Hausfraus.
When piglet was indeed of recent vintage we took him to Malgrat (as previously stated a last resort if you will) for a nice quiet holiday. It had been a hard day travelling for him and as soon as he fell asleep we put him to bed and settled down for a some peace.

Unfortunately some young German skinheads decided that it was time to wake up and prepare for a night out by playing some proto Rammstein and singing raucously and very gutturally at the top of their tuneless teenage voices. So I marched out onto the balcony and by a mixture of mime and piss-poor German conveyed that my very young child was sleeping. It was brilliant. The heavily tattooed, noisy thugs immediately apologised, shushed all their friends and turned the music off. The next day they sought us out by the pool and had drinks and a good chat.Lovely chaps. They were all engineering students celebrating passing some exams or other.

To sum up: Thank you German mothers for bringing up your sons properly. It made my holiday.
(porkylips looks better as the sun goes down., Thu 11 Feb 2010, 22:15, 3 replies)

Cuba,,
,,I went to Cuba a few years ago, to Guantanamo. Not the US base, but the area around it.

My mum's words of wisdom?

'Be careful if you go near that american base. You do go a bit middle-eastern looking in the sun and you know how stupid americans are.'

What?
(inflateable, Thu 11 Feb 2010, 22:01, 5 replies)

Blast!
When something used to provoke my mother to the level of anger that would make most people swear, she would simply angrily say "Oh blast!", and then hurridly apologise.

This puzzled me for some time, until one day I asked her why she apologised - she explained that it wasn't the word that she was apologising for, more rather the vented anger/frustration that it represented and to reassure me that it wasn't directed at me.

:)
(comrade^, Thu 11 Feb 2010, 21:56, Reply)

never underestimate how oblivious mothers can pretend to be
my last boyfriend was a upright, straight thinking catholic lad who didn't drink much, didn't do drugs and had about *nil* personality

my current boyfriend is a dirty layabout and a recreational drug user. he is also incredibly interesting, perceptive and ... actually fun to be around? not that im saying drink and drugs equals fun. im saying that id rather be with someone i liked than someone who was an upstanding citizen and a law abider.

my mum has an interesting way of dealing with this switch around... by asking when im going to invite my last boyfriend round for tea. how about ... never? considering we broke up two nearly three years ago and have barely spoken since.
(ladyintheradiator, Thu 11 Feb 2010, 21:40, 1 reply)

How never to have another motorcycle crash ever
My mum is usally pretty down to earth, and is quite understanding in most situations. I've been quite accident prone all my life and have probably more accidents than hot dinners. I was 21 at the time and had passed my motorbike test pretty much one year previous. Some cock of a driver, with no insurance, licence, tax, or a legal car for that matter decided upon themselves to U-turn in the road from traffic that wasn't moving. he clipped the back end of the bike and sent me flying. only going about 15mph but the damage was quite extensive. broke arm, fingers, leg, toes, concussion, the works. Got to hospital and my best mate had been caled and was waiting for me in A&E. Lots of people runing around checking my pulse, levels of abger etc.... I got shut up quite quickly, the thing i remember most about all of this shitstorm is my mum. My lovely concerned mother came running through the door in tears, to see me on a trolley looking very injured and sorry for myself. the only thing that sticks out in my mind is rather elaborate, katie price style PINK VELOUR FUCKING TRACKSUIT she was wearing. I'm sure this the only time she's worn it. Apart from the embarresment of my mum in the pinkest (bright pink, not baby pink), velourist bloody tracksuit i have ever seen. It probably served as the best way of taking my mind of the excruciating pain of the left hand side of my body. I laughed all the way through the mountain of stitches that went into me that day.

Thanks Mum. You are an expert in pain relief.
(Aamen Hammer is straining, Thu 11 Feb 2010, 21:38, 3 replies)

100 Years Old
When I was six, my mum told me she was 100 years old. I was very impressed: she looked younger than my grandmum, but she was much, much older! So I told all my friends about her age.

