Top Shelf

I recently met a young Filipino (soon to become Australian) family.  I had advertised a coffee maker and they came to buy it. 

Colloquially, Top Shelf means ‘the best’.  In our case Top Shelf means it ends up on a top shelf through lack of use and that is what the coffee maker did and I thought I would get rid of it.  

The young couple were pretty interested, but I could see that it wasn’t going to suit their needs, so I talked them out of it.     They were astonished that I did so and couldn’t quite believe it.   Instead I offered them a near new percolator type of coffee machine at far lesser price and they very happy.     We got to talking and when they left they had a large bundle of my Swiss Chard (silverbeet) a bag of lemons and a nice computer loaded with games for their kids.   The next day I came home to find a message on my answering machine inviting me to dinner.  Unfortunately I had a previous engagement and drove to their place to apologise.  The food was being prepared and smelled delightful.     I felt bad as they had gone to a lot of trouble.   The husband is a FIFO worker in the North West mining industry and when he returns in two weeks is to be naturalised as an Australian citizen.  They have invited me to attend and I will take photographs of the event.

Rowena, the wife, asked me why I give away computers for free.   I introduced her to the word altruism.

I have the feeling that we are going to keep in contact.