Scaring small children at a single glance

Last night was an unexpected pleasure. I dashed home from work at usual time and went on a hunt for somewhere that does passport photos as it turns out my passport does not have enough months validity left for me to comfortably enter Uganda tomorrow so an emergency one is in the making thanks to the good people in the Irish Embassy. I really dislike passport photos at the best of times and my skin had chosen yesterday to erupt so I’m happy this photo will only represent me for a year at most!

Dashing back from that, filling out forms and hastily showering in order to dash back out the door again was difficult as all I really wanted to do was nap. However, we had been invited to the opening night of an art exhibition and, even if it artist wasn’t James’ bosses husband we’d have gone as these things don’t come along all that often here in Dar.

The French ambassador opened the show with a never ending speech which made me wish I already had a glass of white wine in my hand. Then, as I circled the room inspecting the pictures and flinching at the prices and gossiping with our good friend K, I began to meet the crazies of Dar’s “artiste” scene. I narrowly escaped being propositioned twice by making it clear that James was my ‘husband’ and K swiftly became married to James’ non-existent twin. The funny thing was they were so serious in their need to “talk personally” to us even when we made it quite clear we weren’t interested.

By the end of the show only the Irish were left and all in excellent form. I usually am not very good at these small talk situations but last night I moved gently from person to person, heard their news, discussed the paintings and had a wonderful time. We even snapped up one of the pieces, our first piece of investment art; the fact that I’ve blown my budget is irrelevant I suppose when I love it like I do. It makes me feel really quite grown up too. It made up for making a small child cry by just looking at her. I didn’t do anything other than smile and wave and she turned her head into Daddy’s shoulder and wept. She had recovered the next time we came across them but still wanted nothing to do with me. Apparently I’m that awful.

I felt better about it after take-away pizza and an episode of House. Gorgonzola pizza fixes even the memory of having scarred a child for life. I also still have the picture of my, um, picture (2nd from left)in my head.