My mum was mortified when she learned what I had been saying, and I was embarrassed when I learned it wasn't true. But instead of punishing me, she took me into her confidence and whispered that she was actually 29 years old. I had doubts about her new line, and I didn't want to be known in the neighborhood as the kid who couldn't keep his mum's age straight, so I kept age 29 in strictest confidence.
(Perv With A Dog had his eyes pecked out by scrub jays on, Thu 11 Feb 2010, 21:01, 3 replies)

She is ace
Let me tell you about my mum, she is a fairly normal mum. Not batty or anything... she is just simply my mum. She is not the sharpest tool in the box and has brought up 3 and a half kids and considering what she went through. Its the half kid that i will tell you about...

I used to like my grandparents until my mum told me this story. Anyway, my mum had a boyfriend when she was 17/18 and unfortunatly became pregnant.
Of course this was too much scandel for her parents and the fact that they hated the father, so they made her give her up for adoption.
Over the years my my mum tried to track her daughter down but failed time and time again, eventually giving up.

Then, several years ago my mum got a letter "Dear Mummy Fishbone... i think I am your daugther." A few weeks later they met up and a few weeks after that I met my half-sister who is a spitting image of my mum.

Because of that, my mum told us show vowed to bring us up differently. She has been patient as a saint and we have all grown up in a relaxed loving household and dealt with any of the crap us kids threw her way... As I said, she is a simple mum, but she is my mum and she is ace :o)
(Fishbone-didi, Thu 11 Feb 2010, 20:40, 2 replies)

My mum causes my most embarassing moment and I'm not present.
When I was little (!) I had some pipes relaid so I wouldn't end up pissing sideways. This also meant a bit of cosmetic alteration. Fast forward 30 years and a friend has taken her small child to show my mother. In amongst the child health conversation my mum says "As you know JVZ is circumcised." She didn't up to that point and found it highly amusing when she told me. Suppose I should be grateful I wasn't there or I'd probably have been told to drop my trousers for her to have a look.
A few years later another friend is in the diary to visit mum, this time with me there. Before she arrives I ask for a certain subject lost to memory not to be mentioned. "I'd never say anything to embarass you". she said. When reminded of what she had said on a previous occasion she said "I thought you would have told her." When??
(jvz, Thu 11 Feb 2010, 20:33, Reply)

Mum
My Mum always told me to keep away from Ginger people cos they were dangerous, she said Red means danger!! I'm 48 now and still scared of Ginger people
(gooner045, Thu 11 Feb 2010, 20:18, 3 replies)

Too ugly.
Was visiting the rents this Monday passed. We were talking about a boy that used to live down the road from us. It's nice to say he was a bit special. The conversation went along the lines of.

Mum: Oooh you remember dippy Jonathan? I was talking to him on the bus the other day and he seems good now but he was having a bit of trouble with his girlfriend.

My Younger Brother: What! I can't believe he has a girlfriend. He was a complete tard. How can he have a girlfriend and I don't. I am good enough for that.

Mum: Yeah apparently she is lovely. I think she said he was blind too.

My younger brother stomps off in a huff. I am pissing myself laughing in a corner. My mum had not realised that she had just used the greatest put down I had ever heard.

My brother standing at the top of the stairs screaming at me for laughing.

My Younger Brother: Oh thats fucking brilliant. Not only has he got a girlfriend but she is blind aswell. I can't even get a fucking blind girlfriend. Brilliant.

My mum still not realising what is going on smiles and continues the chat on another topic involving cats and a dead bird.
( Mr. Street, Thu 11 Feb 2010, 20:17, Reply)

My mum the booze hounding bad example
Ahh now my mother (much like my father) has always tried her best to be a bad example, not for her the twin set and pearls.

Twas about 15 years ago and the family was on holiday in the wonderful (by which i mean poxy) spanish town of Salou and we were spending a night in a bar doing a sixties music quiz. Being of the requisite age group my parents were doing quite well and were frequently winning a "spot prize" of a shot of some unknown liquor. Being already somewhat lubricated my mother was failing to follow the golden rule (don't drink any clear spirit that has stuff floating in the bottle, a lizard in this instance if i recall).

