The Earliest Days of Trenna AND Greg – Part 3

This is the third part of this tale of love. The first part is here.

A Step Backwards, and a Big Step Forward

By Greg

I Nearly Blow It

I almost stuffed the whole thing up about a week later.

Just think, the 30 best years of my life may have been completely different. This website would have never existed….

Trenna had invited me to a picnic at Walyunga National Park, and she was making all the arrangements. Walyunga is about 35 minutes drive from where Trenna lived.

I had driven to her place and then she had driven us in her red Holden Gemini to the park. She was a good driver and we got there well before lunch.

We had a pleasant enough time wandering around near the small Avon River that runs through the park. Being Summer it was warm and there were no shortage of flies, but as usual the conversation flowed freely as we walked through the bush hand in hand.

We returned to the car and started to unload the boot (trunk) of the car.

“A gas barbecue! You want to use a GAS barbecue?” I exclaimed.

“I like my barbeque”. Trenna was not impressed with me.

What a prick I was being. It was indeed a good portable barbecue, and given bush fire risks it really was the only suitable way to cook our meat in the tinder dry bush. I started assembling the barbecue but I think I continued to grumble about wood fires being the only way to cook meat. (They aren’t, I only use gas barbecues now.)

We started cooking the meat and Trenna started laying out other food on the picnic table that was at the site we had chosen. She had prepared plenty of salad items. There was beetroot – I don’t eat it, cucumber – I don’t like it, tomatoes – then I didn’t eat them raw, (I love them now).

Trenna wasn’t impressed with this fussiness – I wouldn’t last at Craig House I was told.

Then for desert, Trenna had gone to considerable trouble and expense to have a wide variety of fruit items. These days I would think it a marvelous spread and would get stuck into it, but in 1988 Apples were about the only fruit I tended to eat.

Trenna was getting pretty pissed off by now that all her efforts weren’t being appreciated.

I didn’t know it at the time, but Trenna was on a really tight budget at that time, every cent mattered to her, and I wasn’t eating her expensive fruit.

In short, I was being a prick – a term Trenna herself used a number of times in subsequent years as we recalled the fateful afternoon.

I absolutely was acting wrongly, I should have just eaten all the things I didn’t like, and thanked her for her wonderful catering. I wasn’t trying to be a knob, but I absolutely was one.

There was no fight or overt disagreement, but the rest of the afternoon didn’t go all that well.

Not long after the meal Trenna decided it was time to go and she drove me back to her place. She was pleasant enough to me, but some of the warmth I had seen earlier was definitely gone.

I know from discussions in subsequent years that she considered dumping me at that point. I wouldn’t have blamed her. She forgave me, but never forgot.

However, I also found out later that she had decided to give me another chance because our mutual friend Evo had told her that I was a good bloke. He also told her I was the best debater he had ever encountered – I think by that he meant that Evo and I argued a lot when we drank!

Apparently this character reference got me to our next date.

She Had Said She Liked Camping

We had some nice phone calls, and maybe we went somewhere together that I don’t recall. Things were looking up but we still hadn’t slept together. We had been together a few weeks and I wasn’t sure if that was normal or not for a couple of 30 year olds in 1988.

To slightly digress, awareness of HIV/AIDS was only just emerging in 1988, and it was still mainly seen as a disease for gay men. In Australia the infamous Grim Reaper Ad had tried to tell us it effected everyone, but as a nation we weren’t there yet.

Anyway, it occurred to me that what would be nice would be to go camping with Trenna, and who knows what would happen in the confines of a small tent!

So I asked her if she would like to go on a camping trip to Pemberton with me, and she immediately agreed!

I was over the moon!

Before we went away though I thought I would reciprocate the Walyunger lunch with dinner at my place. I was hoping to make amends for the National Park fiasco.

A date was set for Wednesday 27 January 1988.

He Fed Me Dog Food!

Trenna offered to drive over after work and she arrived at my place in Kensington (where I still live) about 6pm. She was her bubbly self.

I had knocked off work early and had the roast dinner in the oven.

I had been impressed a few years earlier by a promotion at the Perth Royal Show by the Lamb Marketing Board (or some such body). They were selling roast lamb shanks for you to munch on as you walked around Side Show Alley. So I was roasting a couple of lamb shanks.

These days lamb shanks are a popular cut, and cost a fair bit for what they are, but in 1988 they were rarely served as a meal, and they were very cheap.

I had never had a girl over to my place for a romantic dinner but I did my best to tidy up the place, set the table nicely and of course, had bought another bottle of Moondah Brook Chenin Blanc.

Some of the details of the meal have faded but it comprised a roast lamb shank each, roast potatoes, roast carrots that I didn’t peel because I had heard they are more nutritious that way, and I would have done some green – probably boiled, frozen peas. I know I didn’t do a gravy or sauce. It was probably a hard meal to digest but the flavours weren’t bad.

As always the conversation flowed and she was delightful. The bottle of wine was drunk.

Before 6 the next morning Trenna’s hands roamed over me to wake me from a blissful sleep.

“I have to go, I have to drive home, shower, get dressed and catch the bus to work. Thanks, it was a lovely night”.

I made her a morning coffee and some toast and brought them to her in bed. And then after a long, lingering kiss she got into her Gemini, and was gone.

At least the ice was broken before we went away camping.

Much later I found out that Trenna had made it to work OK and at morning tea or lunch time the women at work wanted to know how the meal at the new boyfriend’s had gone.

“He fed me dog food! But it was a nice night”.

I turns out that Trenna was also familiar with lamb shanks. It was what she regularly bought Prickles as a special treat.

End of Part 3…

Part 4, the final instalment in this series is HERE