Hot Uncle
Amongst the many / varied fruitcakes that constitute my family, Uncle George stands out as a particularly....interesting case. He's a chemistry teacher, and his main eccentricity is his desire to do entertaining experiments with household appliances. His best moment so far was his (unbidden) experiment, designed to illustrate his ideas about biofuels. The great man decided to pour cooking oil in to my mum's toaster and switch in on. One fire extinguisher later, and the nephews are convinced that their uncle is the greatest in the world. My mum, on the other hand, is working out how to have him deported.
(incongruous, Sat 7 Jul 2007, 16:37, Reply)

My grandad
died in 1983, two years before I was born, at the ripe old age of 65. This makes me sad because he sounds like an absolute legend and I'd have loved to meet him:

He was in Italy during the war, and was stung by a jellyfish. He had injections for a week and was the first person in our family to taste proper Italian pizza. Then they got captured by the Germans and put in a POW camp somewhere in Saxony.

From which my grandad escaped, on the back of a fire engine.

In his later years he preferred to spend his time eating my dad's Easter eggs (my dad is not a chocolate fan), drinking, smoking, playing bingo, buying LPs with naked ladies on the front and watching Scooby-Doo. He was also a DIY genius, which luckily he passed on to my dad, along with his toolbox and a couple of cars.

On the other hand, I have two grandparents still living:

Grandma: Irish Catholic, loves the Pope (the dead pope, she says the new one is evil looking), convinced me my grandad was the Pope when I was very little, mad old cat lady, and has about 4679464947956749 ornaments (little houses, cats, ballet dancers etc) which need dusting on a daily basis. Of her 7 grandchildren, she sees me (21, so middle grandchild; the rest are 6, 13, 13, 31, 35 and 42) the least as I'm away from home most of the year and when I am at home we live about 50 miles away. As such, time has kind of stopped for her as far as my age is concerned: one minute she'll be raving about how sad it is that I'm all grown up and living in Italy ("you were such a nice little girl" being a favourite - so what am I now?), and the next freaking out that I'm allowed to go shopping on my own in (relatively small) Cardiff because I'm only a little girl. This is because I got fed up with my mum and grandma in M&S looking at dresses when I was four and sat down without them noticing and got into a shit-ton of trouble... and 17 years later granny is still convinced some paedo is about to abduct me. No amount of me telling her I'm a little too old to be worried about it will convince her. Also, she has got to the old-person stage where they don't care what anyone thinks any more, so if she thinks something about you she will say it. As such, me, my aunt and my cousin have been told we are too fat, my aunt has been told she smells, and my little cousin's dad has been told he is a brute.

Grandad: An interesting combination of Alf Garnett (looks), Victor Meldrew (spies on the neighbours), Rab C Nesbitt (clothing) and Father Jack (fondness for telling people to fuck off, including anyone on TV he disagrees with). Socialist (will only buy the Mirror). Looks like a little old French man, because his dad was from Marseille. Hates women, and treats my nan as his personal nurse. Shame in that case that he has two granddaughters, who he more or less ignores. Lives on boiled sweets and soup from the tin. Sadly, these days he is pretty much senile and doesn't remember who anyone is, plus has terminal cancer. Not good.

You do not talk about politics in my family; everyone except my parents are mad Welsh socialists. (Well, they are Welsh, just not socialists).

My dad is obsessed with family tree research, thanks to all these drivellous sites he's found and us being one of the only households in the family with internets. So far he's traced back to find out my great-great-great-great grandfather owned a brothel in Swansea, and can't get back any further on the French side because he doesn't speak French and I refused to help.

So far the funniest bit has been him correcting anyone who calls him English, and then finding out both his parents were born in Bexleyheath.

He has four old and scary aunties: the kind that pinch your cheeks and say you're looking thin and need to eat more. I think he's scared of them too because we virtually never see them: so for me there are usually five minutes of "Doris... no, she's over there, Val... no, she lives up the valleys, Vi... yes... must be" and then occasionally being told off for not knowing who they or other random relatives I haven't seen since I was five were. Grandma's funeral was fun.
( Maladicta, Sat 7 Jul 2007, 16:03, Reply)

Loons
My 65 year old aunt is getting worse as she gets older. She recently went into a furniture shop far from her home town, accosted a sales girl, pointed towards a coffee table, and demanded of the girl "Can you tell me if that table would match my living room?" The girl nearly pissed herself laughing and had to run into the office. My aunt left, muttering about "rudeness".
(drfeck pissshitfuck, Sat 7 Jul 2007, 15:32, Reply)