Some hours later imagine the scene as my teenage sister and i are walking back to the apartment with my mother unsteadily running about like a loon, leaping on wall and over bollards giggling like a mong. In a final act of drunken lunacy on the stairs down to the apartment my mother is sliding down the stairs using the wall to support herself laughing like the drain of proverb and loudly shushing the frankly silent family before delivering the coup de grace by collapsing in the doorway and piddling herself. From this point on my mother lost some credibility when it came to dissapproving mine and my sisters teenage dabblings with alcohol.

Lovely woman, but a bugger when she's drunk
( Rhubarb_Triangle, Thu 11 Feb 2010, 20:11, 4 replies)

Oooh I can feel another African tale coming on….
It’s a sad fact that despite leading a varied and interesting existence probably the single notable achievement of my life on a global scale has to do with driving. Specifically driving a Land Rover Discovery all the way around Africa, and without actually running anything over. If there were a Guinness Book of Records entry for the first person to drive a Land Rover Discovery around Africa my name would be up there in lights.

Now all this arduous driving meant that by the time I’d got to South Africa I pretty much knew what I was doing driving-wise (despite a shaky start in which I rolled my first Land Rover in Spain on Day 1 of the trip). So mum probably thought it was safe for her to pop over and join me for a trip to the mountainous country of Lesotho.

You know what mum’s are like about ‘advice’ – but she surprised me by not once criticising my driving as we drove up from Cape Town. As we got close to the border we stayed a night at a Tigerskloof farm near Kokstadt (sic) where Peter, the owner turned out to be a real Landy enthusiast – he loved my Disco which is of course an ex-Camel Trophy car because I just love to keep a low profile when I travel. He had also, as it turned out, worked as a missionary in Lesotho, and when I asked for route advice he gave me an appraising look and then started drawing a map…

So it was that a couple of days later we found ourselves on a road that was fast deteriorating into rocks as we began to climb the Matebeng pass. The trail wound its way up and down mountain sides, passing the remains of the winter snows still clinging to the verges. Lesotho is over 1000m above sea level at it's lowest point, and has the highest average altitude for any country in the world, and the fact that there were any roads at all struck me as amazing.

The smart locals were happily getting around on foot, or using the sturdy Basotho ponies favoured for their sure footedness and stamina. Some of them seemed to make better time across the mountains than the Camel...

After four hours and forty kilometres (mostly in low ratio) we finally descended to the level of the Orange River which we forded with ease, passing the washed away remains of a substantial concrete bridge. I had thought that we were over the worst, but the road now changed in character.

Ahead was a track that climbed straight up the cliff ahead of me. This was the mother of all ascents – not for this road the nice switch backs of the pass behind. Oh no – this was a single dangerously steep ledge cut into the towering cliff, rising hundreds of meters in a straight line with a sheer drop straight into the ravine below. I sized this up from the bottom, and decided that although it appeared impassable the fact that I had met two Landcruisers coming the other way meant that it had to be passable (I only later pondered the fact that they had only come down, not up the track). So I took a deep breath, trusted to fate and a new set of All-Terrain tyres, and began to force my way steadily up in high ratio second.

In truth this was probably the most dangerous part of my entire trip (including rolling the first Landy). If I’d been coming down the hill I could have accelerated into any skid to regain traction, but if I slipped back on the loose scree strewn in my path my only option would be to pop the clutch and try to steer into the cliff without bouncing back into the void. Obviously I didn’t want to scare my mum who was looking distinctly anxious, but to be honest I was concentrating totally on finding the best path for each of my 4 wheels as we scrabbled for traction. Ahead was large boulder that I would need to swing my front left tyre past with a couple of inches to spare. And bless me if mum didn’t finally crack… “Watch out for that rock!” I laugh now, but at the time all I could do was utter “Muuuum “ in my best impersonation of Kevin the teenager. Anyway we got to the top with only minor damage to my seat covers, but I’ve got to hand it to my mum – she really does pick her moments.

Length? 18 months and 70,000km
(strongp, Thu 11 Feb 2010, 19:53, Reply)

[pearoast] Wet dreams and bedsheets
When I was about 10, me and my mum were discussing wet-dreams (as you do). She told me it was a natural thing to happen, and if I ever 'soiled' my bedsheets, she'd not hold it against me in any way and say absolutely nothing about it.

