Strengthening the Ties Tour: NQT

Our good friend, Adrienne, who we know from SA, had invited us to a get together with a group of her friends for the Labo(u)r Day weekend. Her friend, Katie’s family holiday house was in a little town called Nonquitt. The get together included the O’Brien parents (who are two incredibly accommodating, hospitable to a fault, fun loving people) and sixteen ‘youngsters’. A special highlight besides seeing Adrienne, was also seeing Steve who is a great friend of ours. The weekend started with watching Barack Obama’s acceptance speech. (He really is a masterful speaker – do yourselves a favour and download one or two of his speeches on youtube.com). The theatrics and festivities only increased from there!

The house is situated right on the sea so the days were spent swimming, throwing frisbee, kayaking, playing wiffle ball, badminton, competitive games of croquet and tennis. I did do a little fishing in very pretty areas, but no fish caught. Late afternoons were spent having sun downers, evenings started with a huge supper and continued with classic games such as mafia, psychiatrist, encore, fantasy and charades with a group of people who have the following day jobs namely, actress screenwriter, actor, accountant, consultant, masters student, community organiser, astronomer… Need I say more…Games often continued until 3am and beyond. I did say that the O’Brien parents were incredibly accommodating – can you imagine trying to sleep with sixteen screaming, laughing, shouting people downstairs!

Monday was Labo(u)r Day and the O’Briens treated us to our first ever New England clam bake which consists of a huge sit down lunch which includes clams, lobster and corn. The amount of food was relentless and delicious! Unfortunately, it was time to leave on Monday to go to Boston, but a deeply heartfelt thank you to Mr. O’Brien, Mrs. O’Brien, Katie (their soon to be famous daughter) and Adrienne for inviting us and treating us to such an incredible long weekend!!

Next stop Boston!