“I’m just a soul whose intentions are good…Oh Lord, please don’t let me be misunderstood”…

I feel that usually the term ‘eccentric’ is difficult to define. Is it ‘quirky’ or ‘maladjusted’? A harmless, playful slap to the tender cheeks of ‘accepted’ society behaviour, or a disturbed head-first dive into the paddling pool of purest mentalistness?

Whichever of the terms you think apply, then I believe my Old Uncle Cecil might just qualify.

Many’s the time my family and I would spend the weekend at his sparcely furnished gypsy caravan in Stoke On Trent. He lived there despite being worth a veritable mintage after successfully gambling all of the family fortune in 1948 on Hattie Jacques and Liberace to feature in the 1960 Royal Variety performance. His volunteered life of relative poverty was due to his stern belief that money was ‘The only reason Atlantis sank’

As my family would enter his caravan, Uncle Cecil would insist we would all have to ‘Salute the Cardinal’, which was a process that involved pulling our pants and dunghampers down to our ankles before slowly walking round the room and sucking each other’s thumbs, all to the theme tune of ‘The Magic Roundabout’. I must admit it was a bit disconcerting to see my parents take part in this ritual, but I suppose it was all good clean fun and if it prevented Uncle Cecil from wielding ‘Old Mable’ which was a collection of crowbars sellotaped together with meat cleavers and sprayed burgundy (the colour of justice apparently), then it was worth the trouble.

For every single lunch, we would dine hugely on deep fried asparagus coated in tartare sauce and wrapped in a Curly Wurly – apparently this was the only dish capable of ‘fending off the soothsaying Venezuelans’.

Every fourth plate would contain lumps of ground down barbed wire, as he said it give dinner an exciting, ‘Russian Roulette’ feel to it. Unfortunately due to the seating arrangements I was always fourth in line…It took several operations later in life to enable me to speak properly and even now I still set off the metal detectors in airports.

Since 1973 Cecil had decreed that all toilets were the work of ‘Dogmatic pragmatists working for the coconut creatures’, and that the reason there was one in every home was because they were being used for transmitting signals on our ‘movements’ to the Royalist chipmunks on Ursa Minor. Consequently, every time any of us needed to do a ‘Thora Hird’ round his place we would have to squat down and pinch out our loaf on a glass table in the living room whilst Cecil lay underneath it and watched ‘just to make sure there were no demons escaping’.

There was almost a scandal when Cecil was caught inserting his twitching phallus into a ripened, luke warm tortoise on Hearsall Common in 1982, but we all laughed when he explained that he had simply ‘lost his speedboat keys up there’, and that his Cadet training from the African Gorge of Yngwie Malmsteem showed him that this was the most sensitive procedure with which to retrieve jagged items and cause the least distress to the animal. Who were we to argue?

Always security conscious, Cecil would spend his afternoons with his binoculars, ‘keeping an eye’ on the children in the playground across the road. He always seemed to be frantically rummaging through his pockets for something… perhaps a pencil so he could note the registration plates of any suspicious vehicles?

Sadly Cecil is no longer with us. He finally came a cropper when he decided to wage war against ‘The dark spirit world that is represented on earth by Avon Saleswomen’, and insisted on only using weapons ’the good lord provides’. He was discovered three weeks later with seven holes drilled into his head and his cock firmly jammed between two industrial strength power sanders from B&Q.

So yes, he was lovably eccentric, and I do have a few more stories about Old Uncle Cecil…but come on, everybody has an uncle like that….don’t they?


( Pooflake braces for an onslaught..., Fri 31 Oct 2008, 11:25, 4 replies)

Fucking hell!
That was hilarious!

But no pun?

You're slipping, Mr. Flake!

*clicky*
( Boss Keloid Got your mother's maiden name tattooed on my arm, Fri 31 Oct 2008, 11:30, closed)

Click for mentioning Hattie Jacques.
But other than that, words fail me.

They obviously don't fail you.
( girlinthehole, Fri 31 Oct 2008, 11:33, closed)

Click for the song reference
Now I shall read the story.

Update: Christ, that is a beautiful and touching tale as well. Very nicely told, and if I could click a second time I would.
(LongJohnBaldry, Fri 31 Oct 2008, 12:02, closed)

Something occured to me after I'd finished reading this tale.
Those individuals you sometimes see wandering the streets, seemingly laughing to themselves as they pass by; they're not eccentric or crazy, no, they've just had to get out of the office for a while so as to laugh at the latest offering from Pooflake without the entire company questioning what exactly it is they find so funny.

Or is that just me?
( Moey, Fri 31 Oct 2008, 13:50, closed)