Some unexpected visitors

Some unexpected visitors

26 August 2011

Knock knock! Came a stern rapping at the door. Aaron and I looked at each other, then at our guests, who were staring back at us. We wondered who it could it be knocking on our door in the middle of the night?

Our friends Jane, Frederic, Jen and Archie had come over for dinner this evening and Aaron had made his renowned signature Mexican dish. The cheddar cheese (or tasty cheese as they call it in Australia), onion and roasted red pepper enchiladas were delicious, as were the spinach and cream cheese ones. It was the first time we'd hosted four people at once and we organised the night with little time to prepare, so we asked Jen and Archie if they could bring their own chairs and cutlery with them! They kindly obliged which meant we could all sit round the table together and no-one was relegated to the sofa. After a sumptuous dinner, a couple of glasses of sangria and some great conversation, Jane and Frederic headed out, as they  had a long day of  apartment hunting ahead of them tomorrow. If you're not familiar with apartment hunting in Sydney, we can tell you it's traumatic (see Apartment Hunter)!  None of us envied them.

After bidding goodbye to Jane and Frederic the rest of us settled down to a game of cards. Well...actually a little more geekily Aaron and I were teaching Jen and Archie Guillotine, an entertaining French revolution card game. Just as Aaron was explaining the rules the buzzer to our apartment block entrance sounded. Assuming it was Jane and Frederic returning, having forgotten something, Aaron let them in. I remarked that the brief voice that came over the intercom didn't sound like them. I felt a little uneasy, wondering who my husband had just let into the building, at what was now approaching midnight.

Shortly afterwards there was a knock at the door. Aaron jumped up to answer it. We have a small flat in which the door opens straight into the living room, so we were all able to see our unexpected visitors. I looked up and to my surprise I saw two police women! They peered around Aaron into the room and reported that they had received several complaints of a noise disturbance coming from our apartment. Aaron, our guests and I looked at each other in astonishment! “Did you have some music playing?” they asked. We admitted that we had earlier been playing some music from our small notebook computer, but Aaron had turned it off some time ago.  “We heard your voices as we walked down the corridor” they went on. We paused rather dumbfounded. I wondered if I had been laughing too loudly! They looked around, noticing that there was only one open wine bottle out and by now most of our glasses were filled with water. They went on to say that perhaps the walls were rather thin and they'd let us off this time.

When they left I couldn't help but laugh, it seemed so bizarre! It's a shame that our neighbours know us so little that they were too intimidated to pop by and ask us to keep it down if they were trying to get an early night on a Friday. But at least hopefully it means our neighbourhood has such a low crime rate that police have time to call in at our dinner parties! Anyway, with quiet voices, we enjoyed the rest of our card game. That was the most entertaining game of Guillotine I've ever played!