» Awesome teachers

Mr C and the swamp donkeys
I've been lurking on here for far far far too many years so its about time i popped my QOTW cherry *pop*

In high school we had a fairly mundane science teacher named Mr C. Brown cordoroy trousers,grey hair, glasses, you know the sort.

Great pleasue was taken by the entire class in mentally torturing him (monotonous humming passed around the class to make him go mad, chalk rubbed along the edge of his desk so he'd get a white crotch- the usual genius teenage torture).

I can't recall how this particular topic came up one day in class but it turned out he was a massive radiohead fan (this is back in the mid 90's hey day, when we were all about 15 or so) and loved going to gigs of any sort. He said that if enough of us wanted to go to a particular gig, and provided we got parental consent etc he'd book tickets and take us there and back in the school minibus.
He took a group of the lads in the class to see the Prodigy and when the girls of the class wanted to go and see Space in Sheffield he gladly obliged as his own teenage daughters wanted to go too.

The day came round and a dozen of us piled into the school minibus, his wife and daughters already sat in there. In our imaginations we expected his girls to be mini female versions of himself- geeky and a bit boring. They weren't. They were the most horrendous swamp donkey fat slags you've ever seen. The entire journey his wife and daughters shrieked, belittled and critisised him which i thought was appauling in front of his students.

When we reached the gig, the wife and daughters dissapeared off to "av a fag" leaving us to boogie the night away, Mr C stood patiently at the back nodding his head along with the music.

He wasn't the most amazing teacher but after that most of us had a new found respect for Mr C, he must have had a bit of a crap life at home and despite most of the kids in his class being swines, he'd still try and be as nice as possible.

The moral of this? I guess even the average teachers can still be a bit awesome in their own way.

Sorry for the length- its been building for a long time!
(Thu 17th Mar 2011, 16:18, More)

» Creepy!

Creepy Kitty
The house I grew up in was really lovely old Victorian semi (fnar!). It was a gorgeous house but could be exceptionally creepy. On an evening the floorboards would relax so it would sound like someone was walking around upstairs, even if there was no one else in the house. We had huge bay windows overlooking the garden so as soon as it got dark you had to shut the curtains otherwise it just felt like you were in a fishbowl for all the monsters in the garden to look at.. Apparently we even had a ghost but my mother chose not to tell anyone about the little girl who had died of meningitis in the house in the 1970’s until the ghost decided to attack my brother ( I’ll save that for another QOTW).

One night I’m enjoying a bit of home alone time. I must have been about 12 or 13, my parents had gone out for the evening, my brother was at work so I’m making the most of my time by slobbing on the sofa and watching something inappropriate on TV. My old cat was curled up sound asleep on my lap, deeply relaxed.
All of a sudden he looks up and stares at a spot about a foot above my head behind me, his heckles up and his pupils massive (Anyone who has cats knows the look, it means they are terrified or about to rip your throat out). The sofa wasn’t up against a wall but kind of in the middle of the room so it was quite plausible that there could be something behind me.
He’s proper freaked and won’t stop staring. This completely creeps me out to the point that I daren’t actually look around, I could only sit there frozen in fear waiting for some unheard and unseen attacker to get me. Then just as sudden as it started he’s back to normal and having a bit of a wash.
I reckon the feline bugger did it on purpose, only cats can stare in that wide eyed big pupil way. Still, I had to hot foot it to bed and sleep with the lights on that night.


On an unrelated note does anyone else find Marty Pellow creepy? He looks like a rapist.
(Tue 12th Apr 2011, 11:50, More)

» Grandparents

Brain on, mouth engaged please
In our family we have a saying about my Nan- “Her heart is in the right place but her brain isn’t”. Brain and mouth often aren’t connected at all with this old lady. And its not a case of a bit of old age dementia and the general nuttiness you can get with the older generation. She has ALWAYS been like this (according to my Mother and Uncle)
If anyone read my answer to last weeks QOTW, its should be apparent that she shouldn’t be allowed to cook. She also shouldn’t be allowed to speak to anyone.
Over the years her brain has concocted several bizarre fantasies about members of our family.

