Woke to more rain and drizzle and a definite non-summer Saturday. Miraculously, our Christmas lights are still working, although four bulbs at the end of the strand are out of action and seem to be full of water.

A typical Saturday, coffee and scrambled eggs, the paper and the crossword, then a frantic dash up the road to the markets before they shut at noon! Lunch of fresh bread and delicious tomatoes, then a walk the full length of Richmond. Past the myriad of girlie-clothes shops, twisting and turning through the crowds along the path to our first stop — Richmond Hill Café and Larder, to check out their famous “cheese-room” and be overwhelmed at the selection. There’s the cheese equivalent of a sommelier in residence, quite happy to talk to absolute novices, equally happy to dispense small tastes of whatever takes your fancy. All the cheeses are labelled in dollars per 250g, since the price per kg would cause heart failure — privately imported boutique cheeses do not come cheap! We left with two very small samples of a Morbier and a Montgomery cheddar, then continued on our walk through East Melbourne to the Fitzroy Gardens.

On Thursday evening, the wedding celebrant had suggested that since she was doing a wedding in the Fitzroy Gardens, we should wander past and see if we liked her style — so feeling very self-conscious, we sauntered up to the wedding and hung around behind all the well-dressed guests. No obviously obnoxious habits were apparent, so we headed off, passing another three weddings in the park on the way out!

Phew! That over, it was back to the Bridge (hotel) for a well-earned beer in the late afternoon sun — but there was no escaping them, today was a day of weddings. Across the road on the lawns of the Ridges hotel were the accoutrements of yet-another one. We sat and laughed as later and later guests arrived, frantically hunted for parking, then dashed across the road to take their places.