» Drunk Parents

Back in the mid
1980s my grandfather had an allotment in a village outside Derby, and an arrangement with a local farmer to get cheap horse manure to use as fertilizer. One Friday when I was 4 or 5 my grandfather called up my old man and asked if we'd like to come down from York (where we lived at the time) and help him do some work on his allotment. Sure enough, Saturday morning we drive to Derby early, and whilst I'm engrossed in helping my grandma make chips with a potato cutter, my father and grandfather toddle off to the farmers with a barrow to pick up a load of shit for the allotment.

Hours pass. My mother and grandmother are wondering where they've got to, and decide to check the local pub. We walk up there, to find my very drunk father, my very drunk grandfather, and a very drunk friend of my grandfathers being hosed off in the carpark by the landlord.

Apparently my dad and my grandfather had picked up the shit from the farm and had been wheeling it back to the allotments (which was next to the pub). On the way they'd met an old Navy friend of my grandfather's, who suggested a break for light refreshment in the pub. They'd sat outside, barrow of shit at their table, and sank 'several' pints when for some reason an argument erupted. My grandfather, being a reasonable fellow, had dipped his hand into the squishy barrow of horse poop and thrown a wet clod directly into my fathers face. My father then responded by throwing shit back at him. This then degenerated into some sort of three way shit flinging competition, with my relations, and my grandfathers friend, jumping around like drunken chimps, flinging faeces at each other until the landlord came out with a hosepipe and separated them.

My grandma made them both sleep in the conservatory that night.
(Mon 28th Feb 2011, 14:00, More)

» Sticking it to The Man

Hm
Quite a few years ago (mid-1980s) a friend of my grandfather had a dispute with the Inland Revenue over his tax return. Letters were exchanged with increasing ire on both sides until the elderly gentleman snapped and started writing two or three letters a day to the Revenue. They replied, demanding he stop writing to them so often. He then took it to the next level and started putting the stamps on the envelopes in odd places (halfway down the back, upside down at the bottom below the address). As the story was told to me, this meant that the letters had to be hand processed by the Royal Mail as the sorting machine couldn't read the stamp. So the Royal Mail attach irate notes to the letters asking the recipient to tell the person writing to them to put the stamp in the right place. Sure enough, the next letter my grandfathers friend gets has a PS asking him to ensure that he stamps the envelope correctly.

My grandfathers friend considered this request, mulling it over in the British Legion, then promptly sat down and wrote five letters to the Revenue with the stamps all over the place. Again they write back to him. This goes on for some time. Eventually they cave in, accept they made a mistake, refund his money, and plead with him to correctly address and stamp any letters to them.

This OAP anarchist had one last letter to send. He got a large envelope, put a stamp smack bang in the middle, wrote the address in a spiral around it, and enclosed a single sheet of paper that said:

"Dear Sir,

Hey diddle diddle
The Stamp is in the middle

yours sincerely,

Annoyed OAP"
(Mon 21st Jun 2010, 1:26, More)

» Faking it

When
my sisters and I were but slips of children we would regularly have to spend hours crammed into the back of my fathers latest crappy vehicular purchase on our way to visit our grandparents in South Wales or, if were especially lucky, to go on holiday to Aberwystwyth (bear with the spelling I'm slightly drunk).

Anyhoo, my middle sister would sit next to the window and stare out, whilst childishly humming and (probably) blowing bubbles. She was 4 see? One long afternoon from North Yorkshire to South Wales she spotted the recently pasted remains of a hedgehog that had come second in a contretemps with a car.

"What is that Daddy?" she piped up. My father took a drag on his cigarette and began explaining that the squished remains you see on roads are actually the splattered remains of lobsters. She was afraid of Lobsters you see?

As far as I can remember, he explained how lobsters when they were young lived free high in the atmosphere, swooping, diving, and generally having a great lobstery time. However, when they grew older they had to return to the sea and so had to make themselves parachutes to gently float down. Most made it but some, unfortunately, got blown off course and hit roads - becoming the puddle of blood and gore that she could see.