I'm sure that has helped greatly in me not developing guilty feelings associated with ejaculation.

Thanks mum, you're a star!
( mistaspakkaman and the inedible shifting caterpillars, Thu 11 Feb 2010, 19:41, 1 reply)

Shouldn't we
carry them around for 9 months when we have grown up a bit? That might ease the guilt a tad.
(roysin, Thu 11 Feb 2010, 19:40, 2 replies)

Not a good one.
Not much to say bar a chuffin ace mum, those 11 years were the best.

She lost her battle with cancer in February 1995.

I was coming home from chior when we found out.

I will never forgive myself for not being there to say bye.
( hooker1uk Filth monger of the lowest degree!, Thu 11 Feb 2010, 18:51, 6 replies)

All memories lead to mum
All memeories of being under 13 remind me of my mum, even if they have nothing to do with her.

Thinking of being young = Mum

Am I the only one??
(Dwarfsmuggler Has hogtied Snow White, Thu 11 Feb 2010, 18:15, Reply)

Cycle of silliness
Statistically, the vast majority of us end up repeating everything our parents did. We just can't help it. They way they do things is just they way that things SHOULD be done.

For example, my mother keeps her kitchen strictly organised with metalware [saucepans, baking trays etc] in one cupboard, glassware/ceramics [casserole dishes and serving dishes, not glasses, which are kept in another cupboard with the mugs] in another, and plastics [tupperware, mixing bowls etc.] in a third. It's always been this way. That is how a kitchen WORKS. And I cannot help myself from repeating this system in my own kitchen, despite me not having enough cupboards for all the different categories of kitchen implements. [I make do by having a saucepan SHELF].

Similarly, I grew up in a household with dogs and cats, and so would never DREAM of storing food in a cupboard below waist-level. Nor ever ever ever leaving food uncovered, or putting a plate of food on the floor for a minute while I get a drink or whatever. Even now, in my pet-less flat where I'm the sole occupant, I carefully clear a space on the tall bookshelf to park my plate if I want to leave it unattended even for a second or two. the echoes of my mum laughing "it's your own bloody fault!" when i was crying because the cat had eaten my sausage for tea is still too loud in my head to ignore.

Other things get passed down: I always, ALWAYS stir the butter and pepper into the sunday-dinner cabbage with a kitchen knife. And I do this because mum always did, and SHE did it because HER mum always did.
Books are arranged on shelves in author blocks, and vague genre-order, but size-order ALWAYS takes priority [tall books at the edges, shorter/smaller books in the middle of the shelves].
Scraps of coloured paper, broken crayons and other stationery items are obsessively hoarded, to be brought out with the massive bottle of PVA glue whenever a birthday card is to be made. I still do this, even though now i'm in my 20s.

Sometimes it's really small things that stick with you for the rest of your life. I never eat Lion bars, because once when I was a kid, mum told me they had nuts in. Now i just can't bring myself to eat them even though i know this isn't true.

Or the time, when I was about 6 and was getting the sniffles, she told me that I was getting a cold because I'd been drinking out of damp glasses. EIGHTEEN years later, and I STILL carefully dry a glass before I fill it with a drink, even though I now KNOW that she was just taking the piss.

Eating "nute and frut" chocolate, or nipping to the Chippy for a round of "chish and fips", or the sunday ritual of "wog dalking" in the woods, these are all normal parts of my vocabulary thanks to my mum.

I can't wait until I have my own kids, so I can pass on the catalogue of weirdness and silliness to them too. And top of my list is teaching them to sing "Window the in doggy, that is much how", just the way my mum taught me. (it wasn't til i got into primary school, that I realised everyone else sang it backwards!)


