My Dad
Looking back my father was full of crap which he'd instill into me and my siblings.
Most of his outbursts were either painfully bad jokes (which he would find hilarious) or really strange phrases, some of them I'll never forget.

*ahem*

"The Elephant is a pretty bird, it flits from bough to bough. It makes its nest in rhubarb trees and it whistles like a cow."

"One fine day in the middle of the night, two dead men got up to fight. Back to back they faced each other, drew their swords and shot each other."

He would repeat these nuggets at the strangest of times, mostly to the amusement of my younger sister.

He would also threaten that I would be sleeping in the shed (he wouldn’t ever be angry when he said this, it would always be out of jest).

Best of all though, and something that he used to do a lot (which I now do CONSTANTLY) is that, whenever you have a guest round for dinner, wait for them to say something along the lines of “Thank you, that was lovely.” then you HAVE to reply with “And at 10 pounds a head it’s not bad either.”

Touching briefly on the bad jokes bit again, he would often tell his jokes with a German accent. He was a fan of allo’ allo! so you can imagine what he sounded like. -_-

My Dad was and still is ace.
(British Steel was participating in awesomeness on, Tue 25 Nov 2008, 5:22, 13 replies)

My mad arse Granddad
Was quite the bastard, but that is a horse of a different colour.

At last count he had 5 sprogs (all married), 12 grand-sprogs (all in some stage of marriage/divorce or on/off de-facto-hood) and 18 great-grand-sprogs.

One mighty Clan-Gathering Christmas, there happened to be three pregnant women present. The poor old bugger was surrounded by sprogs, grandsprogs, lots of their spouses and great grandsproglets.

He loudly interjected in the spirited conversation about possible baby names for the three imminent additions to his already mighty brood with the following classic line:

"RIGHT! That's it! There are too damn many of you. I can't be having with remembering all these bloody names at my time of life. So henceforth I do declare that any female decendants of mine will be addressed as MAUD and any males will be addressed as HAROLD!"

And so it was. Luckily, none of us actually have the misfortune to be called Maud or Harold. So at every Clan gathering ever since, Granddad makes no attempt to remember your name. He just shouts "MAUD" or "HAROLD" at his nearest (great)grandsprog and sends the unfortunate child to fetch him another beer.
(Que?, Tue 25 Nov 2008, 5:20, 9 replies)

Soaps reminds me
My father used to ritually pat each pocket, "Got my wallet, got my keys..." then he would grab his genitals "Got my dick!" He would stride triumphantly out the door to work.

All of my many brother do this to the consternation of their wives. I do it to scandalized whispers of "Shut up! Shut up, someone will hear you! Shutupshutupshutup!" from dignified Mr. Dub.



Why did he marry me?
(TDub Nunc id vides, nunc ne vides on, Tue 25 Nov 2008, 0:47, 4 replies)

Chocolate shower
There is only one family ritual I can remember rom my childhood.
Back in the 70s, every Christmas we would get a tin of Roses or Quality Street choccies.
Everyone would crowd onto the settee while dad opened the tin.
Then the entire tin would be emptied over us.
We then sat to have a polaroid photo taken.
Then we had to pick up all the choccies and put them back into the tin before being allowed to choose one.
Without fail my siblings and I would secretly push a few under the settee so we could snaffle them later.
And without fail, dad would look at the tin and say this isnt full, find them, and we would look under the settee and say oooh there they are with lack of sincerity, while reluctantly putting them back in the tin :(
When we all hit our teens we refused to play this game any more
(insomniac-surfer oh go on then, just this once, Tue 25 Nov 2008, 0:33, Reply)

Bowel movements
When I was young, any display of fractiousness or misbehaviour was dismissed by Mum with a simple question: "do you need to do a poo?"

This has persisted to the present day, and we're big hairy grownups now.

I've got my own little one and spouse now, and we're saying "it's the morning" to announce a desire to drop the kids off at the pool.

This dates back to a holiday in the Far East when the time zone change led to previously regular daybreak bowel habits to migrate into the middle of the day.
(hirsute, Mon 24 Nov 2008, 22:07, Reply)

Tossing the Caber
I have a hair brush which I stole off Mrs Nick when she was 17. Although I now go to the hairdressers for a five minute trim and a polish on top, I still have to toss the brush in a 360 or 720 degree spin every morning when stepping out of the shower, before brushing what's left of my hair. If i drop the brush, I have to do it twice, or I'll die!