Most memorable were the time she came to our house one breakfast time and threw a newspaper at my Dad screaming “Stop abusing my Grandchildren”. Turns out the Sun or whatever she had been reading had run a story on child abuse and she’d decided my Dad was clearly one of these evil child abusing men. My Mum was livid and made my brother and I (aged about 12 and 6) explain that we weren’t being abused. At 6 I doubt I knew what abuse was…What is more than a bit gutting though is that she continues to tell people how my Dad used to beat me and my brother when we were little- nothing could be further from the truth.

As we grew up things didn’t get any better. She had a massive amount of paranoia that my brother was gay. He’s about the most heterosexual man you’ll ever meet but because he had male friends (wtf?) he was clearly gay in her eyes. Oh and his gayness was a disease that he could be cured of by spouting excerpts from the bible at him. She used to ring my Mum up in the middle of the night crying and telling her to stop by brother from being gay. She just didn’t understand the whole concept of sexuality.

Not even her own husband was safe from her crazy mind. Around the time the Yorkshire ripper was at large she rang my mum in hysterics claiming that Grandad was the ripper and she was going to ring the police and shop him. And how did she know he was the ripper…he’d come into the house carrying a hammer.
My Mum threatened to have her sectioned after that outburst. The police would have taken that so seriously and it would have destroyed my poor little Grandad!

She’s labelled my cousin as a prostitute, My uncle as a serial womaniser, his ex and current wife as horrendous gold diggers and my Mum is just clearly in league with the devil. That said, she does love us all dearly.
Apologies for length but I could spend a day telling you all about my Nan!
(Fri 3rd Jun 2011, 15:49, More)

» The Best / Worst thing I've ever eaten

Lasagne of Doom!
My Nan has never been much of a cook, my Mum often tells stories of how when she and my Uncle were younger they would sneak out of bed at night to the kitchen to get some proper food- this consisted of ketchup sandwiches I’m told, as this was a massive improvement on Nan's cooking.

Back to presentish times...The whole family loves a good Lasagne (My Mum makes a simply super one!) so one day my Nan decides she wants us all round for tea. She'll make a lasagne so asks my mum for the recipe. We aren't talking homemade béchamel sauce and all that malarkey, my Mum gives her the simple "Buy Dolmio sauces" version- what could go wrong?

Everything.

Something must have gone wrong in Nan's head.
Instead of pasta sheets we have pasta twirls- not a big problem.
Instead of white sauce we have mushroom soup - ummm.
Instead of chopped tomatoes or dolmio tomato sauce we have tomato soup- Ick.
We did have mince but rather than chopped onions we have leeks- Urgh.
I have no idea what cheese was used but it tasted like it hadn't been taken out of the plastic wrapper.

We are all politely trying to choke down this monstrosity and my Dad pipes up “ I didn’t know you put peanuts in lasagne?” He’d found some small and incredibly hard pellets in the meal. “Oh that will be the sweetcorn” says Nan. Sweetcorn wouldn’t be totally offensive in a lasagne but certainly not to our taste, however she’d cooked the lasagne for so long they had just gone hard, black and gritty.

I never ever eat at my Nan’s now. Bless her.
(Thu 2nd Jun 2011, 11:19, More)

» Racist grandparents

Can anyone tell me....
My Grandmother became quite peturbed that I hadn't yet introduced her to my new boyfriend (mainly cos she's nuts and we'd only been courting a few weeks so didn't want to scare him off). She was convinced that the reason for this was because he was black. Cue many tearful calls to my Mum telling her to not let me go out with a black man as she didn't want any 'Pickaninny' babies in the family.

Please forgive my naivety but I thought a baby pickaninny sounded quite sweet and something to be found on a kids TV show...I think I do want one.
(Tue 1st Nov 2011, 15:06, More)