One Particular grandmother Christmas
My grandmothers downward spiral into dementia happened so quickly and this question of the week reminded me of one particular Christmas where she was given all her presents first then told everyone she was getting theirs, she left the room for what felt like ages and eventually appeared with a huge smile on her aged face. Her present for me was a pack of felt tip pens (I at this time would have been very late teens/early 20 and I didn’t really do as much colouring in as I used to) my mother on the other hand was presented with an oven glove she had just given to my grandmother minutes before.

It seems she left the room to find anything she could to give to people and when she ran out of items she simply rewrapped the presents she’d just been given. I have a million stories about my grandmother but I have always remembered that particular Christmas because of the sheer awkwardness in the room as people opened their present and smiled a weary smile at her.

All my other grandparents have passed away but my grandmother still marches on, her life-force stronger than ever. Not only am I convinced that she will out live me but I’m pretty sure that when all life on this planet is gone my grandmother will still be there … probably doing her ironing.
(Sub-Lingual Hates You, Sat 7 Jul 2007, 15:21, Reply)

Mum's brother
Aged 12, first visit to India. Wondering why I've never really heard much about my mum's older brother and his family, especially as they seem so normal. Then a few days later at one of those massive, nauseating weddings I sit in wonder at the amount of opium my uncle and his wife consume. Their farm is close to the spot near the river where dead bodies are cremated before putting the ashes into the water the next day. People leave food out for the 'spirits' which my uncle's kids would often happily eat. I found this out when I saw them checking out the latest cremation, putting the charred skull onto a stick and running around with it. Years later when we were going through some old photos I realised one of their green fields was chock full of the most luxurious cannibis plants you've ever seen, which are still there. I'm thinking of setting up a package holiday company to my uncle's farm.
(bonjelafiend, Sat 7 Jul 2007, 14:24, Reply)

Great Uncle Stanley...
...was a hippie thirty years before anyone else.

We don't see much of him really, but he turns up out of the blue every so often, such as when I was born, when he came to massage my feet, apparently. From what I remember of him in more recent visits he is a nice man, very intelligent, and certainly unique.

He's a "philosopher, mystic, cereologist and elder", now in his 90s, living in Glastonbury with his Icelandic lover. He's an expert on crop circles and butterflies.

Link to him here:
www.isleofavalon.co.uk/messenger.html
(Richard of York gained battles in vain, Sat 7 Jul 2007, 13:57, Reply)

"Don't eat ice cream after your chips, you'll be sick."
What the fuck is my nana on about?

My little brother's terrified of her.
( Reid got it going on like Donkey Kong, Sat 7 Jul 2007, 13:36, Reply)

Maltesers anyone?
My grandmother's slow descent into senile dementia eventually culminated in her being incarcerated into a residential "retirement community". Up until then she had been doing all the usual senile things - putting food in the refrigerator expecting it to cook, leaving doors open, getting lost on the way home from the local village shop and ending up three miles into forestry commission land.

Sadly, being put it a home only served to accelerate her dementia. I believe the lowest point was when she took to shitting in the fruit bowl in her bedroom. Apparently the resulting pellet-shaped excrement looked just like chocolate pieces and she would offer them around to members of the staff.

I'm sure people who work in old people's home see this sort of thing (and worse) all the time, but it was quite a shock to find our once dignified and more than a little stuck up grandmother doing this sort of thing.
(McFlooble, Sat 7 Jul 2007, 9:32, Reply)

I wouldn't say that my Dad's crazy, as such.
But he certainly does have some unusual ideas. Including thinking up some rather interesting money-making schemes.

My favourite of which is his plan to set up a business shearing penguins. He hasn't put too much effort into the planning stage yet, beyond recognising that it would be smarter to go for a larger breed of penguin, rather than the small fairy penguins he can find locally. The logic behind the penguin shearing is that penguins can clearly keep themselves warm in very cold climates, and that therefore their fur will make for effective fillings for doonas/duvets.


