How embarrassment

Last night we went round to see Sue and Graeme, Michelle and Belinda. Sue is Bob’s sister, Graeme her husband and Michelle and Belinda their daughters. They have the most wonderful holiday house just down the road from P-Mac at Bonny Hills.

Before I go any further, I feel I should explain the significance of P-Mac. Mirinda is convinced that Port Macquarie residents should call the place Ports when I think, it would be much cooler to call it P-Mac. I’m not sure where she gets the plural from as there’s only one of them.

But that’s all by the wayside and up the junction. Last night we went round for a barbi. The exact same thing happened last time we were over (two years ago) only it was at their non-holiday house.

It now gets a bit complicated. Graeme is retired…sort of. He officially stopped being paid to days ago and, he claims, is now retired however, over an evenings chat, we discovered he’s not actually finished work and will continue, subbing for a staff member who’s going off on maternity leave. Typical of someone who has loved their job and just wants to keep doing it.

Anyway, we had a lovely evening which almost came a-cropper before we started eating. We had collected our buffet style food (delicious by the way, all concerned) and assembled our various food groups on our plates and had all sat down. Sue suggested that Graeme say grace, which he was prepared to do.

Mirinda, however, had other ideas and decided to start a conversation with Sue. Sue, clearly having forgotten poor Graeme, who sat stoically in a position from which he could adequately carry out a decent blessing, seemed to take an instant interest in what Mirinda was talking about.

The whole thing could have been most embarrassing but was saved by Graeme asking them, loudly, whether they wanted him to say grace or not. It was quite funny from where I sat. Mirinda, of course, had no idea any of it had gone on. When I told her later, she insisted I include it in my post.

Sue was also somewhat shocked when she realised that Mirinda wasn’t joking when she said she wanted to be shown the house. This doesn’t sound particularly shocking until you’ve been subjected to a Mirinda inspection. Once she’s been through, nothing is a secret.

And then, today, two more embarrassing things happened which nicely tied together all our visits on the trip back to Dural.

Straight from the motel we drove to Uncle Les’s place. I’d never been to the house, never met Julie, Beth or Alick, and not seen Uncle Les for about 20 years. I was very much looking forward to it, especially since talking to Uncle Les from mum’s and Facebooking (is that a word?) Beth.

Firstly, Cynthia (the satNav) amazingly, not only directed us accurately to their house but she said “You have now arrived at your destination” as I read out the number of their letterbox. Given the sparsity of houses on their street and the size of the numbers, this is pretty impressive.

We had a lovely visit (and the bestest cup of tea I’ve had in many a year), chatting about everything from the current state of Australia politics to the saving of the Rocks to Beth’s chances of working in a bar in London. There was also quite a bit of chat over the location of Alick, the youngest cousin – he’s 13.

Apparently, my cousin Alick is quite shy and had, therefore, decided to stay in bed. While this was a shame for me, the longer it went on, the harder it was for him to emerge from the depths of his bed linen. In the end, we took a photo of me, Uncle Les and a photograph of Alick between us. Uncle Les said he was going to get the photo printed and hang it on the wall , just to embarrass Alick. It was very funny.

In fact, there was a regular paparazzi’s worth of photographs taken. My favourite is this one of me and Beth.

We then headed further south to visit Farelli and her two boys. While I’d met Tiger two years ago not long after his birth, I had yet to meet Leo and Mirinda hadn’t met either of them. And I have to say, what a lovely pair of boys they are.

Tiger has the cheekiest face (and looks the spitting image of his mother) and sunniest disposition while Leo is sensitive and ridiculously well behaved.

Our visit, however, did cause a little bit of consternation when Tiger, accidentally knocked over a piece of Leo’s roadway construction. Leo was in tears and very distraught and, finally, in embarrassment, locked himself away in his bedroom. Of course, we carried on as if nothing had happened.

However, the longer Leo stayed locked away, the harder it was for him to show his face again. But, I have to hand it to him, gradually his curiosity became far too much for him and he made a comical appearance from around the door just in time for ice cream.

Now, Leo realised straight away that I had once tested games for a living and know far more about kid’s stuff than any adult even half my age and sat on my lap, showing me his DS skills followed by his gaming prowess on his (mum’s) iPad.

(See, Alick? I’m not some scary adult. I’ve never grown up.)

Of course, I took far too many photographs (though I blame Tiger and Leo really since they kept telling me to take more and more) and was in trouble from Farelli for trying to get a decent shot of her.

Of course, the boys LOVED having their photos taken…

Clearly the photo thing isn’t genetic!

We managed to get back to Dural just after 10pm. I reckon Mirinda will sleep most of tomorrow.