My family and other animals part 2
Ah wonderful great Aunt Lowes. Another example of one of the fine branches of lunacy that seem to make up the various aspects of my family tree. Lowes was a character, to say the least - her house when she died was a treasure trove of filth and junk. It was every health and safety inspector's nightmare (or wet dream depending on which angle you look at it from).

Lowes was a product of Edwardian Britain - educated to believe in the Empire and in the sound reasoning of foreign diplomacy that Britain was always right, irrespective of subject matter.

Whilst this might not sound too PC today, she was a charmer - She wasn't authoritarian and there was always a twinkle of mischief in her eye. She just believed that she, being British, was infallible.

So God help the poor bastards that tried to kidnap her. At some stage in the post-war years she went on a cruise (God knows where). The ship pulled in to some small port, and Lowes, being a keen botanist, disappeared off into the surrounding hills. That evening she hadn't returned and the crew on the ship informed the captain. After some fretting and informing the local police, a ransom note arrived to the tune of a couple of hundred pounds for 'the return of the English woman'.

There was little that the captain could do except acquiesce, and so he gathered the money and waited to hear what to do next. Problem was another note arrived, not detailing where the money should go, but lowering the initial demand to one hundred pounds. Thereafter, a small flurry of increasingly desperate notes arrived, each time lowering the price for the Englishwoman. Finally, one arrived asking for one bottle of vodka.

The poor buggers had been so traumatised by their experience with Lowes continually berating their lack of table manners, unwashed hands, slouching, dress, and general demeanour that they had become increasingly desperate to be rid of her.

Pirates capturing Ukrainian and French freighters off the coast of Somalia? Pfffff. If only we still had Aunt Lowes to go and tell them to wash behind their ears - that'd sort them out....
(sugar_tits, Tue 4 Nov 2008, 15:15, Reply)