My uncle.
He won't be named here, but connoisseurs of curry sauce will know his name.

Besides, he's a total fruitloop. He's not only a huge miser, he's a fundamentalist Christian miser as well. Oh, and certain other family members believe him to be a closeted homosexual, but that's beside the point.

He built his own Land Rover!

...using bits he scrounged from skips, tips, and scrapyards. To his credit, he got all the bits together and actually built the thing on the old 109-inch chassis. Except he forgot to put the right gearbox in. It only has a low-range one and as such won't get above 45 and uses more fuel than Al Gore's mansion. The exhaust must have been wonky as well because it was louder than a Manowar concert (for those who don't know, Manowar hold the world record for being the world's loudest live act - in 1995, they averaged 131dB.)

He also built his own glasses. He simply bought the lenses and then cannibalised a pair of safety specs from his work (in the engineering department at Cambridge University) - you know, the ones with the flared sides - to form the frames.

Okay, so you may think he's just a harmless tinkerer, a genial eccentric? Wrong. Wrong wrong wrong.

In 1981 he signed up to go on this missionary cruise. Basically he and a fellow mound of God Botherers went aboard this ship and sailed to obscure parts of the world with the intent of bringing the good news to remote tribes on Pacific islands. Well, it all went okay until they were sailing somewhere near Polynesia and the engine carked it.

So here they were. Forty or so Christian missionaries on a ship in the middle of nowhere. The nearest piece of dry land had last had Europeans visit it a hundred years before and they'd ended up in the pot. What to do?

Well, where as you or I might suggest, "send up a flare" or "put an SOS or mayday call on the radio" or similar sensible ideas, guess what my Christian, miserly uncle did?

Exorcised it.

Yes. He got his Bible and stood in the engine room and cast the demons of mechanical failure out in the name of Lord Jesus Christ.

It didn't work, so they sent up a flare.

Soon after this trip, he got married and had a son in short order. To be fair, whenever I visited my cousin and his family - my cousin, incidentally, is also a bit of an oddball, he's training to be an undertaker and he's into LARPing - my uncle and aunt's marriage seemed really rather loveless. One theory is that my uncle, being on this ship full of deeply religious young men who were rather desperately lonely was so disgusted at the urges within him that he got married in short order to try to prove to himself that he wasn't unclean or whatever.

Length? I have no idea.

Oh, and it's my first post. *pop*
(Blizzardbeast, Tue 4 Nov 2008, 12:52, 4 replies)

..
LARPing rocks!!!
(Serbitar Has a furry shit canon called Whitey., Tue 4 Nov 2008, 16:19, closed)

....
I've always been interested in a way, to be honest, but I just couldn't take myself seriously.
(Blizzardbeast, Tue 4 Nov 2008, 16:39, closed)

Engine exorcist?
"The Power of Christ Propells you! THE POWER OF CHRIST PROPELLS YOU!"
( uberdeity Wondered why Owen Lars knew of the term "hell" on, Tue 4 Nov 2008, 17:16, closed)

arf.
^^^lol
(dave likes cheese, Tue 4 Nov 2008, 17:23, closed)