What's your family been up to now?

[SuperBacon]

Going to really wreck the mood in here as it's such a fun thread, but it's now two years since my sister passed away. She died of an overdose, homeless, in a doorway in Chiswick, ignored by the world. 

When I think what people probably thought as they passed her (and I dont blame them thinking that, its a natural reaction and they weren't to know she had passed away) while she laid dead...it absolutely tears me up inside. She deserved more than that, and to have more dignity. I hate knowing that she was probably being judged in her final moments in life.

Since then, two of her children have had children of their own, grandchildren she will never meet, and that makes me sad as well.

It's a fairly silly thing but I get quite emotional whenever I watch my own daughter play football, or when I watch the England team like we all did in the summer, as my sister was the best football player I've ever played with. She played for Brentford and Chelsea (before the club was recognised by the actual Chelsea), would train several times a week, would absolutely rinse all the boys on the estate and lived for football.

This really was a time when it was very, very hard to even find a women's team, they trained on literal dogshit parks, and had to make do with whatever they were given in terms of when they played.

Me and my Dad would often go and watch her play at all times of the day, as that's when they were "allowed" to play or have a ref. It was quite mad. I remember once watching a game near the Hammersmith flyover, a ball went into the road, a car ran over it and that was that. Game over as they only had one ball.

Persistent injuries meant she never made it, but she definitely could've. I don't exaggerate when I say if she had been born at a different time, she'd have played for England, she was that good.

She was also a very kind person, who never had anything or a pot to piss in, but would still go twos with you on her last fag, or give you 50p of her last quid.

I wish I'd done more to help her, and I wish there was more help out there for sick people who need it. 

Anyway, sorry to ruin the mood, but I just needed to write something . I'll be back soon with more funny texts from my Dad.

She was a Chelsea fan, but nobody is perfect eh?

 

[DavidB6937]

@SuperBacon Go use that edit function and take out all the apologies, because they're completely and utterly unnecessary.

What you've written there is incredibly similar to a lot of the things I've felt with losing my son and where my brain has been going over the last few months.

Could I have done more? Can I do more? Why doesn't the world care more? All those sorts of questions. I think it's a healthy dialogue to have as long as you don't get bogged down in it. I've seen people fall into depression because they feel so out of control and focus so much on the "what if" type scenarios that they get overwhelmed by it.

I'm trying not to do that. I'm allowing myself to be constantly upset and in pain and miss him terribly but I'm still making sure I get out of bed in the morning. I'm still working. I'm still existing.

Do I think it's fucking horrendous that I look outside my window and the rest of the world carries on like my pain is the most insignificant thing? Sometimes. But then you remember all the shit going on in other countries that we often glance over, let alone the stuff in this country! It's a complete and utter headfuck but it's also a reminder that we can't take on everything because it's a bloody big world and a lot of the time it's difficult enough to cope with your own shit.

I don't even know where I'm going with this, so apologies if it seems like I'm hijacking now. It's just obviously something I've been thinking about for hours a day over the last however many months, and I think the only logical conclusion I can get from any of it is that we can only do the best with the time we're given and the cards we're dealt.

You're not going to fix life's problems. No one is. There's only so much energy and so much time in a day. And life isn't fair. It really fucking isn't, and that's another thing I try not to get too eaten up by because that's a dangerous hole to fall down too.

Allow yourself to be sad. Allow yourself to miss people. But also allow yourself to live and don't spend too much time with regrets, especially ones you can't do anything about. Or look for ways to help now - like, for example, I'm hoping to raise more money for charity or looking to explore options for talking to businesses about how to support grieving people better etc. None of it will bring my son back but it might help the next person. Just sharing my story, my thoughts, whatever else over socials etc. Or apparently rambling on a wrestling forum.

[stumobir]

Given this forum’s proclivity for chippy teas, can I interest any of you in some tartare sauce? My wife’s grandad has just bought a gallon of the stuff.

 

[cobra_gordo]

I mentioned the other day amongst the chat about the 2016 Celebrity Cull in the death thread that my grandad died the same year. A proper giant of a man, working class as they come and I wanted to share a couple of stories about him, partly because I feel like talking about him but also because he was a funny fucker, not always on purpose.

• When he died he and my nan had been married 65 years. They got a letter from the Queen congratulating them. The mayor gave them crystal champagne glasses. Better still is I found out not long before that every year on the anniversary of them first meeting he'd get her a "With sympathy" card.
• He used to collect whiskey and had twenty to thirty full bottles on high shelves above their kitchen cabinets going all around their kitchen. Once told me, aged 13 or so, that the best way to see if the whiskey had been drank and then refilled was to check the seals on the bottles. Every one was broken and replaced with cold tea. My nan had no idea.
• Old metal chimney fell off their roof in the 70's. Replaced it with one he made from a bean tin. It's still there.
• Member those red hot boiling summers we used to get as a kid? My nan would always have a load of ice lollies in the fridge but god forbid you got thirsty afterwards. "You can either have a lolly or a drink" my grand would say, a rule that we jokingly still use to this day. Trouble is, it's not like they were magnums or anything, it was these cunts
  
