There was the time my halfwit nephew tried to wear Bermuda shorts to a family christening because of his 'itchy legs'.

( Pig Bodine., Fri 2 Jun 2017, 20:47, 1 reply)

A rather tame one compared to the ones already here, but I think this will eventually be one for our family
I have a few things that I could add to QOTW from my wifes family history: her great uncle that tried to burn down the local boozer after an argument during a game of shove ha'penny, her own mum who bled her mother’s bank account dry, bugger off and then have the balls to turn up later and try to claim her share of inheritance money, cousin D who may or may not have something to do with a local kiddy fiddling ring and caused him to rather hastily flit to somewhere unknown to everyone in the family. I thought it may be better to start with a more recent and rather tame one involving my own family.

Bit of background for you my mum is a bit of an attention seeking nutcase who always needs someone to be victimising her, whether it be me for being born and ruining her life, the miners’ strike (Lord knows how, my dad was a sparky who worked through it at a different plant- fun fact I thought the strike lasted for 15 years the way she brings up the fact she had to raise three kids up through this), my now ex sister in law for taking my brother away from everyone or bread for suddenly changing somehow to something that she can no longer eat and then forcing her to have an eating disorder with other foods unrelated to bread. The most recent one however seems to have caused the whole of my mother’s side of the family to totally ignore me.

A few weeks ago I was enjoying a rare chance to get out with the kids and bumped into K, one of my mothers friends and the conversation went like this

K:Hi Mon you ok, hows your mum?
Me: I don’t know I haven’t seen her since Christmas…were due another visit soon because it’s my daughters birthday next week
K: What? Dosent she see you every week she fills us in on everything you and the kids are up to, last week she said you couldn’t be at theirs for a barbecue because you were off to the seaside
Me: Erm no we did go to the beach two weeks ago but she hasn’t been in touch. We see her 3 times a year
K: But she only lives a 5 minute walk away don’t you go visit her?
Me: Not really I tried calling down regularly and she asked me to ring next time before we popped down…after countless times of being told to not go see them as she was about to pop out I left it at that.
(After a few more questions I realised that my mum has been updating people on what we are doing by looking at my wifes Facebook Profile (something my other half was well chuffed at).

Later that night I got a call from a rather irate mother of mine for letting her friends know that our family isn’t as close as they thought and I am deliberately trying to drive her into an early grave. A rather flummoxed me replied that I cant believe that she needed to look at social media and create some false idlyic idea that everyone gets along, I also offered to call and see her to sort this out and was shot down again as she was too busy…going camping with my other two brothers and their kids.

I have since been informed that while on that camping trip she informed everyone (including her 3 sisters via telephone) that I had decided to cut them off totally and had done the same with everyone associated with them…thankfully my grandma (dads mum) ignored this as she knows my mum is as mad as a sack of badgers.

Apologies for rambling, I will get back to doing some terrible puns or something later this week
(mon bison powered by magnets, Fri 2 Jun 2017, 12:12, 2 replies)

There was this one time that I came first on qotw
My dad had a weird cousin. A very weird cousin.

He used to go back to Todmorden every summer for his holidays (because tiny northern towns where it is cold and rainy all year round make great summer holiday destinations) and decided he wanted to be buried there, in the graveyard on top of a hillside. Bought his plot, bought his tombstone. Name, date of birth - but of course no date of death.

Went back the next year and saw his own tombstone propping open the church door. A sight that not many people see! He died shortly afterwards and, in line with his instructions, there was no funeral. They just "chucked him in t'soil". And nobody bothered to update the tombstone. So there it sits to this day, slightly slipping down the hillside:

Distant Swipe Relative
Born: 01 01 1940
Died:

As weird in death as he was in life!
( rachelswipe with a fork, Thu 1 Jun 2017, 22:29, 4 replies)

my grandfather on my mothers side was a mean and abusive drunk
Word came that he was in hospital and didnt have much time left, so we jumped in the car and drove 10 hours straight to get there before the old bastard passed away. We got there just in time, and he was conscious but confused as to who we were, after a few minutes the penny dropped and he seemed to perk up a little, then he ushers us all in closer with some urgency, obviously wanting to get something important off his chest with his last dying breaths,
so as we leaned over him on his hospital bed, 10 year old me eager to hear whatever pearls of wisdom he should offer up - he said this...

