‘Don’t do that, Enj,’ Colin pleaded.

Later in the evening, after the children had come down the stairs to ask us to make less noise and we were therefore in a more receptive frame of mind, Colin produced a High Wycombe Shiraz, vintage 1978, No. 0004 out of a bottling of 3,000 – one of the first wines he ever made. Although it was patently a treasure, Colin had some reservations to voice about its oaky flavour. ‘Not everybody likes my oakiness,’ he said.

‘Don’t sell yourself short,’ Angela told him. There was a new weight of seriousness in her voice. Clearly, Colin selling himself short was an issue around the place.

Alfonso having returned to Hillcrest, Franz said, ‘When you put your mind to it, Colin, you are one of the best winemakers in Australia.’

‘It’s true,’ Vivien said.

Colin glowed. The burgundy dye that had been confined to his hands now suffused his whole person. He was the same colour as his Shiraz.

More special occasion bottles were opened. Not just Colin’s either. We got into wines from any number of local vineyards, monuments and trophies, a veritable museum, each bearing witness in its very nose and aroma to the day-to-day tragedies or triumphs of the Barossa. It was as much a history lesson as an orgy. Had it been literature we were discussing I would have been the very first to resist so blatant an example of the sociologico-biographical fallacy; but in the case of wine I was somehow able to overlook such carelessness as to texte. ‘Glorious,’ I said, swilling it about my palate. ‘Absolutely glorious. And he was dead within the hour, you say?’

How we came to discuss the subject of the excellence of German desserts, why this should have led to a resumption of unruliness, and what it was in the behaviour of the others that led Colin to whisper in my ear, ‘I think you’re probably a bit like me,’ I cannot now recall. But I know that it felt perfectly logical at the time that Colin, who often complained how much of life had passed him by, should suddenly say, ‘I’ve never seen a blue movie.’ And should ask me, whom he considered to be a bit like him, ‘Have you?’

I told him that I’d seen something that I supposed could be called, just, blueish, but that if he wanted to see for himself they were showing a cut version of Deep Throat in Adelaide that very week.

‘What’s Deep Throat?’ he asked.

Upon which someone – and I am not going to say who – put their finger in their mouth and yodelled. And had the children not come down the stairs a second time, appalled by the racket we were making, there’s no knowing what turn the conversation might have taken.