  
• Continuing the trend of being a northern tightarse he would go up to their garden shed and take his own teeth out instead of going to a dentist.
• I'm sure I've told this one before but he would always go on about his time in the navy. He was obsessed with the sea, something that has definitely been passed on to me. He'd love to tell us the time he thought he saw a dog in the water off Greenland or somewhere and it turned out to be a seal. The best was him telling us for years how his action station was as an oerlikon gun operator, a massive machine gun. He was always proud that that was his post. I found out weeks before he died that a) he was only in the navy for national service and fucked off as soon as he could and b) there was nor oerlikon gun on his ship, what they had was a barrel and a stick that he had to stand next to when they shouted action stations.
• Nearly sank a pedalo off the coast of Spain.
• Once nearly fell in a river when he came on a school trip with us because he was shooing away a cow that was freaking out the 10 year old girls in my class.
• Reversed his Nissan Sunny in to a lamp post that he swore "wasn't there when he parked the car".
• Said it was the councils fault that he once nearly crashed his car in to a skip that was on the road despite it being surrounded by cones and covered in enough lights for it to have been used as a hellipad.
• Despite his numerous driving escapades would frequently shout "Move it corpse!" at any driver in front of him going remotely slower than the speed limit. I took great pleasure in shouting it at the hearse following it to the cemetery for his funeral. He'd have laughed.
• He used to give use a copy of all his holiday photos. I've never visited China or Australia but I may as well have done thanks to his in-depth photographic record.
• Would buy his own Premier League football stickers when we were kids just to be able to swap them with us.
• Once got in to a ten minute argument with one of the entertainment team on holiday in Portugal because he refused to accept that Moonlight Shadow and Moon Shadow were two different songs.
• Had only two cassette tapes in his car- The Best Of The Fureys and the BBC all-star version of Perfect Day.
• If we were at his house and stuck indoors we had a choice of three tapes to watch-Pinocchio, Zulu and Oliver! The day he bought The Jungle Book on VHS was like we'd just won the lottery.

There's loads more tucked in my brain somewhere. When he died I wrote loads of them out, framed them against a map of his favourite part of the Peak District to go walking and had it up at the wake to give folk something to smile about. Sorry if any of the stories are boring but I'm sat giggling to myself remembering him. I don't half miss the daft old bugger.

 

Edited October 22, 2025 by cobra_gordo

[davertfnewman]

I've probably told this before, but my grandpa had ornamental rifles and pistols up on the wall and as a kid I asked him if he'd ever shot anyone with them. He said he'd use them during the war to shoot the Germans, with OTT pantomiming of said encounters, because he was just telling tales.

However, I don't realise this and when we take one of my friends over I asked my grandpa to tell him about shooting the Germans, which he "recounts" with some embarrassment. My dad then sits down with me and takes me through some numbers, like grandpa's year of birth, when WWII was happening, and how old he would've been. The realisation sets in that he would've been a teenager, not old enough to serve during the war, and actually embarking on his trip down the mines, just like his dad, grandfather, brothers and uncles.

So, the story gets reinvented into grandpa killing the Germans with his shovel as they burrowed through underneath the Welsh coal mines.

[LaGoosh]

Lovely post @cobra_gordo and got me thinking about memories of my own Grandad and the stories he used to tell, put a big smile on my face. 

Something about that war/immediate post war generation - they seemed to live such bonkers and colourful lives. 

[BomberPat]

neither of my Grandads fought in the war - Dad's Dad would have been too young, and Mam's Dad was a dairy farmer so was considered an essential worker and wasn't drafted.

Dad's Dad did end up serving in Korea, and almost never talked about it. The most we ever got out of him were that he was nicknamed "Yorkie" as the only Yorkshireman in his regiment, that he drove a Thornycroft Antar tank transporter (pretty much the most he ever talked about Korea was whenever we went to the Museum of Military Vehicles in Beverley, because they had one, and he would just talk about the vehicle itself rather than any experience), and he would kick off whenever we watched M*A*S*H because of what he saw as inconsistencies.

After he died, we found out that he met my Gran when she was working in a military canteen, and he used to flirt with her all the time - he was apparently only turning on the charm so he got bigger portions, but ended up in too deep. God knows what their actual relationship was like, by the time I was around they slept in the same room in separate beds like a 1950s sitcom couple.

Mam's Dad I have fewer memories of - he died when I was seven, and had lived in the next village over, while my other grandparents lived in the same village as me, so I saw them at least once a week and my maternal grandparents a little less often. My Mum was the youngest of her parents' thirteen surviving kids, on top of at least one who died in infancy back in the '30s. I found Grandad's death notice in the 'paper while doing some family tree stuff, and it lists all of his surviving kids, and then just says "and grandchildren, great-grandchildren and in-laws", because it would be impossible to list them all - I remember as a kid asking Mum how many cousins I had, and she admitted she had no idea any more, she just lost count. 