"There are niggers in this hospital that think they are doctors, and nip whores that think they are nurses" content with that, his eyes shut, and he was gone. completely true story.

R.I.P. Racist In Peace grandpappy!
( R2Dtard Poor kids are as smart as white kids, Wed 7 Jun 2017, 3:15, 2 replies)

Family Scandals?
Kept in the family's candelabra
(horrid, Mon 5 Jun 2017, 12:08, 3 replies)

A Stranger calls.
As children, my parents would take us on various camping holidays to Wales where we would generally laze about the site and play on rope swings over stupidly high river beds etc. Long before health and safety would have put on the fun dampeners. Well, there'd be other people there enjoying themselves and then there was Dom. A lone male in his 40's from Holland who spent the day in a tight pair of Y-fronts and nowt else. He had a pet ferret and would walk it around the site on a lead. My mother in her infinite wisdom took it upon herself to invite Dom to dinner to get to know us. He bought my brother and me a present each. How delightful, we were over the moon. The next day he invited us back to return the favour of dinner. When I say us, I mean just US, my brother and me.
Yes, my mum sent us over there double quick, "he's just foreign, completely harmless", we went into this tiny tent that stunk to high hell of Gawd knows what, this weird albino ferret scurrying about in a sleeping bag, and he was bollock naked. We went back to our mum, who took us back saying we must have made it up!!! Arriving back he was dressed back in his pants and our mum ushered us in apologising for our behaviour. When she was gone he took his pants off again and just sat there looking at us. Luckily he just made us eat biscuits (from a sealed packet thankfully) and have a can of coke. Out of the blue, he says "You can go, you clearly don't want to be here" so we fucking legged it!
So before this hideousness closes, before Dom left the campsite my mum thanks him for being so kind to us, gives him our HOME ADDRESS and says keep in touch! He visited us at home twice but my Dad who had not been aware of my mother's blossoming friendship with a complete stranger didn't allow him to be alone with us EVER! I received a birthday card from him on my 13th birthday which read "Dear 'Bobbinns', Thanks for the memories, Goodbye forever. Dom." As for what memories he has of me is quite a mystery, memories of a little boy being scared to death of a giant, overtanned Dutch bloke who would randomly appear with or without a ghostly ferret with blood red eyes.
When me or my bro bring up Dom to my parents my Dad gets REALLY angry at my Mum and my Mum goes freakishly quiet. It's always fun to bring it out at Christmas. (no real names were used to protect my identity HAHA)
(Bobbinns Wrapped in cotton wool, Fri 2 Jun 2017, 13:44, 2 replies)

Another skeleton
When my grandmother was about 70, there was a knock at her door. A woman was standing there, in her 50's, with long, dyed red hair.

"Is your name Grandma Swipe?" she asked. "Because I'm your half sister from wrong side of t'blanket!"

Turned out my great grandfather had two families, one from mon-thu and a much younger one from fri-sun. He got away with it because his job on the railways meant he worked away from home. Even though they were only FIVE MILES apart.

Guess it answered the question for my grandmother as to what happened to her dad when he walked out for the last time when she was about 16.

The dirty old bastard!
( rachelswipe with a fork, Mon 5 Jun 2017, 9:40, Reply)

We don't talk about my bonkers dad but suffice to say he cut my hand off and Star Trek.

( drimble he'd been white, he'd been black, Fri 2 Jun 2017, 20:40, Reply)

Australia
An great-great-uncle or summink on my Dad's side was given a free one-way ticket Down Under for his part in some dodgy sheep shenanigans in Suffolk. I think he sold a few that belonged to someone else, although he claimed that he didn't do it with any malice, if that's possible etc. Anyway, off he trotted.
So, my folks decided to visit the town where they knew he lived (somewhere near Sydney, I think) and have a dig through the records. On mention of the guy's name the bloke in the Civic Records Office took them outside the building, pointed at a church on the square and said "basically, your relative built that", and there's a stained glass window with his name it and everything. There were a number of other buildings built by him too and he's a bit of a town hero.
So, that's a nice skellington.
( Fray Brentos *mega-belms*, Fri 9 Jun 2017, 14:20, 1 reply)