A big reunion

One member of my birth family is already deceased but the three remaining were together for once on Tuesday night:  Roxanne, Christopher and I. Rox and Stefan came down from Rocky for a couple of days and this time brought their twins down with them:  Emmeline and Kelly.  Christopher arrranged the Tuesday night dinner at the Story Bridge hotel. It's a beautifully renovated old hotel but their prices reflected that. They were eventually full-up even on a Tuesday night so many people are presumably used to hotel prices (steaks around $35). The food took about an hour to arrive after being ordered but that is common in hotels and what did eventually arrive was good.

People were a bit slow to arrive but we eventually had both of Christopher's children: James and Madeline.  Madeline brought along her girlfriend, dressed in an American burlesque sort of way. 

Kym came too and readily took the bait when I made a few old-fashioned conservative statements, such as referring to Ceylon as Ceylon. Kym is very "Progressive" and politically correct but she has a good sense of humour too -- which she undoubtedly needs to get on with her husband, my brother, whose attitudes are similar to mine. One thing I noticed was that she tossed her hair a lot when she was trying to needle me.  She has a lot of hair so why not use it?

Anne came with me but Joe could not come due to a clashing engagement.

The twins were both nice-looking young ladies but one was short and one was tall.  Emmeline was the short one and Kelly was tall.  Roxanne is 5'4" so that explains Emmeline and Stefan is just over 6' so that explains Kelly. With her mother's pretty face and her father's long legs, Kelly was quite striking to look at.  Tall women do tend to have an advantage in that way. She is also socially pleasant and has the light of intelligence in her eyes.

I should explain that.  I find I can tell highly intelligent people just by their eyes.  I am not sure I can explain it but it has something to do with them taking long gazes at things.  They see more so take longer to look at people and things.  They have a "seeing" (reflective, searching or enquiring) gaze.  Kelly's father Stefan has it too.

Stefan is a great conversationalist so helped keep everyone near him interested. He could talk to me about house renovations and talk to Christopher about old motorbikes, for instance. 

Roxanne talked a lot about her experiences in Saudi Arabia and their attitude towards women.  She was in Saudi for a couple of years while Stefan was there making big money as a telecom technician.  Roxanne is quite critical of negative attitudes to women so you can imagine what she thought of the Saudis.  Her twins were born there so it is a small oddity that two very Nordic looking young women have birth certificates in Arabic.  There are not very many blonde and blue-eyed Arabs.

Christopher was in good form, buying drinks for a lot of people.  Business must be good at the moment. Anne enjoyed meeting the twins and talking to a lot of the family.