These guys were actually pretty good, but you couldn’t pay me enough to get up there and do anything like that myself. The contest was close—judged by who received the loudest cheer from the crowd—and then we continued with the next trivia round.

By the time Garry announced it was the half-time break, the rum and Coke had gone right through me and I made a mad dash to the bathrooms. Jedda hurried behind me but a queue had already formed and was poking its way out the door of the ladies’ bathroom. Of course, the men had no such wait.

‘If this line doesn’t start moving much faster, I’m going in there,’ Jedda announced, almost knocking out a passer-by as she pointed.

‘Shit, I’m so sorry,’ she gushed.

‘It’s fine,’ he said and then looked to me. ‘Well hello there, neighbour.’

‘My goodness. Dan?’ My hand rushed to my mouth at the sight of him in cut-off denim shorts and a red flannelette shirt covering the biggest fake beer gut I’d ever seen. ‘Who are you dressed as?’

He feigned hurt. ‘Thought that was clear—I’m a classic bogan.’

‘You look even more outrageous than us. That wig!’

‘Hey!’ He frowned and stroked his hand over his hair, letting his fingers glide through his impressive orange mullet. ‘I kinda like it. I’m thinking of getting my hair cut like this.’

As I laughed the line shuffled forward a little and Dan glanced down, taking in my outfit. ‘And I think you taking the piss out of me is the pot calling the kettle black.’

‘Ah yes, maybe,’ I replied, ‘but Jedda organised it, so I can’t take the blame.’

He chuckled. ‘You have good taste,’ he said to Jedda, then looked back at me. ‘I’m not sure those shoes quite fit the look though.’

‘They’re pretty much all she has,’ Jedda added, turning up her nose at my podiatry brand flats.

‘Is that right?’ Dan replied.

I glanced down and saw he was wearing the kind of thongs you bought in a $2 shop, and he had the most enormous feet I’d ever seen. The Emersons obviously had big genes—even Dan’s sister looked over six foot tall.

‘Anyway, I’ll see you ladies later,’ he said, forcing my eyes back up. ‘Enjoy the rest of the night.’

‘Did you see the size of those feet?’ Jedda whispered as he disappeared into the men’s room. ‘You know what they say about the size of a man’s feet?’

‘That’s just a myth,’ I told her, quoting an article I’d read in the ‘fun’ section of one of Adrian’s podiatry journals. ‘A research study proved absolutely no correlation between the two.’

The line shuffled forward a little more—we were almost, finally, into the bathroom.

‘I think he likes you,’ Jedda said.

‘He does not.’

‘And you were totally flirting with him.’