On the final day of the last school holidays, my friend and I went to the Royal Melbourne Show. Neither of us has young children any more but a while back we were reminiscing about times we’d gone as kids – and then as teens, and later as parents with our own small people – and we decided we wanted to experience all that again.
The last time I’d been to the show was pre-pandemic, when I took a tribe of my own and other people’s children and I trailed along behind as they ran from ride to ride, from showbag stall to showbag stall, spending all their pocket money and eating as much sugar as they could. I was a sort of hanger-on that day, a chaperone, only needed to ensure nobody got lost or wandered off with somebody else’s family.
