The Barnes family
where I grew up, this lot were notorious.

The parents were related before their marriage, I suspect, and the resultant children were, well, odd. The kids were just odd - the parents were well beyond that stage.

Ma Barnes used to chase after random children with a washing pole. Not the line prop, the actual metal pole that you attach the rope to. It even had a lump of concrete on the bottom. Needless to say, she was a big woman, and if she started after you, you ran like hell. To my knowledge she never caught anyone, which is probably the only thing that kept her out of prison.

Pa Barnes was a 'collector'. He collected anything that could conceivably be burned on a fire. Everyone else was content to burn coal or wood, but not Pa Barnes. He had a home-made wheelbarrow which he spent all evening, every evening, pushing around the place collecting things to burn. Bags of rubbish, old bits of fence, tatty old clothes raked out of a bucket, you name it. He only tried to burn an old tyre once, though, I heard the Fire Brigade talked him out of trying it again. The same local Fire Brigade who eventually launched a campaign against this guy. They were called out to chimney fires in his house at least once a week. They made official complaints to the council every time they were out, to no avail.

I could almost understand if they were living in dire poverty. They weren't. Pa Barnes worked for the Inland Revenue and was apparently quite senior there. They had a nice car, the children were clearly well fed and were always decently clothed despite being raised by two oddballs. Pa Barnes just point blank refused to buy coal or logs for the fire.

I wonder now if he was some sort of prototype 'eco-warrior' determined to keep the land fill sites empty. Either that, or he was just nuts.
(TheWeeWitch hasn't been here much recently .., Mon 3 Nov 2008, 15:26, Reply)