_{*sings* window the in doggy that is much how, tail waggly the with one the! Window the in doggy that is much how. Sale for doggys that hope do I!}
( Seventh is somewhat subdued, Thu 11 Feb 2010, 17:55, 9 replies)

You might think of me as a bit of a bender....
You created me Mom so I guess you're to blame
For the love that I feel just from hearing your name
You're as tender as corned beef and as warm as pastrami
I love my Mommy :D

Pic of card
( Jeccius Steam Borderlands 2 junkie, Thu 11 Feb 2010, 17:54, 9 replies)

Me mam, with me dad the Catalyst.
...me mum's quite normal compared to some of the things I've read on here so far. She's protective of her family, a good organizer and a good teacher to boot (teaching assistant to be exact, but she's done it for years before she was officially paid for it). She regularly babysits me daughter for me and has taught her basic counting and reading skills and a few welsh songs (which freaked the wife out no end as our 2 year old started talking welsh to us).

What I tend to find is she goes a bit mental only when me dad's involved. She's the quite normal sense of humour person, while my dad tries to find any way he can to embarrass or have a laugh with her. A few examples;

Every time he sticks channel Dave on she goes into a fit. He's seen every episode of "Top Gear", and the meer mention of Dave sends her into tsunami style fits.

Temporary alarm clock; me dad installed a metal dinner tray and wooden spoon into the aerospace immediately beside my sleeping mother's ear one morning, the alarm clock gloriously kicking in with me dad shouting "WAKEY WAKEY!" while banging the fucker into oblivion. She was livid for a week after that. (was a qotw answer a few weeks back if I recall).

Mum and dad, walking down the road towards the school where she works. Me mum spots a school bus full of kids and teachers heading towards them. Mum says "Don't do anything stupid now, there's a load of kids from the school driving past...."
Worst thing she could have said. He grabs her hand, starts to pretend to be a gorilla and as the bus goes parallel with them all the kids look down to see me dad stooped low while looking up at them, pulling the biggest mong face he could muster while waving to the bus with his free hand. It took weeks for her to live that one down.

Still, she puts up with stuff like this and dropped me from her strawberry chuff so she's gotta have a sense of humour, or quite simply she'd go nuts. And thankfully she has. Also, any decent books that come out she buys, reads within 48 hours and chucks them in my direction (mixture of Clive Cussler, Terry Pratchett and Matthew Reilley at present). Cheers mum :)
( Jeccius Steam Borderlands 2 junkie, Thu 11 Feb 2010, 17:51, Reply)

um...
H ow can i possibly begin to describe her?
E ccentric, yes, but by no means stupid.
L oving and caring, as a mum should be.
P leasant to everyone, even strangers.
M indful of others' feelings, she always thinks before she speaks.
E ver ready to lend a hand - or a fiver - whenever needed.
I ndomitable of spirit, she never gives up.
M ore than a match for bullies and tyrants.
L ively and fun, always a hit at parties.
O pen-hearted and warm, always ready with a hug.
C heerful even in the face of despair.
K ind to small animals and children.
E asy to talk to, always willing to lend an ear.
D eft with a needle and cotton.
I ncreasingly beautiful, she ages like a fine wine.
N ever nosy, she'll always wait until you're ready to tell her.
H appy with nothing and grateful for everything.
E cstatically happy to babysit her grandchildren, any time of day or night.
R eady for anything, no matter how big the problem.
C uddly and soft, with a smell that just says "mum".
E veryone's best friend.
L ightweight drinker, she'll stay sober to watch out for others.
L ess a woman, more an angel.
A mazing, simply amazing.
R ight now, i have to say, i love my mum.....

*edited to make the gag easier to spot
( Smash Monkey lowering the tone of the whole internet, Thu 11 Feb 2010, 17:51, 3 replies)

More pearoast...

Not my Mum; her Mum.

I was thinking I had no eccentrics in my family. Sure there are a few that are slightly unhinged in one way or another, but the same can most likely be said of any family. And then I got to thinking about my Nan.

She's calmed down somewhat since crossing the border and entering the land of 80 something, although she insisted on continuing to look after 'the old people' until a spate of recent illness reduced her mobility significantly.

However, we need only travel back 10 short years or so to unearth some of her more eccentric behaviour. My Auntie (by no means eccentric, but certainly short of some marbles) had procured tickets to watch Iron Maiden in concert somewhere, and, when her friend had to cancel, she jokingly offered my sweet, old, sub 5' tall Nan the spare ticket.

"Oooh, a pop concert, how fun." she proclaimed.

