After some careful consideration
I have come to the conclusion that my family are actually the eccentric ones. this was brought home to me after an ex boyfriend was telling some mutual acquaintances about the time he came round for dinner at my family home.

My description of the event in question was 'he came round for dinner, mum had done a nice roast, and the whole family was there'

His description was slightly longer:
'I went round to vitamin c's house for dinner, and her mum had cooked a nice meal. The whole family (all 6 of them) sat down, I was made welcome, and we started eating. Then some flying ants started to enter the room by way of a crack in the floor by the stove. Mummy vitamin c started coaxing the dogs into chasing and eating the ants (at one point, by pretending to eat one herself), but the dogs were rapidly overwhelmed. Ants kept on flooding into the room, a bit like the waves of envelopes in the first Harry Potter film. youngest sister and brother vitamin cs started to try and catch ants in the wooly hats they were for some reason wearing to the dinner table, younger sister ran around screaming, whilst daddy vitamin C got out a book on insect identification, and started trying to work out what genus the ants were. vitamin c was sent upstairs to get the family microscope and a couple of glass slides, so that she and her father could study the ants more closely, whereupon mummy vitamin c got out the hoover and started vacuuming up the ants. so imagine, if you will, 3 people running around, 1 of them screaming, the other two flailing around with bobble hats as though they were butterfly nets, 1 person hoovering anything that moved, 3 dogs yapping and jumping up and down trying to catch their dinner, and 2 scientists in the corner of the room, taking turns to describe the marauding ants to each other.'

I still am not sure what's so odd about this, but needless to say, that relationship didn't last much longer.
( ascorbate, Fri 31 Oct 2008, 12:48, Reply)