Looney Tunes...
I'm one of four kids and each of us seem to have inherited a touch of madness from our daft bat of a mother.

She truly is a character. Early childhood memories include her asking me and my twin brother in an unsuitably loud voice, if we "need to go poo" on a tube train. The looks of pity from the other passengers were even more embarrassing. I believe we were about 5 going on 10. She has an obsession with talking loudly in front of anyone, no matter what is being discussed and yet, also harbours a raging paranoia about the goverment listening in on her conversations (this especially applies on the phone, so when we ring her, it's rather like taking part in a French resistance play).

She won't leave anything of "value" at home when she goes out, so everything (and I mean at least 6 carrier bags of "my papers") have to be hauled into and out of the car everyday.

Her sense of timing is appalling and she is constantly late for everything - the record as it stands is 3 hours for dinner at my house ("I'm coming darling, I just had to do security checks in the house" - wtf?)

It doesn't help that her father was always a bit mental too(apparently his sister went to the loony bin). She slags off the royal family, the upper classes and the Tories something rotten, but speaks with the most delightfully posh English accent, perfect pronunciation, diction and all.

She mostly accepts my job at the morgue as a "passing fancy", even after my 8-year post there, and still insists that my classical education is really what I should be honouring. "You'll make a beautiful singer and pianist one day. Why don't you leave your job darling?" Yeah alright ma, I'll leave my job that gave me a house with it, just so I can sing bloody arias in some stuffy old theatre and plonk on the ivories reading Chopin badly.

My older brother and older sister have an arabic father and I swear they inherited new barmy attributes from him when they were born. They both call me and my twin Yon-Hair Yaney Ganey (me) and Yon Duma (my twin) and occasionally whilst having a regular conversation with us, break off into unfathomable Arabic nonsense as if telling us off, and then proceed to violently but comically whack us round the heads. I don't understand any of it but it makes me laugh.

My dad is the only one who seems to be slightly normal, despite having a horrific motorbike accident when he was 19, suffering severe brain damage, being in a coma for 6 weeks and having to relearn emotions and speech.

Mr Tubs is my daily laughter tap. He thinks he's a terminator. I thought he was joking when he told me this quite proudly, but he really wasn't. Even when he was a small person, he thought he was a robot. It cracks me up laughing when I talk to him. He never gets emotional or anything. It's like having my own Arnie. He thinks my lot are all barking. But I think he's jealous...

I'm so lucky to have all these lunatics in my life. Eccentricity should always be celebrated. It's a wonderful trait to posess, or even better, to observe.

Hooray for the crazies!!
(HappyBoofy, Fri 31 Oct 2008, 13:05, Reply)