Yesterday Jeff and Linzi's friend Scott came to join us at the house in Corindi. He is also travelling for a year and is a deputy head from Jersey who has spent the last few months travelling in Bali.
Of course news of his arrival sparked my usual maternal ferocity - I really do have a problem, when someone else that I don't know is coming to share our space (or we are going to share their space). I have visions of drunken parties followed by copious amounts of swearing and vomiting, you know, worst case scenario kind of stuff and very extreme (and in reality pretty unlikely behavior in a deputy head).
So when Scott arrived I crouched before Sam emitting a low growl, teeth bared, ready to pounce should he make a sudden lunge at Sam and try and eat him for dinner... and then, about 20 seconds later, I realised that he was not in fact a child eating predator but just a jolly nice northern fellow and so offered him a cup of tea instead.
And so a nice evening followed. I cooked a vegetable Thai fusion curry (which is basically a Thai curry gone wrong, but tasted quite nice in the end). Scott being a good northerner is great because it basically means that he, like us, will eat pretty much anything. We ate food, drank beer/wine and made Scott talk shop all night as we discussed the benefits/hardships of home schooling and moaned to him about the UK schooling system. We rambled on about how brilliant Sam is and poor Scott probably sat thinking, 'Oh yes I see thousands of poor deluded parents like you, if only knew what he was really like!' But to be fair he didn't voice any such thoughts and the evening ended with us (Me, Will and Scott) prancing around the front room learning how to do a memory test!!!
So there we are, it all worked out well in the end and the lesson is that sometimes it's quite nice to try and see the positive in people rather than assuming that everyone is a crazed party animal who will have Sam smoking crack by the end of the night. I also accept that I will probably always feel a bit this way when we are sharing our space with someone that I don't know - but will try and remember the important lesson... that it only takes about 20 seconds before I invariably really like them and want to make them a cup of tea and give them a hug.
By the way that's Will on the wave above.
Hello Mama Ruth,
ReplyDeleteI'm doing really well. I'm in a nice field and the grass is getting greener. The crazy woman is still popping up to give me carrots. She talks in a funny language that I don't understand. The Yeti that accompanies her is a rare specimen! Neigh!
Hope you're having fun. Love the blogs, hope you write a book when you get back. Tell Sam his blogs are good too, but not enough of them.
Love Archie x O x O x O x