At the pub’s posterior is a tiny beer garden with capacity for a dozen. Its wall is festooned by a black outline painting, intriguingly of the hotel itself. This seems redundant marketing. Surely, if you’re clasping a refreshment in a shady nook, you don’t need to look at a visual rendition of the pub, to entice you to swing by that very venue. You’re already sorta sold. While Claire’s buying our second and ultimate round, I peer at this meta-painting, zeroing in on the beer garden and try to find the artwork on the wall.

Tradition demands when in an Empire-themed North Adelaide boozer for Mystery Pub I’ve a Heineken. In 2021 I commenced this at the Kentish, Mystery Pub #9. I insist that Heineken is European VB, but without the sophistication, presence, and contextual glamour. Claire arks, ‘Why do you buy this?’ Thinking deeply about her question, I contemplate my life’s story, good and varied fortune, and not inconsiderable world travel before declaring, ‘I dunno.’

An older couple’s in the courtyard. Cautious and tentative with each other, Claire wonders if they’re on a date. Hang on, the man’s on his phone while she patiently waits, her face poised between a smile and a frown. There’s significant physical and, it would seem, interpersonal distance between them. We speculate again: date or comfortable couple? He’s finished texting and now they’re talking again and finally, she’s smiling.

In the corridor by the front bar hangs a framed print of the London Underground map. I love maps and this is the best. It’s even more evocative of the British capital than a Monopoly board. While the Friday cluster goes to and from, I drink in the details. The Tube stops are splendidly poetic and offer complete, expressive itineraries. St John’s Wood. Alight here for Harrods, Lords Cricket Ground, and Abbey Road Studios and its pedestrian crossing. And then there’s Waterloo. Hop off for a promenade along the Thames, ride on the London Eye or visit to the Dali Universe.

North Adelaide’s a superb suburb of opulent mansions and the front bar is today colonised by a boisterous, self-important consortium of suits. We squash past. An easy guess is they’re legal eagles whose long lunch is elongating. We note one of this throng untimely begripped by chardonnay. She’s making abundant but thus far utterly unsuccessful advances towards a colleague. His uninterest is apparent. Tonight, there’ll be tears and also likely Monday in the office.

Earlier, we visited a Light Square gallery where Claire met the artist and comedian Sam Kissajukian as she’s soon interpreting at his exhibition. Meanwhile, I wandered around, examining and reading the painting’s narratives. One mentioned liminality, which means, among other things, the state, place, or condition of transition. Later in the beer garden liminality applied to us as in our evening culinary evolution, we contemplated pub foods and then surrendered to a blissful bowl of wedges.

We spoke of their initial popularity, ensuing fall from grace, and their recent and happy reappearance in taverns just like The British. Despite this perpetual flux, the sour cream and chilli sauce work in humble tandem.