Thursday 31 January 2019

Wha's like us?

Damn few it seems.

Some of you may remember our last encounter with an expat British couple in 2017 which didn't end in a long-term friendship! (See What the Feck is that??? - 2/20/17)

When we were planning for our extended stay in South Africa this year, we realised that we would need to do a bit more homework to ensure that we would be able to make the most of our trip.

Needing to know about health care, property rentals, banking and other such stuff, we found a book on retiring in SA which was published by a British expat in 2017 and was written in a clear and informative style which covered all we needed - and quite a lot we didn't.

The Author had included his email address and when we were struggling to find out how to arrange our own Wifi set-up - since our landlady was not willing to help - Linda emailed him and he provided a very helpful response. We also found that he was living on the same estate as us and joked about bumping into him when we arrived.

Once we had settled in, we realised that we were almost neighbours so, as a way of saying thank-you, we invited him and his wife for a drink on Tuesday.

It started off well when he volunteered the fact that he would prefer a soft drink to a glass of wine - perhaps I should have just asked them to leave then.

Declining the offer of sparkling water, he settled for a glass of wine - his wife was much more enthusiastic in accepting the original offer and drank most of his wine as well - constantly swapping glasses with him - which meant that they stayed twice as long as was necessary.

She also did most of the talking - on the subject of the house they have under construction on the estate and on penny-pinching in life in general. As you can imagine, Linda and I enjoyed the evening immensely and were thankful that they must have felt the same since there was no suggestion of a return engagement.

Still at least we tried.... 







1 comment:

  1. I was thinking for a second there it was the same couple from your last trip and that you simply forgot . LOL Oh well at least you tried.

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