I recently attended a work friend’s birthday party. It was the old dilemma of wanting to go to affirm your friendship with the birthday girl, but also being aware that you’re not likely to know many other people there. My one hope was that the birthday girl was friends with a girl at her church who used to go school with my housemate. I figured I could manage at least five minutes of conversation with her before we ran out of things to say. Unfortunately she was sick and couldn’t come.
To make matters worse, the party had a forties theme. I had no idea what level of creativity or effort to expect as the norm, and no way of knowing if I was going to be able to blend in or not. Okay, that’s a lie. It’s fairly unlikely I’m going to blend in to any crowd at the best of times, much less at a themed birthday party. The point is I had no established standard of expected effort to work off. I was seriously considering piking altogether, rather than getting all dressed up to head out and talk to no-one.
Fortunately I had what is fast becoming my trademark hat to fall back on, which in combination with just about anything roughly smart looks suitably forties (not to mention devilishly attractive (if I may say so myself (and I do say so myself, whether I may or not (so there)))).
And there I was, standing in an unfamiliar hall with no guarantee of having anyone except the rather pre-occupied hostess to chat with. Thankfully a few other workmates had come along, though none of them looked remotely forties. We were chatting away for a while when the hostess came and introduced one of her friends from bible college. We looked at each other suspiciously before I broke the expectant silence with “wait… don’t I know you?” It turned out she had left St. John’s the year before I got there, and we had actually met fleetingly a couple of times before (I submit this as further evidence to the claim in my previous post that my college is stalking me.)
To make an already strange evening even more bizarre, our hostess, who is quite an avid swing dancer, had invited her instructor along to give us all a free lesson. So, after heading out to a party fearing I would be standing alone in some corner of the church hall all night, I ended up spending most of the night dancing the Charleston with another old jabba, and walking home singing songs by the Ws, which I hadn’t heard for years. And I have my hat to thank for all of this. Okay… and also the birthday girl.
I can’t wait to see what I can pull out of the hat next weekend.
Far from home
Garry with 2 Rs
20 May 2008
09 May 2008
Old Boy
This might just be the most self indulgent post I’ve made yet. Apologies to those for whom that which follows will make absolutely no sense whatsoever. Get over it.
For all my university years, my life centred largely around St. John’s College, St. Lucia, where I lived for all my undergraduate years, and through which I’ve made friendships that will last for the rest of my life. Many of you may understand the unique culture and social conventions that accompany college life, and no-where in the world is this truer than at St. John’s. But however determined my singing, chanting, posturing, roaching, drinking, chirping, disk hurling, and out-whipping may have been in years gone by, I’d recently started to feel the effects of getting older, living somewhere else and with different people. To be blunt, I’d started to feel like I was getting over it. Normal people would accept that that is probably fair enough.
Then the other night, as autumn started to show its true colours (brown and gold, funnily enough), I got cold enough to dig my jersey out to wear to church. At the risk of sounding (and indeed, potentially being) idolatrous, I’m afraid I can’t come up with a better description for the feeling that came over me when I put the thing on than to say it was like a religious experience. A stranger and stupider religion would be hard to find (except maybe Scientology), but that’s really what it felt like. When I slipped that jersey on, all of a sudden I felt like “ah… yes. This makes sense.” Like all of a sudden I stopped being a project manager and I was once again Garry with 2 Rs, chirpiest jabba this side of the Buttery. I accidentally dropped a “you won’t” at bible study (“you won’t burst into song in the middle of a prayer session”) the other night. They all looked at me as if to say “that doesn’t make sense”. And objectively speaking, they were right, of course.
It was just a feeling, but then the weirdest thing happened. The college started to stalk me.
It started out simply enough. I was watching an episode of Doctor Who, when Donna Noble looked straight at the Doctor and said “She’s engaged, you prawn”. I laughed pretty hard at that, but I didn’t really make that much of it. And then as I sat down in the café the other night there was a busker playing the flute outside and what does he chirp up with but “when the saints go marching in”. That was awesome.
The kicker came just this evening. I was at the movies, and I got a trailer for Will Smith’s next film. It was all about this superhero with an attitude problem. The whole trailer was a sequence of shots of Will Smith crashing into things: cars, busses, buildings, trains; you name it, he was crashing into it. The name of the film? I kid you not. “Hancock”. I almost fell off my seat I was laughing that hard. Hancock. You’ve got to be kidding me.
So to hell with getting over it. I may be constantly on the move, but this is where I am now, and this, apparently, is still who I am. Garry with 2 Rs, chirpiest old jabba this side of the Harbour Bridge. Now what did I do with that packet of frozen s.s?
Far from home
Garry with 2 Rs
For all my university years, my life centred largely around St. John’s College, St. Lucia, where I lived for all my undergraduate years, and through which I’ve made friendships that will last for the rest of my life. Many of you may understand the unique culture and social conventions that accompany college life, and no-where in the world is this truer than at St. John’s. But however determined my singing, chanting, posturing, roaching, drinking, chirping, disk hurling, and out-whipping may have been in years gone by, I’d recently started to feel the effects of getting older, living somewhere else and with different people. To be blunt, I’d started to feel like I was getting over it. Normal people would accept that that is probably fair enough.
Then the other night, as autumn started to show its true colours (brown and gold, funnily enough), I got cold enough to dig my jersey out to wear to church. At the risk of sounding (and indeed, potentially being) idolatrous, I’m afraid I can’t come up with a better description for the feeling that came over me when I put the thing on than to say it was like a religious experience. A stranger and stupider religion would be hard to find (except maybe Scientology), but that’s really what it felt like. When I slipped that jersey on, all of a sudden I felt like “ah… yes. This makes sense.” Like all of a sudden I stopped being a project manager and I was once again Garry with 2 Rs, chirpiest jabba this side of the Buttery. I accidentally dropped a “you won’t” at bible study (“you won’t burst into song in the middle of a prayer session”) the other night. They all looked at me as if to say “that doesn’t make sense”. And objectively speaking, they were right, of course.
It was just a feeling, but then the weirdest thing happened. The college started to stalk me.
It started out simply enough. I was watching an episode of Doctor Who, when Donna Noble looked straight at the Doctor and said “She’s engaged, you prawn”. I laughed pretty hard at that, but I didn’t really make that much of it. And then as I sat down in the café the other night there was a busker playing the flute outside and what does he chirp up with but “when the saints go marching in”. That was awesome.
The kicker came just this evening. I was at the movies, and I got a trailer for Will Smith’s next film. It was all about this superhero with an attitude problem. The whole trailer was a sequence of shots of Will Smith crashing into things: cars, busses, buildings, trains; you name it, he was crashing into it. The name of the film? I kid you not. “Hancock”. I almost fell off my seat I was laughing that hard. Hancock. You’ve got to be kidding me.
So to hell with getting over it. I may be constantly on the move, but this is where I am now, and this, apparently, is still who I am. Garry with 2 Rs, chirpiest old jabba this side of the Harbour Bridge. Now what did I do with that packet of frozen s.s?
Far from home
Garry with 2 Rs
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