It's Party Time

Sue and her brother are asking me to a Bar-B-Que at Fred’s house in Newmarket. I pick up Sue from her flat and we drive over to Fred and Shelley’s place. It’s a nice house, up on a hill with a great view over Newmarket. There are a few people there, lawyers, business people, I feel out of place. Sue looks after me. She drinks a lot and gets quit tipsy.

My first BBQ

We’re all gathered around the pool area. The food Shelley has prepared is good. Lots of meat, salads, I tuck in. Food cooked by someone else always tastes good when you eat a lot of tinned food usually.

Fred comes over and asks me to take Sue home, by now she is quite drunk. We get her out into my car, she can hardly walk. As we drive up Newmarket Road she says she’s going to be sick. Oh Great. Not in my new car I say. I pull in at the next side street and kick her out of the car. I can hear her throwing up against someone’s front fence. She gets back in the car saying she feels better now.

I drive her to her home, and guide her up the stairs to her flat. She’s fumbling for the keys, not managing very well at all. I take her handbag, take out her keys and open the door. By now she’s half a sleep. I guide her into her bedroom and put her to bed. She is asleep before I leave her bedroom.

When I get back to my own flat, there is a party going on downstairs in and around the garage. The girls upstairs have invited a lot of their student mates over for a party. Ben is amongst them. I have to leave the car in the street, the garage is otherwise occupied.

They are a nice bunch of people and take a keen interest in us. We still find it hard to communicate properly and conversations are labouring but we persist. It’s the only way to learn. Ben finds it extremely difficult and says very little.

The party goes on well into the night. There is no use going to bed, the noise wouldn’t let us sleep anyway, plus we are enjoying ourselves.  Parties in Australia are nothing we had ever experienced back home.

A party in Switzerland takes place in a restaurant with everyone leaving after a couple of hours. Not many parties are held in homes. Swiss people don’t like the privacy of their homes invaded.