Also quite good is his desire to start his own cult, knowing that all you need to do this is be charismatic and have something new and different, worshiping-wise, to offer the masses. The object of worship has undergone a few changes, but his most recent idea is "the gap". Yes, the small space that exists between a train and the platform. And I have to say, he does have the knack to make it seem like worshiping the gap is a sensible idea. I wouldn't be surprised to hear in years to come of crazy cultists literally throwing themselves at the mercy of the gap.
(teff, Sat 7 Jul 2007, 9:08, Reply)

granny's special jello mold
You know that Jello mold on the dessert table at the Christmas family gathering? The green one with those chunks of something in it? Apple, you say? Heck no! it'd be a dessert then. This is a side dish because those white chunks are potato!
(brian1121, Sat 7 Jul 2007, 8:05, Reply)

My uncle
My uncle is a lovely, lovely guy but he always manages to do the most stupid things. One day he gets on a train, finds a seat and notices a brief case, umbrella and coat opposite him. Assuming someone has left them behind he deiceds to do a good deed. With the train just about to depart he opens the window and stuffs the brief case, umbrella and coat out the window. He settles back into his seat and starts reading his paper. Just then a guy comes back from the toilet, looks around him and asks my uncle if he has seen his stuff. My uncle just shakes his head and raises his newspaper so he can hide behind it.

He once mistook a tube of deepheat for toothpaste. That was hilarious.

And when he was courting my aunty he tried to impress her by showing how fast he could run. He ran straight into a wire that caught him smack in the mouth. It lifted him clean off his feet and ripped two teeth out which are still missing to this day.

I would go on but I know he reads this site now and then and I don't want to embarass him too much.
(Creamy Discharge Freeze Motherstickers, this is a fuck up, Sat 7 Jul 2007, 6:35, Reply)

Uh huh

( enoughblueskyforsailorstrousers, Sat 7 Jul 2007, 2:34, Reply)

My great grandma
.....still had the tape on her windows, ( to stop them shattring from bomb blasts ) 20 years after the war ended, she also used to talk back to the radio announcer and she would put a cloth over the radio so he couldn't see her when she had a tin bath in front of the fire.

Complete nutter.......
(MrPhoto, Sat 7 Jul 2007, 1:55, Reply)

Jack the ripper...ooooohh... the ripper...
How apt this question is, as it allows me to proudly point out that I am related to the late Screaming Lord Sutch of the Monster Raving Loony Party.

Turns out his (albeit distant) inclusion in the family fold was one of those interesting stories that never got told... until he hung himself.
(Supacherry, Sat 7 Jul 2007, 1:48, Reply)

My Great... Aunt?
Oh it's pretty much your standard story, I'm sure you've heard dozens like it. You know, boy is born in Dublin, boy becomes man, man becomes Roman Catholic priest, priest moves to New York, priest falls in love with lesbian housekeeper, then at age 65 priest becomes a woman and lives happily ever after. That old chestnut.

Ladies and gentlemen, I present Denise (née Dennis) J. Brennan. I've scoured the internet and family photos for an image of her but to no avail. I am yet to meet the legend herself in person but a recent quote passed on from her brother is as follows:

(Upon having planning permission revoked for a jetty) "First I cut off my dick, now they want me to cut off my dock!"

(Full article at www.pfc.org.uk/node/726)
(Kappa Trackies, Sat 7 Jul 2007, 1:26, Reply)

They let him drive?!
Some years back I went to a family funeral. My parents managed to get a lift from a cousin, but I ended up in the back of my 85 year old uncles car.

As we set off *in the funeral procession* he was moaning that they were driving "too fucking slow". When we finally got to the main road and sped up, he started overtaking the other cars, narrowly missing numerous oncoming vehicles until he got right up behind the hearse.

I was sat in the back wedged between my uncles two terrified daughters and was convinced we would be the next funeral.

We got to the crem, and as he made a valiant effort to park his ford escort in a space barely big enough to accommodate a small town he hit the accelerator instead of the brake, hurtled over the grass verge and wiped out an innocent bench.

First time my dad ever heard me swear.

I got the bus home.
(BooEvil, Sat 7 Jul 2007, 0:12, Reply)

I love my mad granny.
She can drive a tractor, and hold her breath for over two minutes underwater, and she eats curry in bed and slides down the bannisters. She sings 'all the ducks are swimming in the sewage' instead of 'in the water'. I want to be like her when I grow up. :D

I fear b3ta will turn me into the weird one in the family. I've already managed to shock my mum by saying, "Oh well, at least I'm not Ken Bigley" when I had a bad day. I didn't think she'd be that bothered, especially since it was she who invented the Frozen Chicken Nuggets Shoved Up Yer Bum song that is now legendary in our family.