I'm not dead yet, so it must work.

Length? About 128 billion angstrom units
( The Lone Groover has mal des nuts., Mon 24 Nov 2008, 22:00, Reply)

Dedicated follower of fashion
Mum: You do realise you've married someone who dresses just like your father*?

Me (indignant): He doesn't!

~~~~thinks~~~~

Oh.

Fucksocks.

*jeans (usually falling down), shirt (half untucked), jumper (with holes in), brown shoes (scuffed).
(grandmaswhiskers, Mon 24 Nov 2008, 21:15, 2 replies)

Candlelit dinner on Wednesdays
Once upon a time when I was aged about 5, I managed to get hold of a wire with two headphone sockets on either end. Being both curious and under stimulated, I noted their similarity to plug-pins, so I thought I'd try inserting both ends into a plughole. I did just that. I created a small blue spark, the ends melted slightly and all the lights went out. Lacking in any knowledge of electrical engineering, I was unaware how just one tiny fuse had saved my life - instead, I was more concerned by the wrath of my mother.

So anyway, this meant we didn't have any electricity. We had to make do with old fashioned methods of illumination. That night, we had our dinner by candle-light. This seemed to go down quite well - in fact, it went so well that once the lights were restored, a certain something was lacking in our dinners, so it was decided that from then on, all Wednesday evening dinners should be by candle-light. I'm not sure how long this went on for, but I'm pretty sure it lasted a couple of weeks (perhaps until the sun set late enough to start illuminating the dinner). So that was the story of how I nearly sacrificed myself to create a family tradition.

Length? About arm's length and slightly melted at the end.
( mistaspakkaman and the inedible shifting caterpillars, Mon 24 Nov 2008, 20:36, Reply)

Good ol' family traits
In my family there are a few things that we do that I never realised weren't the norm until boyfriends or friends came to stay.

For example, after anyone says "Stop", my mum will inevitably shout "Hammertime!" from wherever she is in the house.

Also, if you ring the house phone, whoever picks up will give the normal, "Hello". This HAS to be replied with "Is it me you're looking for?".


And finally, my dad's obsession with trying to crowbar the word "scrote" into as many sentences as possible.
In my dad's world;
Porridge oats = porridge scrotes
Strictly Come Dancing = Scrotely Come Dancing.
Vodafone = Scrotafone.
(Lucy Van Pelt embracing ginlovers, Mon 24 Nov 2008, 20:33, 6 replies)

I have four rituals
1, My mum always told me to have a 'squeesy wee' before leaving anywhere when I was a kid, if I needed to go while out she would threaten to hold me over a drain, She passed away 3 years ago but would still offer the drain option even though I was 22 at the time. I still have to go before going out, even if I had just gone.
My boyfriend has now leant this habit and can't help peeing before going out.

2, The magpie rhyme, If you see one magpie before midday you have to nod and say "good morning Mr magpie" If there was more you counted then and said the rhyme;

one for sorrow
two for joy
three for a girl
four for a boy
five for silver
six for gold
seven for a secret never to be told.

3, When my sister and myself were little we were given the choice at chistmas: open our presents at midnight or wait until the morning. We would always pick the midnight option, so we would be woken up at 12 to open the presents.
Total genius on my mums part as she knew that we would be too tired to play with them then and would sleep in late in the morning meaning that she got a lie in.

4, Another leaving the house ritual, no matter where I am or who I'm with I ask them "do you have your phone, keys, wallet etc etc. I've even asked my tutors this when leaving their office after tutorial.


Length, long I know but it saves me posting 4 times
(Soaps Roller derbying your way since, Mon 24 Nov 2008, 19:40, 8 replies)

Dull car journey's...
...were always 'brightened up' by playing some of the old faithful car games: I Spy, car colour counting etc. Our dad usually drove and mum ended up trying to keep us entertained, thus avoiding the near fatal 'Are we there yet...?' scenario. One particular journey she had the genius idea of teaching us a new game where we had to pick a letter of the alphabet and using it to start the name of anything you saw: T - tridge (bridge) - toor (door) - tub (pub) - tree (tree duh!)

Pretty good fun on the whole, the crowning finale of this game came when she chose the letter F and we pulled into an old English farm yard for a vist: Fow, Foat, Seep, Fonkey, Fickens were among the first we saw, then parking by the pond our youngest brother screamed FUCK! This was followed by silence and three kids trying desperately not to piss themselves with laughter and give away the fact that they knew more swear words than they should.

