So the latest Japanese delegation has said “sayonara,” taking with them gifts, memories and our good wishes.
As is tradition, a farewell dinner was held in their honour at the Multi-Purpose Room last Thursday, attended by many local luminaries.
One of the most emotive sights was 15-year-old Ayami Ujihara brushing away tears during a succession of goodbye speeches. Who could not have been affected?
I felt a twinge of pride that she could have bonded so quickly and so deeply with her new surroundings.
It made me reflect on my own, rather troubled homestay experiences, both in France. Being a teenager of the miserable, monosyllabic and mumbling variety, I should not have been foisted on foreign soil. I was a diplomatic disaster waiting to happen.
And so it proved.
One evening my adopted family and I were watching the Eurovision song contest; if the event was designed to heal historic divisions, on this occasion it achieved the opposite. Compared to France’s delightful bluesy ballad, the English effort sounded like the racket a pub band makes after too many Heinekens. My hosts began guffawing as they emptied another bottle of Merlot.
Soon my Eurovision embarrassment morphed into a good-natured litany of French victories over the English down the ages, from the Battle of Hastings to the 100 Years War.
On and on it went, until my English reserve snapped and the hooligan emerged. “Ça suffit!” I could take no more and let fly with a jingoistic tirade. No matter that my French was suspect, words like “Trafalgar,” “Waterloo” and “Maginot Line” sufficiently soured the atmosphere. Irreparably.
A week later there were no farewell tears as we waited for a train to cart me away. I sensed only my hosts’ palpable relief.
Two years later I was insulting the French again, this time at the dinner table.
The Madame asked me whether I liked the food. “Oui,” I exclaimed, mouth ahead of brain. “C’est dégoűtant.”
For a few seconds I couldn’t understand the looks of distress. What’s so bad about tasty food?
Again no tears at departure time.
Anyway, back to our Japanese friends at the Multi-Purpose Room, where one of the biggest laughs was provoked by County councillor Darrell Troock, who referred to fate’s rough handling recently of some of our leaders.
Injuries and ailments have deprived them – temporarily, thank goodness – of the confident gait expected of those in authority, turning movers and shakers into hobblers and wobblers.
Troock knows of what he speaks, having had his own recent brush with sickness; for a short while he attended council meetings with tubes running from his nose and attached to an oxygen tank.
He assured our Japanese visitors that Barrhead’s current gimpiness was only a passing phase. Come next year and we will all be fighting fit.
One wonders what our guests made of it all. Perhaps they thought Barrhead, days before their arrival, had engaged in an ancient ritual common to rural Alberta: a dramatic, reenactment of an historic battle, with true-to-life scenes of combat.
The Wars with Westlock, for instance (assuming they occurred, as I’m sure they did).
Or maybe they thought country folk with their quaint ways held “mortification of the flesh” ceremonies to appease the sun gods and spare us winter’s misery.
Hopefully, such musings are way off base and our charming friends returned to Tokoro with nothing but good, wholesome thoughts and a longing to return.
Ayami’s tears certainly suggested this was the case.
