Apologies for the overload of blog posts tonight; I realised I have a lot of things to say and if I don't write them now I will forget. This next one is particularly important.
On Thursday night I met the best person I have ever met in my life.
I was up in Auckland for a few nights to see my boyfriends show in the Fringe festival, and afterwards my friend Hannah and I were hanging outside the Basement, being all cool and theatre-scene and stuff, and this old man came up to us and told us off for not being dressed warmly enough.
His name was Joseph and he was seriously the most interesting person I have ever spoken to. His stories were so incredible that Hannah at I kept shooting each other these looks of amazement as they got more and more elaborate and intense. At first glance he seemed like a normal grandpa type:
Charming and American, dressed nicely but conservatively. Our conversation quickly turned from the weather to how you can tell a lot about a man from what is on his feet. His weren't too bad:
A little bit orthotic looking but clearly well made and well loved. He told us a story about a beautiful young woman he knew who ended things with a young man after the first date because he showed up in flip-flops. She was very well dressed and was having none of that. Turned out that a lot of Joseph's stories were about beautiful young women...
Within the space of about 15 minutes he told us about his nephew who was a professor at Berkley who only owned three pairs of jeans and a couple of checked shirts, about how he does "special physics" and now works on the Large Hadron Collider, about said nephews various relationships, including one with a beautiful Russian fur trader; he told us about "when he used to go to Paris", and what beautiful Parisian fashion models do when they need to pee backstage or at a party; he told us about how he went to Bali 30 years ago and it cost him $11 a night and they bought you coffee ever morning; he told us about how he has been married for 50 years and his wife has never worn any jewellery, not even her wedding ring, and how they are going back to Bali and to visit his son, whose wife owns two houses in the south of France for their anniversary in June. This was all very fascinating (and I am sure I haven't even covered half of it! I hope Hannah reads this an elaborates for me) until I noticed his ring. Totally freaking amazing. We were mesmerised:
Oh yes. That is a picture of an elderly man wearing a skeleton hand ring. He said he bourght it from a 6'4 French albino who works out of London but who is in Auckland convalescing from a mysterious illness. He has a 6'5 father (or uncle?) and a 6 foot tall woman walked into the shop when he was buying it and Joseph told them he felt like he was in the land of the giants. As you do.
Apparently the non-jewellery-wearing wife-of-50-years also loves the ring so they are thinking of getting her one and both wearing them on their ring finger. I really hope they do.
Eventually he wandered off into the night and I had to control myself from asking for his email address or phone number. I'm sure I looked creepy enough taking all these photos of an old man!
Hannah excitedly text me the next day and said she had spotted him again! Wearing an awesome pair of sunglasses. Of course.
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