The odd ...

When I was on my first Australian tour, a friend and I had cycled through a good portion of Tasmania, and at one point, he decided to cycle for the next two days, and I decided to stay in Strahan a couple nights and rest, and then take the bus to Hamilton. Hamilton is a dot on the map, with no overnight accommodations (no camping, no hotels, nothing). We had decided that whichever of us got their first would scout out a place to stay for the night. My friend got their first, and popped into the pub, got chatting with the locals, and one of them, Paul, offered to put us up for the night.

Paul was in the process of renovating an 1800s inn, which hadn't been used as an inn in many, many years, to live in as his home ... so he had lots of room. He took us around the place and it was fascinating, and old, and parts of it were in quite the state of disrepair. You could see how the place was constructed way back when it was originally built. So that was all very interesting.

Then we sat down to have supper and my friend and Paul started to drink and we all started to talk. Paul did most of the talking, and told us all about his girlfriend Robin who had found the inn and bought it with the dream of rebuilding it. He told us how he and Robin had moved to the place, and had renoved the bathroom (which was spectacular), and music room (another beautiful room) because Robin liked to have long baths, and Robin loved to play the piano, and there was a piano in the room. He told us she was dead. He told us about the kitchen renovation which was mostly complete and which they looked forward to completing because they liked to cook together. The kitchen was well on its way to being gorgeous too. And he talked about their plans to renovate the room off the kitchen, and their plans for this and that and the other thing.

But did you catch that? Right in the middle of all the "Robin and I did this and that and are going to do this and that", he told us she was dead. Never in the whole conversation did he tell us how she died or when ... he just kept talking as though she were still there, or maybe just away for the weekend, or something.

It was probably all very innocent, perhaps she died in a traffic accident or something and maybe it was still too painful for him to think about it ...... but there we were in an ancient inn undergoing renovations, and we had been informed that the girlfriend was dead, with no additional information, and the girlfriend was being talked about as though she were still there ...... I have to say that the thought that perhaps she was still there entered both of our heads!

It made for a rather spooky night.