When I was 18, I had a weekend where my parents were out of town. At this point, you\u2019re probably already picturing the following clich\u00e9d situation \u2013 parents go out of town, the teenager decides to throw a monumental party, too many people arrive with too much booze, things get wildly out of hand, and the teenager faces a rollicking<\/u> when the parents see the state of the house left behind. Well, as I\u2019d already experienced a similar situation once before, I decided to be a little more sensible \u2013 just a few friends, ones I could trust, coming round to have a few drinks.<\/p>\n
A few arrived early on and the others trickled in slowly over the next couple of hours. One friend, however, was coming from the deepest, darkest place in the middle of nowhere<\/u> \u2013 she\u2019d taken a bus into town, and needed a lift out to my house. Having expected this, I was still sober and could drive out to pick her up. It was about a 30-minute round trip, and as it was still early in the night, I trusted those already present not to do anything stupid in my absence.<\/p>\n
I drove to pick her up and on the way back we decided to call our friends in case they wanted us to bring back anything. The phone rang but no one answered. We tried one friend after another but still no response. Naturally, this made me slightly nervous, but it was perfectly plausible that there was some issue with the phone reception \u2013 I lived a little out of the town and it could be spotty<\/u> at the best of times.<\/p>\n
When we pulled up back at my house, it looked deserted \u2013 the other cars had gone and there were no lights on inside. My friend and I looked at each other with a mixture of confusion and annoyance \u2013 had they really just upped and left without a word? I got out my keys to unlock the door, only to find it was already open. Annoyance was overriding confusion at this point. We looked around the house but saw neither sight nor sound of anyone. They really seemed to have vanished without a trace.<\/p>\n
As it turned out, so had a few other things. The kitchen table, for one, was nowhere to be seen, along with some lamps, chairs and even bookshelves. Peering out into the garden, we saw something unusual and the penny finally dropped<\/u>. There, sitting silently in the garden, were the rest of my friends, along with the aforementioned<\/u> assortment of furniture. In my absence they had recreated a whole room out in my garden. Quite how they had managed to move some of those things (like the kitchen table) through the house and into the garden was a mystery. This wasn\u2019t some half-hearted<\/u> job either \u2013 there were rugs, chairs, books, lamps, everything. They\u2019d even gone to the trouble of moving their cars onto other nearby streets to keep up the appearance that they\u2019d simply all left. The only missed detail had been the unlocked front door. Apparently, they hadn\u2019t been able to find a key.<\/p>\n
Quite why they had decided to do this was beyond me. That said, one had to admire the efficiency of their operation. It was also a beautiful summer evening, so the al fresco living room experience turned out to be a stroke of genius after all. Thankfully, they agreed to move everything back at the end of the night. Annoyance had long since given way to (slightly confused) admiration by that point.<\/p>\n
Rob<\/p>\n
Vocabulary<\/b><\/p>\n
rollicking (noun) [BR] \u2013 a severe reprimand; a very strong expression of disapproval
\nthe middle of nowhere (phrase) \u2013 a place that is very remote or far away
\nspotty (adj.) \u2013 of uneven quality; patchy and not consistent
\nthe penny dropped (phrase) \u2013 used to indicate that someone has finally realized something
\naforementioned (adj.) \u2013 referring to something that has been talked about before
\nhalf-hearted (adj.) \u2013 done with little effort or care; incompetent or inadequate<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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