"Mum, they're not exactly pop." my Auntie retorted, but Nan was having none of it and it was decided that she would be chaperoning her daughter for the evening.

Much later she recounted her thoughts about the 'strange dance' all the youngsters were partaking in; "where they shake their heads about so their long hair flies all over the place, would have given me a headache, I'm sure." she said to no one and everyone.

More amusing still were her musings on the strangely sweet smelling cigarettes that all the young 'uns were smoking. My Auntie pointed out that it was marijuana she could smell; "ooh, I should like to try some of that" she pondered aloud.

She then shuffled off muttering to herself about footwear and we allowed our mirth to catch up with us. So caught up were we with our laughter that we didn't notice her return, until she loudly insisted that we pay attention to her shoes. And rightly so, as her tiny feet were clad in a pair of brightly coloured, flowery 10 hole Doc Martins that she'd bought especially for her first ever gig.

She's ace, my Nan.
( Moey, Thu 11 Feb 2010, 17:26, Reply)

Teaching Mum To Swear
My brother and I have been working at this for years, with great results.

When we were small and our drunk dad broke the axle of her car, the best she could manage was "you beast! You beast! You horrible beast!" At the time, even she felt that this was somewhat lame.

When we were about seven, we had imported enough schoolyard filth into the house for her to be able to say "you shitting pisspot" one day when someone cut her off on the freeway. Result! Bro and I agreed, though, that her enunciation was far too crisp and self-conscious.

We kept working at it. Now we're in our thirties, she drops the c-bomb regularly and we can't take her anywhere twice.

Hooray for mums!
(lonelybadger, Thu 11 Feb 2010, 17:18, 1 reply)

My mum's as normal as you can get, however her mum, my nanna...
830 words, so in the reply,
( sandettie light vessel automatic New Twitter - @bollocksreally, Thu 11 Feb 2010, 17:10, 5 replies)

Ahhhh Mums.
Dear Mum.

When I think of you I always think of hugs. The smell of your face powder (Rimmel) and your perfume (Azuree by Estee Lauder, it lingers long after any other perfume I’ve smelled and no one wears it like you do) and it makes me tear up slightly because at the grand old age of 29 I have moved away from just round the corner so those lovely Mum hugs are fewer and all the more precious.

You always know. I can no longer count on fingers and stubby toes (thanks Dad) how many times on opening the front door you manage to just know there is something wrong before folding me into one of those hugs (see above).

The sound I associate with you is humming as you potter about in the kitchen. You were the good cop and the bad cop when we were growing up and I can remember the ‘get out of my sight’s’ the ‘you wait until your father get’s home’s’ and ‘Go to your room’s’.

You have to go through the name of every person living in the house (even the cat) before you get to my name and I don’t want anyone else but you when I am ill.

You can drink your own body weight in gin and tonic and still manage to put your lipstick on straight.

I love you Mum.

GOTW.

Ps ‘scuse line breaks.
(GirlOfTheWorld, Thu 11 Feb 2010, 17:06, 1 reply)

My mum is the church going, God bothering type.
She seems to lead a very sheltered life where she doesn't hear any bad language (no "Oh My God or "crap", "arse", "piss", nothing at all) or see anything sexual.

So when a few years ago most tabloid news papers started putting more revealing pictures of women on the front she was slightly offended.

Her naivity knew no bounds however, when she asked a 16 year old Wehttamman if I ever looked at pictures like that, and if I knew it was wrong and whether I averted my eyes from such publications! I said of course I did, AND SHE BELIEVED ME!

Makes me laugh to think that my dad first caught me looking at porn by checking the internet history when I was 11 years old XD
(Yes I know that's a schoolboy error, but I was a young schoolboy)
(wehttamman via B3ta for microwave, Thu 11 Feb 2010, 17:05, 2 replies)

My mum asked me today to register a domain name for her new part-time business. the cost of the domain for 2 years was £12 which I paid from my own account on the promise she'd transfer the money back to me online from her own bank.

she just sent me the following text...

"just sent you £15, the extra £3 is for the website you're now going to have to build me."

thanks mum.
( HatBeard, Thu 11 Feb 2010, 16:59, 3 replies)

Mum jokes...
They've mostly been done, so you have to challenge the conventions of the genre (Oooo, hark at me...) a bit to get them to work.

