All in all this struck me as a novel and possibly highly remedial method of dealing with schizophrenia: one simply brought the other half of one’s riven personality out with one; one took one’s dopplegänger to the party. ‘Good evening, Alfonso,’ I said. Since I was for it, I had to go all the way with it.

Angela too had another name she wanted us to know her by. ‘I’m Louis the fly,’ she sang, remembering an old Australian fly-spray jingle. ‘I’m big and mean and mighty unclean. Straight from rubbish tip to you. I’m Louis the fly.’

‘Aw no, Enj,’ Colin said.

It would be wrong to say that the evening wasn’t going the way Colin wanted it; he laughed, he hummed to himself, he uncorked bottle after bottle, discoursing not upon their cheeky little personalities but their relation to the whole history of winemaking in the Barossa – ‘This is one of the very last Cabernets that Henschke made before he was found murdered in his bed,’ he announced at one point. But I could tell that there was an element he considered missing from the dinner party. I think it was culture. I couldn’t see why else, amid so much din, he kept putting Pavarotti on the record player. It drove Angela mad at last. She tore it off the turntable and replaced it with the Rhinelanders’ ‘Thirty All Time German Favourites’. One thing led inevitably to another. As non-Lutherans living in a tightly knit Lutheran community, Angela (the fly) and Colin, and Vivien and Franz/Alfonso, clearly needed regular surreptitious release; notwithstanding their high regard for their neighbours, they required an outlet for their feelings. That was the only reason we all ended up doing that John Cleese impersonation I have already alluded to. As soon as we’d exhausted it, Angela remembered another one she was good at. ‘Basil!’ she screamed.

‘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.