Some time in the middle of the morning I decided to go in search of what sounded like muffled revelry coming from the direction of the Piano Bar. It had been in order to have access to the Piano Bar that we had bought first-class tickets, so I felt badly betrayed – violated, as the raped and the robbed say – when the piano turned out to be a portable Japanese electronic organ – the sort that will give you, at the flick of a switch, any kind of rhythmic backing you want – and when the pianist, whom I’d expected to be in tails, turned out to be a bearded boy in jeans and anorak whose repertoire was limited – out of spite, it seemed – to hitherto unperformed works of atonality by the lesser-known Norwegian masters. A can of Coke sat beside him on a little table. When he saw me he stopped playing for a moment and said, ‘We gotta lose a half an hour’s sleep.’

I didn’t understand him. ‘Clocks go forward,’ he said. He ran a hand through his uncombed hair and took a swig of Coke. Although he wasn’t touching it, the organ kept up its terrible cheerless beat. It was as if somebody had invented music for doorbells.

An old-timer rose from his seat and shook a leg. It was impossible to tell whether he was partying or palsied. I sat in a corner, willing myself deaf and reading that morning’s issue of the Kalgoorlie Miner. The front cover carried the story of the sulphur dioxide pollution. Inside I read about Mrs Selva Nix, the Goldfields entrant in the Mrs Australia quest, who had planned a Goodbye Halley’s Comet Night that Saturday, as part of her fund-raising efforts. Had we stayed we could have gone to it. I made anagrams with her name and decided that Valse Inx was a good title for the tune that was being played on the organ, then I realized that no tune was being played on the organ and that the Piano Bar had emptied.