Two which genuinely stuck in my mind were the following:

In a computer room at Uni, me and a couple of other people finishing essays in the middle of the night, having a bit of banter and getting a bit giggly. Suddenly, a lad who lived at the end of the corridor burst into the room in his dressing gown: 'Can you lot not keep it down! I can hear you from the end of the corridor. Don't you know people are trying to sleep?'. To which someone instantly replied 'Yeah, that's what your Dad said...'

Secondly, involving the mum herself. There was one lad at Uni who had foolishly confided that his mum used to be a semi-famous actress in the seventies and eighties. Photos were duly looked up on the internet and she was declared to be a bit of a hottie. As a result, he took the brunt of the Mum jokes. However, when she eventually dropped by and we were introduced to her, there was an awkward moment when she said 'So - I hear you all think I'm a 'milf'?'. I did a proper pint-splutter...
(SnowyTheWereRabbit the Leporid from Hell, Thu 11 Feb 2010, 16:53, 4 replies)

She's careful with her money...
Back in the days of yore (ok,I think I was 17 or so) I was home for the easter holidays, with the customary huge amount of dirty clothes for my mother to wash, iron and mend. Sadly I wasn't as thorough in cleaning out my pockets as I should have been, and my mother found a crumpled-up cigarette packet in my jeans.

Uh-oh.

My father is seriously anti-smoking. He is also (unsurprisingly) very anti-drugs.

So when my mother found the fag packet, they sat me down for a Very Serious Conversation (i.e. a complete bollocking) about smoking. I fibbed and said I didn't smoke that much, I had just had a few whilst doing revision as I was getting stressed - I knew my mother used to smoke when she was a student so this mollified her slightly.

My father, all geared up for raging at me, then asked me if I ever smoked drugs. "In for a penny, in for a pound" I probably didn't think, but I was bored and fed up enough just to say "yes, I have actually. I have friends who were smoking it and I was offered a drag, so I took it."
My father's face darkened to a stormy beetroot colour, and his voice grew dangerously soft as he growled "well... did you inhale?!"

At this point my mother, who had hitherto been sitting rather quietly with a look of disappointment in her eyes (why is it that 'quietly disappointed' is always so much worse than 'steamingly furious', eh?) perked up and, addressing my father, said "well I bloody well hope she did darling, weed is really quite expensive stuff".
He opened his mouth, closed it, sagged slightly in his chair, and muttered "fair point". Then told me not to do it again, and wandered off to his study.

My mother then told me that she was fed up with him being so hypocritical, and revealed to me that he used to smoke pipes and cigars with gay abandon, and that he shouldn't be quite so harsh on me.

She rules!
(The Empress it seems you CAN polish a turd!, Thu 11 Feb 2010, 16:53, 2 replies)

singing and other noises
my mother loves to sing. actually, she used to be a singer. nowadays, however, she likes to sing utter nonsense that she's concocted around actual songs. one of her favourites is called "i know an onion, a spanish onion". not only that, but she whistles. i've got nothing against whistling normally, but when she hits a high pitch, she sounds like her mouth needs WD40. seriously, that high-pitched whine drills into your frontal lobe like a sonic weapon.
then there's the talking to inanimate objects. i've actually caught her having a conversation with a pan of sprouts before now. it really makes me worry about my future sanity.
on the other hand, she and dad have been married 40 years this may, but they still behave like lovestruck teenagers, tickling each other and giggling together on the couch. considering that most of my friends' parents are either divorced, separated or were never married, it makes a nice change.
she really topped herself the other week, though. i was in her house and complained that the entire family was going on holiday this year, but i couldn't afford it. in true mum style, she told me to stop moaning and go and make a cuppa.
so i did.
when i went back into the living room, she said "are you happy now?" "why would i be happy?" i asked her. "you're going to spain," she said.
while i was out of the room, she'd phoned the holiday company, booked and paid for a holiday for me!

she may be mental, but i love her :)
( Smash Monkey lowering the tone of the whole internet, Thu 11 Feb 2010, 16:50, 8 replies)