Especially if they’re an hour late to pick their fiancee up from her own hen’s weekend in Geelong.

So, I suppose it was my fault. Sure, of course I was “told” the time to get there, and I did not remember it.  

But still, a neighbour knocking on your door the next morning, asking why you are not there yet or have not answered your phone while you’re holding your half-clothed, just-showered little mate, who is suffering from croup, and your Pomeranian escapes into soaking rain, was not pleasant.

Brain in overdrive. Slamming, crashing, throwing on clothes, chucking baby into car (well, firm and hurried placement), hugging roundabouts (on the speed limit, of course), even buying flowers at Redan’s Skipton Street service station under a sign with “Is she mad with you?”

Well, of course she was. Foot to pedal, fuelled on the fear driven from the idea a scowling fiancée was waiting out on a street – running over in her head how she reminded you of your poor time management – I knew no respite would come until so deemed.

But then I was still in Sebastopol. Rolling past the scorched-brick, heritage buildings of Buninyong, however, made me dream of the pastries and vanilla slices baking somewhere within. Through cloud and down the coat tails of Mount Buninyong, between the trees ashen from bushfire yet sporting slight lines of bark green and fresh, I remembered what people suffered through earlier this year.

Out of Meredith, centre for the highway and music festival, my panic had waned into focus, and plains of green farmland meeting hills in the distance had calmed.

I might have flown into Geelong like one sorry bat into his own hell, but I had the joy from picturesque scenery in my travels.

Chris O’Leary