Rambling ahoy
Fair warning: this post contains no funny to laugh at, no heartwarming to 'aww' at, no tear-jerking to make your eyes red and no tragedy or injustice to cause anger.

Right.

My dad's side of the family is plain weird. As far as I know, it's just my dad and his brother (uncle would be a bit of stretch, we're not close) since my nan and two great-uncles died a few years ago. There's others dotted around the country, including several in the town where I spent most of my life, but I don't know any of them. At all. The weird thing is that there's never been a feud of any kind, or any reason whatsoever for them not to speak, in fact they get on very well when they're forced to speak, they just don't keep in touch. Even if they bump into each other in town, which apparently they do quite regularly, they don't stop and chat. It's genuinely weird to know that there's a load of family living within a few minutes walk that only my dad has ever met, although it does go a long way to explaining why I'm so crap at keeping in touch with people. My mum met a few of the cousins at the funeral of one of the great-uncles and was jaw-dropped to find out that they lived in the same town and my dad had never mentioned it, so she now keeps in touch with them on his behalf. She's trying to research his family tree back as far as it'll go and get in contact with as many of the living relatives as possible. Dad still fails to show any interest. Proof, I guess, that the best way to avoid family feuding is to act like none of them exist, even if you get on perfectly well.

The one exception to the above is dad's cousin Mary who, for reasons best known only to herself, has always insisted on keeping in touch with us. For some reason that nobody's ever been aware of, she chose my mum as her eldest son's godmother, completely ignoring my dad. Oh yeah, and she's a massive cunt. An evil grasping old hag who bleeds everything she can out of her living relatives and steals whatever she can from the dead ones. Nobody can tolerate her for more than five minutes, yet still people feel the need to invite her to weddings and funerals, the only things that ever force my dad's family to gather in one room. She turned up to the funerals of both my grandmas - one was her aunt, so fair enough on that, although the way she blazed through the house after the funeral (I mean, right after the funeral, during the wake) systematically taking everything in sight was enough to piss most people off. Quite how or why she turned up to my other nan's funeral remains a mystery for the ages - presumably she was told about it by my dad or his brother and turned up to see what she could steal. Luckily, somebody predicted this and signs were put up around the house during the wake asking people not to take anything without clearing it with my mum first. This was helpfully enforced by two of my cousins - a police officer and a massive squaddie. Mary went away with just a picture frame and a disappointed look on her face. The worst thing is that people seem to tolerate her: my dad just thinks she's an idiot ("always thick as pigshit, she was" being his exact words), my mum doesn't seem bothered, the rest of the extended family positively love her. It's really just a select few that realise how much of a cunt she is. Actually it's mostly me, my brother and my aunt (my mum's sister, she can even see it from the other side of the family). I will certainly not be shedding a tear for old Mary when she passes on.

There was a bit of a feud, briefly, between my dad and his brother. Lots of stories from my nan about dad's brother and stuff he'd done, said, taken, etc. Lots of mutterings from my dad about sorting him out and disowning him as soon as nan wasn't around. Turned out, after she died, that all of the stories were a load of shite, and she'd said exactly the same to said brother about my dad. We can only assume that it was an attention thing on my nan's part. Of course, dad and his brother are now good friends again.

Should probably stop typing now.
( Dave McF wrote some words on, Sun 15 Nov 2009, 2:59, 1 reply)

I believe it is tradition for a male baby to have two male godparents and one female, and vice versa for a female baby.
(treaclebriggs, Sun 15 Nov 2009, 14:15, closed)