First post for ages from a long time lurker, please be gentle.
(UK-Wookie thought dyslexia was a way to insult Lex Yeah, Mon 24 Nov 2008, 19:38, Reply)

Still unexplained
"Can I get down from the table?"

"You get down from a duck not an elephant!"

*Riotous laughter*

What's more confusing is that it apparantly used to get funnier and funnier.
(Popiella Jones, Mon 24 Nov 2008, 19:01, 7 replies)

Fair Fun
In my family, a great deal is made of Fairness. Portions, for example, cannot just be equal. If they were, then the littlest would receive a bigger amount, as a proportion of their body weight. And this would not be Fair.

This emphasis on Fairness manifests itself most ridiculously in times of great housework, e.g. just before Christmas. You'd think that we could just divide up the jobs between us, making sure that each person received an equal and acceptable amount of work. But this would not be Fair. Hoovering the stairs, for example, is a much more annoying and time consuming task than, say, dusting the living room.

And so a system of points has been devised, giving each job a score based on unpleasantness, effort and time. Jobs are then shared out among family members (bar my mother. None of us would push our luck that far) so that noone receives more pointsworth of work than anyone else. The fact that this system requires more effort and time than actually doing the jobs is not important. It's be Fair.

This year, I won't be going back home until Christmas Eve. I am expecting a nicely dirtied bathroom for me to clean, the moment I cross the threshold.
(Concrete Cow, Mon 24 Nov 2008, 18:38, Reply)

Wangmaster has just reminded me...
... of the FACE Game...

Invented by brothertulip (I think...) when we were a bit too old to play the Farmer game as described here, it consisted of him suddenly yelling "I'm going to poke you in the face and say 'FACE!'".

Then, guess what?

...A nanosecond after that, he'd poke me in the face and say, "FACE!"...

It's good fun, honest.
(happylittletulip helpless and delicious, Mon 24 Nov 2008, 17:59, 2 replies)

HEATHER HIBBERT!
Is code between me and my sister which means your top is riding up on your arse and making it look big. Unsurprisingly it is named after a girl that suffered from the leggings/t-shirt combo that made her arse look like the size of a small planet. Sorry if you're reading this by the way, I'm sure your arse wasn't that big...
(birdwoman pissed herself at least once on, Mon 24 Nov 2008, 17:47, Reply)

FACETOUCH - proposed tradition for parents
The most effective way to fight colds and infection is, along with washing your hands frequently, simply to avoid touching your face.

Therefore, if I ever have kids, I will introduce them to the game of "facetouch", whereby if they catch one of their siblings/friends touching their face unnecessarily, they can punch them in the arm.
( wangmaster2000, Mon 24 Nov 2008, 17:18, Reply)

The Toastmaster General
One oddball custom from my family was the ceremony of toast.

Toast was and still is, an exceedingly important part of my family’s life. It has leaped with my into my own dwelling and it will probably live on.

My father, like his father before him (before he went mad) and me (when I am in my own house), is the ‘Toastmaster General’.

This is what happened on a typical Saturday morning.

My father would be first up, put his dressing gown on, and go downstairs loudly exclaiming that ‘The Toastmaster General is up and about his business’.

We all had to run downstairs in our jim jams, dressing gowns and slippers.

‘The Toastmaster General is preparing the wheat slices’.

We all then had to sit down at our breakfast bar and not say anything lest we interrupt the toast ceremony whilst my father took the four slice toaster out of its cupboard, plug it in whilst arranging it on its little custom made toaster tray. He would then take out four slices of Hovis white thick sliced (it had to be this exact type of bread – my mum once bought medium sliced and it got chucked in the bin), check them for consistency, and reverently place them into the toaster width ways (this was to ensure an even brownness). He would then make sure the dial was at setting 8.

‘The Toastmaster General will now prepare the ancillaries’. (We didn’t really know what this meant but we correctly guessed it meant knives and stuff)

Whilst the bread was toasting, he would then take out the breadboard, plates, cutlery, and jam from the fridge and prepare them on the breakfast bar. He would then check the butter was soft enough (it was always left in a covered butter dish overnight) and placed it before us.

