My closest encounter of the weirdest kind actually happened in Edinburgh, Scotland.
I was on my way home from work, having recently ended my student days (but still with a student mentality). As I crossed the main road near my house, I saw a screwdriver lying on the ground. “I’ll have that”, I thought to myself, and bent down to get it. Suddenly, this guy (one of the customers) comes running out of the local Chinese takeaway shouting “NO! NO! Put it down! Don’t pick that up!!!”
So, I gently set it back down in the middle of the road and look at him in bemusement. He starts going on about how it makes him sad to see people so desperate that they pick up rubbish off the street, etc., and could he buy me some food from the Chinese takeaway. As it happened, that restaurant was by far my favourite restaurant in Edinburgh, so after thinking about it for about 5 milliseconds I said “OK, sure.”
So I go into the takeaway with him and he orders my favourite dish, Lemon Chicken.
Once it arrives, he says that he lives just across the street and I’m welcome to eat the food there. At this point the guy seemed entirely pleasant, but I normally would have said “no” anyway. However, I though it might be easier than letting him know I lived about 20 metres away, so I just said “OK”. He was also a fairly skinny guy and I reckoned I could get out of there if I had to.
So we went into his house. Turned out to be a VERY UPMARKET place. The guy was obviously very rich, or more likely his family was. There was a lovely piano in his living room with a photo of him with Shirley MacLean, who he explained to me was actually his godmother (I have know way of knowing if that was true or not).
Anyway, we sat down and had our food. He knew from my accent that I was from Northern Ireland, and he told me that he had served in the army over there for a few years. It was at that point that things started to go a bit mental. He went quiet for a long time and they said that he had left “part of himself” over there and started crying, and holding my arm. It was a bit, well, uncormfortable, shall we say. I think he realised this and backed off. Good thing too, cos I was seriously eyeing up the window in his livingroom and wondering if I could jump right through it.
He realised he really needed to change the subject, and asked me if I had ever been to Paris. I said “no” and he said that he could take me there if I wanted. Realising this sounded seriously dodgy, he stressed that he had tonnes of airmiles, so it would be no real expense to him and that I could stay in a totally different hotel from him. I politely declined, and he seemed a little disappointed.
So he then told me that some friends were coming round that Sunday for Sunday lunch. Really nice friends, he said, and would I like to join them for lunch. “Sure”, I said, “That would be nice. By the way I have to go now. Someone’s waiting for me.” Happy that I accepted his invitation, he said goodbye and off I went.
On my way back to my flat, I picked up the screwdriver.
Of course I never went back to his house.