We’re a bit ho-hum about this year’s Yarraville Festival.

Well actually, I am.

Bennie’s pumped.

So it’s a good thing I made him knuckle down yesterday by spending a couple of hours on his first high school project. Said project is going to take several more hours today for it to be completed to our mutual satisfaction.

While he’s been doing that, I’ve been doing blog work (with clothes) and house work (without).

By the time we’re just about ready to roll – going our separate ways to the festival for the first time – the pace outside our home has quickened considerably.

The parking in our street is gone and people are walking to the festival from blocks away.

Sauntering the two blocks to the festival is always a strange sensation.

Turn a corner and – blam! – I’m straight into the intensity of crowds, stalls, music, food aromas and, as always, dogs of all shapes and sizes.

Perhaps because this the first festival to be held on a Sunday – normally a relatively quiet day in the village – this year’s fest seems even more crowded, even more thronged with people and eats commerce.

The food stalls are doing such hot trade that there are queues everywhere.

So I hit a snag – two of them actually.

The first comes from a stall under the jurisdiction of the Maribyrnong Swifts Football Club – and it’s perfect in its simplicity.

A superb pork sausage – sourced, I am told, from Footscray Market – on a slice of very good white bread has me sighing with pleasure.

It’s the best food I’ve enjoyed at any Yarraville Festival in any year.

Further along Anderson St, in the mad car park, I hit snag No.2.

This lamb number ($7) comes from Snagga’s Healthy Sausages and is also perfection – a loosely-filled sausage with top-class greenery.

At this point I run into my good pals Pastor Cecil and his wife Jane.

I hang with them for about half and hour, enjoying some lively conversation that includes the saucy tale of their courtship and eventual marriage in Bundaberg.

And just for the record, I record once more the fact that my favourite clergyman has once again been seen out and about and in public wearing sandals with red socks.

Moving on, I hook up with three new friends, two of whom happen to be of the junior human variety.

So it’s a pleasure to spend my remaining festival time in their company, experiencing second-hand the day through young eyes.

This includes a thrilling merry-go-round and faint-painting …

… and even a remarkably placid but assuredly razor-toothed ferret.

Another notable feature of living so close to the village – I can hear the festival’s last hurrah of amplified music as I complete this post.