‘The wheat slices are now toasted and have become toast.’

This meant that the toast had popped up. Inadequately or unevenly browned bread was binned. He would take these hot slices of brown and put them onto the breadboard and would urge us to quickly butter up or the toast would cool down and wouldn’t melt the butter adequately and the toast would be ruined. He would then quickly put four more slices of bread into the toaster.

We had to rapidly eat our buttered toast (mains) before the next slice arrived so we could jam it and eat it as pudding.

‘The Toastmaster General’s job is completed for another day’.

Then he went back to bed leaving us sated and free to watch cartoons.


I wouldn’t say I was totally surprised when he has his first breakdown, but the second and third did come as a bit of a shock.
(powervator and NONE SHALL PASS, Mon 24 Nov 2008, 17:08, 3 replies)

The bay leaf rule

Whoever got the bay leaf on their plate when we had stew/ bolognaise ect, did the washing up

I think I was about 15 before I twigged that perhaps mum was putting it on mine or my sisters plate deliberately, bleedin retard ;)
(sittingduck Attention seeking, bullshitting fuck-knuckle, Mon 24 Nov 2008, 16:45, 1 reply)

Always pee before you leave home...
started by my mum, who has a bladder the size of a walnut. This condition appears to be hereditary.

I know the location of every public loo in town, all the ones in the nicer shops, the pubs who don't make you buy a drink in order to use their loo, the cafes who don't make you buy a sandwich, etc etc.

I have been known, in sheer desperation, to go for a MacPee.

When flying, I always 'go' before I board the plane, and again as soon as my ears detect that we have begun to descend. And probably at least once in between, even on a relatively short flight. My husband laughs at me, but I got the last laugh once. After landing, there was a problem with the plane or the airport (can't remember which) and we sat on the tarmac for three hours. Unable to use the toilets. It was a scheduled flight and he'd made full, gleeful, use of the drinks trolley. I've never seen him fidget so much before or since.
(TheWeeWitch hasn't been here much recently .., Mon 24 Nov 2008, 16:11, 7 replies)

babysitting
My brother was born when I was 14 and so I found my new role in life: babysitter.

He was a right little mummy's boy and used to cry whenever she went out. They used to sneak out of the door so as not to upset him and then I would reassure him that she was upstairs and would be down soon.

He knew something was up but after a while, my kindly persuasion would settle him and he'd start to relax, smile or laugh even.

Then I'd say it:
"Mum's gone out you know".

Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!

Then another 10 minutes of telling him I was only joking, that she really was upstairs and would be down soon, until he settled.

Then I'd say it again.

And so on.
( stopmeandslapme Cometh the hour, cometh your mum, Mon 24 Nov 2008, 16:03, Reply)

Cockgardens and assgloves
My sister and I have a ritual where we try to invent new insults for each other. The standard formula goes naughty word + relatively clean word. Sometimes we celebrate the relatively clean word with a mildly dirty but still cleaner word.

Looking on our Facebook walls, here are some of the most recent ones we've used:
-cockgarden
-assglove
-dudetard
-craploser
-assbutt
-cockmart

Another popular one was asspirate. It has an odd look when you see it on a computer screen, as it looks like some kind of positive word.
(racetraitor has an alibi for, Mon 24 Nov 2008, 15:49, 3 replies)

My dad
occasionally comes out with the weirdest of things.

One of his favourites is "ME MAM! SHE'S JOINED THE HELL'S ANGELS!"

(His mum - my grandmother - is 87.)

It all came to a head when he blurted this out in her company one day.

The worse thing is that I do it now, too.
(Half of Stephen Fry's right buttock pissed on your dog on, Mon 24 Nov 2008, 15:40, 1 reply)

Our family code is to,
NEVER, NEVER, EVER mention:


"THE GAME' we've been playing




*Sorry
(Kip, Mon 24 Nov 2008, 15:38, 5 replies)

reverie
You know the bugle they play to wake up soldiers - I think it's called reverie?

Imagine instead of a bugle you get Reverie sung (screeched) cheerily by your mother, blaringly projected with great vim at the absolute top range of the human voice in exactly the bugle's pitch and rhythm:

"You GoTTA get Up, You goTTa Get UP, YOU GOTTA GET UP in the MorrRRNNnnnning!"

My good god if it had been followed seconds later by the sound of a sniper's shot piercing her skull and dropping her to the floor - we all would have cried big crocodile tears of happiness and wept at the joy of sleep uninterrupted ever again.

but no... no such kindness for us...

