She's not even a relative
but she is my "Aunty Blue" for some reason.

Proper dyed-in-the-wool posh lady in Sydney whose husband made loads and loads on money in shipping, and then died. He'd had a lot of influence in the city which had covered up her oddness (by discreetly paying for it I think), but now she just carries on like before and it's frankly scary to be around.

Visiting from the UK a few years back, we went to visit for the afternoon and she took us to visit her son. Who was on holiday at the time on an island about 2 hours drive and a ferry away.

The drive was bad enough - we had to grab the steering wheel at one point to avoid a bus.

The ferry was even worse - she tried to not pay because her husband had known the owner of the ferry company once.

But the worst bit was the look of horror on her son's face as she turned up at the tiny beach house he was renting with his family and told him we'd come to stay.

He knew nothing of this. Hell, _we_ knew nothing of this. In fact, we soon discovered that if we didn't take the ferry straight back to the mainland in the next half an hour, we'd be stuck there all night sleeping three to a sofa.

We made what apologies we could, and ran for the jetty, leaving him to sort his mother out.

The next day we hid, having told the hotel to pretend we'd left town.
( chthonic, Thu 5 Jul 2007, 17:09, Reply)