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)