Letters From The Other Side from Cynthia.

Cynthia’s week of mistakes and the results of other peoples sins of omission.

Dear Del,
It was very enjoyable to hear your interesting friend’s equally fascinating story last week.
Teddy and I have been helping our friends Sue and Ned with a few maintenance jobs in the holiday units they own in a little village along the coast a few miles from Geelong.
They wanted to thank us in some way, so we agreed to allow them to pay for a luncheon at one of our favourite clubs.
We were driving to meet them for the lunch when I was sure I saw their car stopped at the traffic lights just in front of us.
The car was the right colour and when I saw their profiles I waved at them and frantically flicked my lights and to be honest, behaved in a manner which certainly lacked the dignity and lady-like demeanour a woman my age is expected to display. I just wanted to let them know we were behind them. Much to Teddy’s irritation, I kept this up until I was at last acknowledged by a wave.
We continued to follow them along the road. As we reached the turning I was mystified to watch their car drive on instead of leading us in through the gates of our destination.
After we parked I eventually realized my mistake when five minutes after we arrived, Sue and Ned stepped out of Sue’s small blue car.
The people we had been following were now probably convinced they had been tailgated and harassed by someone who was a danger to society and had kept driving well away to avoid any further contact from us.

Just another of those little lapses we parents don’t share with the family until they are of an age to understand better and not see all sorts of dark forebodings in our erratic behaviour.

During our lunch, Sue was telling me a story which emphasises how easily and innocently someone can tarnish their reputation in a small town.
Her daughter’s husband has anl accountancy practice in a country town. They are pleased with the progress of his practice and look forward to being able to afford to redecorate the large Victorian home they have purchased.
In order to save money her husband who loves a good wine, takes his empty bottles to a local vineyard to have them filled. It also helps his practice as the vineyard owner is one of his wealthier clients. I think that sort of wine is called clean skin, but I’m not sure.
Sue’s daughter became irritated when her husband would wash the bottles out and leave them on her kitchen benches to dry, for days, before taking them down to the cellar.
After asking him repeatedly to remove them and her requests constantly falling on deaf ears, she became fed up and although six months pregnant, decided to take an armload down to the cellar herself.
Half way down the steps, her arms full of bottles; she slipped, unfortunately breaking her ankle. She waited in agony for an hour or more until she was at last discovered by her neighbour who had popped in with some plant cuttings. He carefully crunched his way across the glass fragments, picked her up from the cellar floor where she lay frightened to move in case she damaged herself or her unborn child even more. Her ankle was now very swollen and turning various shades of blue.
For a few weeks she wondered why she sensed a certain attitude emanating from some of the townsfolk and shop keepers she spoke to until, as happens with most stories, it eventually returned to her. She was mortified to have a friend repeat the circulating, and now very much embroidered tale of her fall.
Embellishments to the innocent accident had become; ‘The local accountant’s wife is an alcoholic and fell in a drunken state down the cellar steps.’ Probably accompanied by a great deal of self-righteous tut tutting.

I remember visiting a small cemetery in country Victoria where the inscription on the headstone was Here Lies……..A Much Misunderstood Woman. It seemed such a sad inscription intended as a lasting rebuke to the local gossips of the small town. At least someone must have understood her.

Another friend’s father-in-law committed a sin of omission.
He loved to tinker with his car and its temperamental engine. So he dug a pit in his garage to make it easier and look very much the professional car-tinkerer.
After he had dug it, his wife went to the garage to fetch something, missed her footing and fell down the pit, bruising herself very badly.
The only sympathy she received from the tinkerer was that, ‘She should have been more careful’.
Now she was a wise lady and didn’t say very much as she knew her husband well because a few days later, after a prolonged visit to the local pub, he was forced to leave his car in the pub parking area. He walked into his garage to fetch something his inebriated brain thought he needed and fell down the pit.
Twenty-six stitches later at the local hospital and twenty-fours after that, there was a cover on the pit and the smirk of a Cheshire cat’s satisfaction on his wife’s face.

Sue and I appear to have made a mistake by trying to do the right thing.
Because many of her staff members are lazing about in the Queensland sun, Sue is short of cleaning staff.
Well I’m quite used to that sort of work because Teddy and I owned a few holiday units up near the snow fields when we lived there. I quite enjoyed the time being useful to her and we have always got along very well. Also after acquiring the new title of being a retired ‘Downsizer’ I feel a little useless in the world.
One of the guests left what appeared to us to be quite an expensive pair of earrings on top of a television so we looked up the address of the man who had booked the unit for the weekend, parcelled up the earrings carefully and posted them off Sue thought she should perhaps ring the wife of the man who had booked the unit just to let her know her earrings were on their way back. After all, they may have been a gift and she was perhaps worried about where they were.
After speaking to the wife, Sue put the telephone down very slowly and turned to face me, a look of anguish on her face.
‘Oh dear, I think I shouldn’t have done that.’
I raised my eyebrows to enquire why not?
‘She didn’t know anything about the earrings or the unit…or anything else it seems.’ Her voice wavered.
‘Whoops.’ I groaned. We mooned about the kitchen for a little while until we decided we couldn’t undo what had been done with good intentions.
We made coffee and agreed we hadn’t liked that bloke much anyway; he was very impressed with himself. His wife might be better without him if it eventually came to that end.
Next week I must tell you about some of the romantic couples Sue had stay in the units.
I can tell you it is an occupation that gives a person great insight into police forensic evidence collecting.

Cheers for now, from your very fallible ‘flower child friend’
Cynthia.