The other day, Scrobs attended a memorial service for the husband of an old friend. In fact, my friend had been a flat-mate of my dear sister's, and whenever I stayed in London for exams, interviews etc., I would kip down in their place and use my lady-chum's bed during the night, as she was a nurse on nights at the hospital! She would arrive home about the time I left and sleep through the day, but sadly, never the twain would meet...
The church was packed to the rafters! My departed chum had been a local farmer with a family history going back centuries, so it wasn't unreasonable to expect the two-hundred-plus members of the local community to turn up and see him off!
Now, I knew parking would be a problem, so I arranged with a daughter, who lives in the village, to drop off the car in her drive, and walk to the church, which was about half a mile away. It was a lovely afternoon with brilliant sunshine and the walk was certainly the right thing to do as there were still cars circling and looking for spaces up to a few minutes before the service!
I found the last seat in the pew right at the back, so could see nothing, and it was a rousing service with several laughs and a few sad moments, but on the whole the crowd behaved themselves and eventually got ready to leave the church, which took half an hour, as the family, quite rightly, wanted to meet everyone! I walked back to the car and had an extended chat with my daughter and eventually got away to the reception which was going on a couple of miles away!
The car park was solid! I was in fact the last visitor to get there and managed to park some way away and walked into room absolutely bulging with friends and relatives, all chatting at high volume. There was an international loose scrum of about twenty people at the bar, so a drink was going to be a challenge too!
So Scrobs decided to walk away...
Back in my working days, I would relish the thought of arriving at a function where hundreds of friends, acquaintances, strangers, in fact anyone, were in a similar situation, as networking was in its infancy, and I would be making damned sure that I met as many people as possible, because that was part of my job! But here, after many years of retirement, I just couldn't hack it! I would only have known my friend and her two sons whom I'd met a couple of times, and for the first time in many years, Scrobs was overwhelmed and daunted!
Can't remember ever feeling like that before...
3 comments:
I've always been like that, never enjoyed crowded venues, retirement made no difference. It may be something to do with hearing, not being able to pick out voices easily when there are so many of them.
I think I was just overwhelmed, AK!
I would have been a bit of a wallflower, and that's never been my style!
A good chum I walked the dog with a day or so later, said that it was perfectly understandable now, she explained a few 'whys and wherefores', and the issue seemed so much clearer after that!
It increasingly happens with age, Scrobs, though like AKH, I was never fully social. Could do it if expected, if they were special but generally … nah.
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