Everyone's an Expert/Ambassador
Around the time Jeanine and I were considering a Parish exchange (2013), we were deluged with advice on a whole raft of subjects, which was the best time to fly, which airlines to fly with, who was grumpy at which border, which cities to avoid, which pub serves the best pint and who does the most marvellous English breakfast. Not necessarily the most nutritious, but something that meant you’d only have to eat a single banana for the rest of the day. Everyone was an expert, of course and spoke with the authority of experience in 2010 or earlier.
Of course, things change, people change, businesses change hands, or go out of business altogether. What was purportedly the place to go to have great bangers and mash now had the windows boarded up and no one around.
Everyone’s experience is different, and what sort of day the staff were having will determine the vivaciousness of hospitality. It’s very easy to come out with a brash and sweeping generalisation like… All the people in that quaint little village are… great fun, grumpy… hungover… snobs.
But it works the same way with us, too. When people come to our communities to live, holiday, or shop. Every time we interact with someone who is not known to us and we have not met before, we are an ambassador for Hamilton and sometimes for Australia. Of course, our visitors will tell their friends and relatives about the time when they met those people in Western Victoria and how … and then they …
How quickly we are to make a quick assessment of a broad population on a single fleeting encounter. Every day we are an ambassador for our community, our parish and our nation. A great privilege and joy.