Neighbour red in tooth and claw

I proffered the hand of friendship yesterday, only to withdraw with a bleeding stump. 'Twas like this. I thought it would be a good idea, and rather fun, to meet the parents of my son George's pals. Some of them I already know, but there are loads I don't know at all. So my plan was, and remains (I think), to get together for a "getting to know you" picnic, so the parents can gang up on the children and win the battle of parenting stroppy teens.

So George texted his friend, who for the purposes of this blog, we will call "Susie", and asked her mum to call me. At 9:40 pm yesterday, the father phoned. Ian answered and explained his understanding of the plan and its purpose, and then passed the father on to me. "I don't want to offend you" he said, "but we have 8 children and we're very choosy about our activities". I explained that it wasn't a big deal but we thought it would be nice to know the parents of our children's friends. "There's no point really; now that "Susie" is moving into her senior years at high school she won't be socialising - she'll be focussing on her academic progress".

Yeah, right.

There's a rumour going around that another of their daughters has eloped with someone to Aussie. Assuming that it's true, do we find this surprising?