Watch what you wish for. In last week’s post (Getting Present to Presence) I made the comment that I was looking forward to a chance to try out my new skills of walking into a room of unknown people. This week it happened.
We’ve just moved into a new house-sit in an over-50’s complex in Turramurra. The house is lovely and we’ve only got one dog to look after – a dramatic change from 12 dogs, 2 horses, 3 chickens and 3 ducks. However, we do miss the open fires, the fresh eggs and the mulberries (see my post Mulberry Pie Causes Collapse of Global Economy) we had in Glenorie. I guess everything comes with a price.
Anyway, back at Turramurra; we found a slip in the letterbox earlier last week saying there were drinks on Friday. This is a regular event where the residents of the village have a social get together in the common room.
As we (Danita & I) are going to be living here until mid December, we thought it would be appropriate to drop in and introduce ourselves so that if people saw us around they wouldn’t get concerned about having a couple of strangers casing the place.
So the time came to go and show ourselves. Firstly, there was the dilemma of what to wear. After all, you only get one chance to make a first impression. Clearly, it would be a casual affair but just how casual we didn’t know. Thankfully, Danita is very clever about these things and we did manage to get that right – she in pants and top with me in black jeans and polo shirt. Mind you I was pretty much OK compared to the other men but the women were there with their pearl necklaces and fancier clothes. Danita was, however, suitably attired so we didn’t embarrass ourselves that way.
The fun part was walking into the room for the first time. There were six couples present and as we approached the noise level was quite high. As we entered the room went silent, and all faces turned to us and no one said anything. You could just about feel the thoughts: who are these people? what are they doing here? are they lost?
We then announced ourselves as being the house-sitters looking after D & G’s place. Everyone then relaxed and we had a lovely time – people came up and chatted, offering food and drinks and it was delightful.
Fortunately, we’d done this as we were told that they’d started to wonder about the strange car and motorbike that was parked on the property. We found later the car was a bit of an issue – see below.
Next day we met one of the gentlemen from the ‘party’ and it was good to be able to say “Hello John” (especially as I’m notorious for being name challenged). We had a nice chat and he then pointed out (“pointed” being the operative word) that where we’d parked was reserved for visitors and we didn’t really qualify as such. He is on the Body Corporate committee and so we felt he was just doing his job.
Until next time – travel well.