This started an 8 year paranoia for my sister. Hating lobsters she was continually afraid that one would parachute down on her. My father helped her by screaming that a lobster was above her when she was annoying him (about 3 times a week if I remember) and she would run crying to shelter.

I'm sure that faking a species of aero-lobsters to gain some measure of control over an unruly child is covered by this question, and you'll be pleased to note that I believe that at least part of my sisters subsequent psychological problems is down to having been prone to 'parachuting lobster' fear whenever she pissed the Old Man off.
(Sun 13th Jul 2008, 3:35, More)

» When Animals Attack

Evil
I'm sat in my room next to the window, overlooking the back garden and road next to our house. I'm sat here working on my thesis, now due in exactly three weeks and beginning to prey somewhat on my mind. I have been living, eating, sleeping (and possibly sh*tting) my thesis recently. As you can imagine life has been very, nay, ultra boring. To top off the fandango of enjoyment that has characterised my grey and dull existence the girl I love is not interested, making the whole past month or so an exercise in heart-wrenching academic futility.

So, to set the scene, this is the somewhat despondent, possibily even pessimistic, frame of mind that I currently inhabit. Next to a window.

Through this window I can see a tree in our back garden. This tree is not a paragon of trees. In fact its rather nonedescript. The tree equivalent of Alastair Darling, rather than a racy sycamore, or a hippy willow. In the tree live a family of grey squirrels. The squirrels are in the habit of frolicking in the garden and generally doing squirrely things. I'm sure that Squirrel Nutkin himself would be proud to call these squirrels his compatriots, proud in the knowledge that for nose twitching, acorn burying, tree climbing and general bushiness of tail these squirrels are at the forefront of the squirrelverse.

Anyway, I digress. My housemate just came back from class. As usual he brought his bike into the back garden, rolled it over to the squirrel tree, and started to lock it in place.

At which point a squirrel dropped out of the tree, like some squirrel version of rambo, and clung on to his bike helmet with all its tiny tiny might. My housemate was somewhat perplexed by this unforeseen turn of events, and began flapping at his own head to remove his new squirrely appendage.

This merely enrages the Die Hard Squirrel, which began attempting to chew through the helmet. My housemate takes this somewhat amiss and, becoming slightly concerned, begins to scream oh so softly. The squirrel doesn't really like this shrieking mannikin it appears to have attempted to bring down, and so redoubles is effort to gain unlicensed access to his brain. Now panicking, my housemate, with an audible toot of the sphincter, drops to the ground and rolls around the wet grass, trying to crush the squirrel. This, fortunately for him, works. The squirrel abandons ship post haste, and retreats, probably swearing, back up the tree. My housemate staggers inside covered in grass and mud, swearing he will kill the squirrel.

I'm pretty sure I can see the thing now, on a branch at the same level as my window. My bored mind posits that its sat there, a rolled up cigarette dangling from one corner of its mouth, swigging from a can of stella, flexing its arm muscles... the crazy Begbie squirrel of our garden.
(Mon 28th Apr 2008, 15:17, More)

» Advice from Old People

My
granny is a bit of a piece of work. At 91 she's still sharp, lewd and active.

Advice given has included:

"Remember to fuck around a lot, when I was growing up we weren't allowed to" (aged 89)

"Don't trust priests... they're cnuts." (aged 90)

"The best way to get a baby to sleep is to give it gin and milk" (as she was feeding gin and milk to my then 2 year old sister)

"If anyone in Brazil (where we were living at the time) tries to mug you, kick them in the balls till they drop to the ground, then stamp on their throat." (aged 84)

She's also advised me never to do cocaine, and also that marijuana brownies are great.

EDIT: My great uncle also once told me to never try shitting in a wicker waste paper bin. I'm not sure how that topic came up in our conversation.
(Fri 20th Jun 2008, 0:51, More)