All my family think I am a goth, despite my repeated attempts to explain otherwise and that real goths would beat me up if I said I was one.
( Bob Todd whee, Fri 6 Jul 2007, 23:59, Reply)

My wife, mad as a box of ferrets
She is so insane, she now thinks I'm insane.

She regularly come to bed and forgets to bring her gasmask, or accuses me of being mad for wearing it in the shower.

Last week she sent the kids to school and forgot to dress them properly. I had to drive back and help them into their thongs in the middle of the playground.

I'd been out nice and early one Sunday collecting cats for lunch, put them in the freezer, only for her to let them out again.

It goes on and on .. I swear she is getting crazier.
(flipper is going to die in a bizarre gardenning accident, Fri 6 Jul 2007, 23:48, Reply)

Nan
She was great.
Everyone made sure not to sit next to her if a boxing match was on the TV. She was a big fan and used to sit there and throw punches as she watched. I learnt the hard way and had the bruises to show.

good times :)
( Terry Oblong There's nobody here but us chickens on, Fri 6 Jul 2007, 23:30, Reply)

My great uncle George...
...fancied himself as a bit of a dab hand at all things practical, especially when it came to cars. He would frequently tell my long-suffering great aunt not to talk to him while he was overtaking on a bend, for instance. He would insist that you should never buy a car unless it had been in the showroom for a month. I don't know why.

The number of weddings he ruined by insisting on being the photographer and forgetting to put the film in...
(eesnahk, Fri 6 Jul 2007, 23:19, Reply)

My post on this great and illustrative topic.
My grandad was a medic in North Africa and Italy during WW2. He came back somewhat.. unhinged, as tends to happen in such situations. He used to send letters to the then-president of Ireland, demanding that the river Shannon (the longest river in said country) be drained and replaced with a giant motorway. he also used to write to the Aga Khan demanding that he be given vast tracts of land for saving his cousin's life. He once decided that he was a marvellous poet, and went writing awful poetry for a while. He gave up on that. He also claimed that he would have gotten a knighthood, had he done any one of numerous things. He was great.
(Smedlorificus I Am The Eater Of Cheese, Fri 6 Jul 2007, 23:16, Reply)

My uncle..
..god bless his soul.

He's a massive racist, and while drunk, feels the need to comment to people of African origin that they're in need of shooting.

I think the local police just know him as "Simon the Racist" at this point and don't particularly see him as a threat..
( The Gentleman Bastard waxing lyrical. ©, Fri 6 Jul 2007, 23:12, Reply)

My mates dad..
Mad as a bag of snakes. Getting a lift home, 4 of us in the back of his Ford Cortina, coming home from a roller disco (remember them? ooo i'd go to one right now!), cira 1984, we were aged about 11, maybe 12, at the traffic lights, he points out a women of african decent and says, as calm as you like

"They're all pink inside"

i think i spat some Umbongo out of my nose.

He could fart in different tones as well, often doing soap themes after a sunday lunch. What a guy!
(TheManofScience, Fri 6 Jul 2007, 22:52, Reply)

I'm Jewish
Do I need to expand any further?
(grandmasterfluffles Come to my Armageddon party on, Fri 6 Jul 2007, 22:42, Reply)

The Stuff of Legends..
My parents are of the slightly older generation; my Mum was 40 when she had me, pretty unusual 25 years ago. My Mum is also very handy with a sewing machine and over the years, supplied my sister and I with the latest “fashions” (when your 12, your 52 year old mother, doesn’t quite “get” fashion) She made herself a pair of trousers, using 4 different types of tartan. Yes, tartan. Not the nice kind of dark tartans, 4 really bright, yellow, green-y ones..
My Mum also loves plants. We had a huge garden, always full of plants, trees, she’d keep them in the bath, the living room, always lots beside the piano (makes them happy apparently)
My Mum is a legend, ALL because of the following incident:
Arrives at our High School, to pick up my sister. Her classmates know what my Mum is like and lock sister in the cupboard till Mum gets out of the car…. Wearing, said tartan trousers, shocking pink socks, with the trousers tucked into them (don’t know why) the most battered pair of trainers (Hi tech ones from around 1988), a woolly body warmer and a t-shirt (thankfully, a normal one) and wanders into the school reception. Spotting that the office staff don’t take good care of the plants, she decides to take them home for some “TLC”. So, she starts to load about 20 plants from the school, into the car. Meanwhile my sisters classmates sit and laugh, while she is still in the cupboard. Eventually they let her out, sister goes down to usher Mum out the school before any MORE of her friends can see her, rushing a 57 year old woman, wearing the most obnoxious pair of trousers, shouting loudly about how these poor plants were all dying. That was nearly 10 years ago and we have tried in vain to dispose of the trousers, but they are my Mums favourite item of clothing. I haven’t let her make me any clothes recently.
I'm sure she's going mad: She recently asked "What are those green things that look like Lemons"
(earplugsdont _work and I'm fed up listening., Fri 6 Jul 2007, 22:24, Reply)