This happened Every morning. EVERY Morning.

...

sometimes she would walk through our rooms and keep singing the rest of the bugle part over and over - just a loud piercing "ya ta tatatatata" while beating on pans with a ladle until we couldn't hide beneath pillows or blankets any longer and ...

...

(sob)

I can't go on... never again! the memories ... they haunt me...

(weeping)

but you know I'll do it to my kids =)
( Allisade would love to hear from you, Mon 24 Nov 2008, 15:18, 2 replies)

Farting
If you fart you have to say TAXI. If you fart and someone says sixers before you say taxi they get to hit you six times on the arm.
(Simple Simon, Mon 24 Nov 2008, 15:12, 4 replies)

Burp Secrets
My sister, brother and I have a probably everlasting running war of 'burp secrets'.

That is, tricking someone into leaning in with the expectation of having a super secrety secret divulged, only to be burped at directly into their ear.

As well as getting points for volume and moistness (I believe in one epic 'secret', some food was actually burped out INTO the receiver's ear), you can also factor into the success the disappointment of the receiver. For example, just going 'hey, I have a secret!' is worth fewer points than 'Want to know what I found out about where you REALLY came from?' (ones like this are harder to pull now that my brother, the youngest, is now over the age of six)

I fully plan, as the oldest, to give them each one final burp secret on my deathbed.

Edit: also just remembered about 'fart news'. Aka 'Guess what?!' said loudly and excidedly. 'What?!' expectant and intruiged. '*farts*'

Oh, the hilarity.
(Mr._F is not actually a man- this username is a lie!, Mon 24 Nov 2008, 14:17, 3 replies)

Breaking and entering
Unlike most children at my primary school, we weren't latchkey kids.

Oh no. I think my parents were too skint to get keys cut.

So, instead, when we got home from school, two or three hours or so before the parents (or longer - much longer - if they decided to go on the piss, a regular occurrence, because they were never too skint to do that), we had to break into the house.

Here's how we did it.

We grew up on an estate built in the late 60s/early 70s - the one where they filmed A Clockwork Orange, for film fans.

The main entrance was on a shared balcony on the first floor, but there was a back door at ground level which went into a utility room (effectively the houses were built on stilts because of the threat of flooding from the Thames).

There was a plastic pipe loosely attached to the water outlet from the utility room. So loosely attached that every day after school, whichever of us got home first would poke this pipe through the letterbox (and it's only as a type this that I wonder why the back door had a letterbox at all) and, once we'd got our hand and wrist through there too, whack the door handle a few times until it opened (it was one of those that could be opened from the inside, but not the outside, a bit like a car child-lock in reverse).

And for several years, that's how we got into the house every day after school, until the day that I cut my knee on some glass in the playground and the deputy head had to take me to the local health centre to get stitches put in. I still have a huge scar there thanks to the cack-handed doctor.

Anyway, kind soul that Mr McKenzie was, he insisted on giving me a lift home afterwards.

So there's me and him standing in the garden, and it dawned on me that he wasn't going to disappear until I was safely inside.

Oh well, time to show him the trick with the drainage tube.

I'd like to think he was impressed.

All I know is that my parents were summoned to the school the following day, and a couple of days after that we each got presented with a shiny new key and a nice bit of string to dangle it round our necks.
(Capo, Mon 24 Nov 2008, 14:14, 3 replies)

Anything
and I do mean anything, that has lemon in it, is automatically 'special'. Stems from the time mum made up a pasta sauce recipe, told us it had a special ingredient, and we found lemon zest was that ingredient.

Also, as we have many dogs, there is often dog hair in our food. Since my wee sister is a bit of a pansy, she would always whinge about finding a dog hair in her food. Hence I introduced the 'lucky dog hair' rule. The first person to find a dog hair in their meal has the lucky dog hair, and is thus going to have a good day. I started this when I was 6, and it's still doing strong more than 20 years on. I realised other people don't do it when I pulled out a long hair from a meal at a friend's house recently, and said 'ooh, lucky human hair tonight!'.

That sounds quite repulsive now that I've written it down.
( ascorbate, Mon 24 Nov 2008, 14:00, 1 reply)