For every twenty normal couples in the Wellington area, there’s a duo that are like peacocks amongst the pukeko: the Bohemian Couple. Will and Winona have been “collected” by one of these couples, due to Will’s software expertise and Winona’s vivaciousness.
The Bohemian Couple may be into the arts, or science, or run a specialty business together. Some of them offer visitors chocolate-chip cookies, others, absinthe-kissed martinis. Whatever their inclinations, one of the couple is a flashy extrovert, the other a staid introvert, both anywhere between forty and sixty. The way they dive into everyone’s drama is both lovable and troubling. If it all gets to be too much, they swap houses with somebody in Stockholm or take a weekend’s refuge at a friend’s rural hideaway.
Friends and strangers, straight and queer, coupled and single, gather around the social hearth that they create in their childfree, art-laden, cleverly located abode. Everybody is welcome, except for children under a certain age. The Bohemian Couple, who unfold expansively once a child is old enough to talk to, dislike loud infants and art-crushing toddlers.
Occasionally, their own grown-up child or stepchildren come to visit and are baffled by the crowds of strangers. Bohemia’s daughter, who hasn’t yet learned how to upgrade being plain into jolie-laide, told Winona how upset she was that Mum won’t come to see Bridesmaids on opening night because she’s going to a “girl talk” dinner with a beauty improbably named Ulrika.
Tags: social mores1 Comment
aw, glad to hear that Ulrika has made another friend.