror of supermarket fights, deserted malls and shut playgrounds has battered me. A girl drawing out the front of her home is a welcoming image; at once pristine and sweetly unknowing.

Heading towards the city Anzac Highway is quiet although a bus cuts me off. I almost applaud. The ancient annoyances are now likely to comfort. I see an old man at a bus-stop. Squatting next to him is his terrier. Both appear calm. There’s a patience about them. What choice do we have?

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Triple J is playing something antagonising. Maybe now, I’m finally too old. I push the radio button for Triple M. Some dire 1980’s song. Maybe not.

I pass the monolithic and charmless Highway Inn, all shut except for its drive through. It’s mid-morning, but a couple utes are in there. Taking opportunities when they can. Never have I so acutely felt the tension between self and family and community.

Up near South Road a new petrol station is being built. Half a dozen tradies are in the forecourt, on the canopy, putting in windows. Previously, I’d connect this to cars, fossil fuels, climate change. But today it’s a reluctant symbol of growth and hope.

I then see an old BP. Fuel is 84 cents. This seems more 1991 and not 2020. I rub the back of my neck. No. No mullet there. The day before we flew to Sweden fuel was $1.40.

On our final night in isolation I shaved off the first-ever beard I’d grown. Confinement offered opportunity too. The patio pavers enjoyed their first pressure clean in a decade. Claire got stuck into the cupboards. I rang family and friends. Sat in the sun.

Arriving at work to collect a camera for the globally-compulsory Zoom meetings, I pulled into the barren carpark.

I was also there for my flu shot.

In our world of heightened immuno-consciousness, this seemed an urgent idea. I fumbled for my security tag.

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