My Nan's mental
Whilst playing with a Nerf in the garden:

Nan: How does it make that noise then Andrew?
Brother: Well basically Nan -
Nan: Cheerie Bee (walks off)
( St. Defenestration The REAL one, Fri 6 Jul 2007, 22:08, Reply)

"That reminds me..."
I was visiting my grandmother while she was on painkillers following an operation. Formerly an artist, she had circulated with a number of artists during her youth in Paris, and she told me a story about the time she met the sculptor Constantin Brancusi. Unfortunately, as she came to the end of the story, her mention of Brancusi would remind her of the very story she was telling
(Radio Free iPods "Fickt nicht mit dem Raketenmensch!", Fri 6 Jul 2007, 21:58, Reply)

The Wood Museum
My dad collects, stores, and reverentially cherishes wood.

OK, let's be specific - planks, or finished surfaces.

Examples - I had a new kitchen fitted recently. Mr and Mrs Disappointed came to visit. There was a spare drawer front which Mr. D cradled longingly then took home.

A window frame, complete with glass, was removed from their neighbours house during recent alterations. Mr D retreived the whole shooting match from the skip.

There is a shed at the bottom of their garden full (comprehensively - you can no longer open the door) of wood, including a hutch last occupied by our Guinea Pigs over 20 years ago.

It is impossible to get behind the shed due to the sheer amount of wood stashed there.

The wood stash has now started to consolidate behind the conservatory.

I ought to add that my 68 year old father is utterly compos mentis in all other respects and held a highly responsible post with the MOD prior to his retirement.

Eventually my father and mother will pass on, because all flesh is as grass.

I will inherit, amongst other things, a fucking enormous amount of utterly useless timber.

I'm seriously considering killing two birds with one stone and sending him off with a viking funeral.
( The Disappointed Caravanner of the year, Fri 6 Jul 2007, 21:31, Reply)

Dysfunctionate
I have 7 uncles and 2 aunts, 6 grandparents and my two parents (with respective new romantic interests, adding up to 4).

My Mum and Dad are fairly normal people in general, although my Mum likes to reply to my text when she's drunk (and ONLY when she's drunk) - with "I bow to your superior knowledge, and the gin I have consumed" - whenever she's wrong. My Dad on the other hand just did a very good job of parenting so not much - but his talks were funny. To date my favourite is "mating".

It goes something like this:
Ok son... A cherry meets a nice cake one day, right? So the cherry gets inside the cake... and sprays his whipped cream all over the place... and then 9 months later (if she doesn't get a finger stuck inside her and have the new creamy inside removed) a little cherry cake pops out.
(I replied to this, "What have cherry cakes got to do with children?". He said:)
"I love cherry cake... so... nothing, I suppose.." and conversation went silent for an hour.

My Uncle Kieran, he's a bit odd, he only visits when he wants something though... and one day, he came round after my Father's motorcycling accident (broken collarbone, about 5 years ago), says "Heey bruv, how you doin' these days?!" and slaps him on the shoulder. My Dad doesn't swear much so to hear him explode was just.. comical.. xD

Uhm, my dear Nan on my mums side of the family, she finds the most pointless excuses to phone up and talk to us... and try to get me to visit so she can fatten me up (this must be her objective! I get offered food from every direction when I see her). I don't really mind though - my Nan is ace :D

My Grandad seems to think he served in the war despite being about 5 at the time. He reminisces about things that never happened and tells me all about it. I don't think he ever actually had a fist fight with Hitler :D
(Tyraen, Fri 6 Jul 2007, 20:46, Reply)