Adelaide-nostalgic?

Andy was in Adelaide on the weekend. Twenty four hours I felt as though I'd like to be there too, and then I started wondering if this was really true. Am I just nostaglic for an emotional state, a city in my mind, a collective of people, many of whom no longer live there. There are classic Adelaide moments that I cherish, that still occur, but they so often involve expat Adelaideans, a gathering of people visiting at Christmas pulled together by an impromptu barbecue or Hindley Street feast, bumped into at Womad. And also the sense that there are still mysteries in the city that one could discover on foot, in the style of Will Self and other flaneurs.


Perhaps this doubtfulness is tainted by my sister's reality: commuting every day, doing the school run, battling petrol prices. That sense that one must carefully plot a path through real estate and schools for the next twenty years. It's as if the city has joined the rat race, but with not quite the same integrity and intellectual energy of Melbourne. I could just be talking out of my hat or it could just be that cycling home helped freshen my view towards the North Coast, but I can tell that I have access to something special here.