I wish I had known him more, and that I'd had chance to ask him about his life. My family don't talk about stuff like that, so little things just eke out over time. When I worked at a Zoo, my Mum gave me a lift to work on Christmas Eve on year, and we were talking about the staff who still work on Christmas Day, because all the animal care still needs to happen - she started talking about her childhood memories of Christmas, and how it would be her dad getting up around 4.30-5am, doing all the morning jobs around the farm earlier than he normally would so he could be around to hand out presents, then immediately going back to work until it was time for dinner. By the time I knew him, he'd long since retired, so I never knew him as a working farmer.

The other fact that came out unexpectedly, going back to WW2, was a couple of years ago, I was at Eden Camp with my parents - Eden Camp is an old prisoner of war camp in Yorkshire, converted into a living museum, so it's a load of quonset huts which different themed exhibits and whatnot about the war inside; one is done up like a music hall, one is about the Blitz, one is a barracks, and so on. One hut is all about Italian prisoners of war, with the end of it being all about the various Italians who either stayed around in or moved back to Yorkshire after the war, usually because they'd fallen in love with a Yorkshire lass. I was reading one of the displays, and my Mum just said, "you know your Grandad had a few Italian POWs working with him on the farm, right?". And no, Mum, I did not know that. 

[SuperBacon]

13 minutes ago, BomberPat said:

neither of my Grandads fought in the war

One of my Grandads was a conscientious objector, and we weren't really "allowed" to talk about it with him.

To be honest, he didn't really say much anyway apart from "Brentford were shit" so I'm not sure I would've got much out of him about it.

[davertfnewman]

A few things that reminiscence reminds me of are:

1. My one uncle who did serve during World War II would NEVER talk about it because he'd seen and experienced too much and didn't believe others should be exposed to it. He was kind of grumpy anyway but nice enough to me as a kid, so you took whatever other stories he would share and respected that.

2. My gran used to be friends with some of the ex-soldiers because she was a bit of a social butterfly anyway, including ones who would often have tans, dark hair and a hint of an accent. Those were the Italians who had also stayed and married and had families and tried their best to shake off their original accent and embraced a new one and Anglicised their names from ones like Giovanni and Salvatore to John and Sam.

[LaGoosh]

My Grandad was a teenager in the war and lived through the Blitz in London. He once told me he was part of the rescue/clean up and would have a barrel he pushed around that would be filled with the limbs of the dead found in the rubble. After the war he joined the paratroopers and was stationed in Israel/Palestine and had the time of his life, apparently. After he died I went through his photo albums and he's got photos of the some of the first ships of Jewish settlers arriving in Israel. He only spoke of the war and his army career in pretty broad terms but over the years I glimpsed a few stories out of him of him killing someone with a bayonet, torturing a few enemy combatants by tying them up in chairs and giving them a good hiding, holding a gun to a superior's head when the superior killed a civilian child completely unprovoked and a fight in the mess hall where he threw someone in boiling water.

He was a complicated man. Capable of incredible warmth, loyalty, generosity and love to his family and friends, always charming and flirting with any young lady who crossed his path (even up till his 90s), always joking around with everyone he met but he was also an incredibly tough, often arrogant and proud man. Spent most his life in the roughest areas of East/South London, a notable figure in the dockers union and violence was always a part of his life and something he quite enjoyed. One of my Great Uncle's once referred to him as "probably one of the hardest men to have ever lived". When he was on a trip to France in his 70s someone snatched my Nan's handbag and my Grandad even at that age managed to tackle the thief down and pummel him into submission. As an old man he always seemed frustrated by life in general and was pretty useless at doing anything. He retired down to Deal for a quiet life by the sea but I think more than anything he wanted to be young, strong, in a pub on the Old Kent Road with all the local characters, never more than a few pints away from a scrap with someone. 

Edited October 24, 2025 by LaGoosh

[SuperBacon]

My sister has just unlocked a core memory tied to Jimmy Cliff (bear with me)

On the estate* I grew up on there was a family that were just horrible shits. The son was an absolute cock, the daughter used to racially abuse my sisters and used to pronounce Graeme Le Saux 'Graham Le Socks' and the Mum was a bitch. 

She lived in the block next to us and used to moan about absolutely everything, us playing football, us talking, us playing '40 40 in' (regional differences may occur) and was just a busybody. Her name was Lorraine. 

When Cool Runnings came out and I Can See Clearly was a huge hit for Jimmy, whenever she moaned we used to all sing in unison "I CAN SEE CLEEEAAAARLY NOW LORRAINE HAS GONE" which used to infuriate her, and one time after she'd called us all cunts after singing it she slammed her window shut and it smashed as she'd slammed it so hard.

It was pandemonium. One of the greatest euphoric moments of my life where half the estate erupted in pure joy at her misery.

RIP Jimmy Cliff. Thanks for that moment.

*I'm sure we all have similar stories, but that estate was absolutely wild, with some of the strangest characters ever. The best was the bloke who'd nick all the lights off the top of police cars (the ones they slap on when undercover) and then set them all off in the middle of the night in his flat so it would look like a rave. 

One of the other funniest stories is we had several traveller families living in the flats, one who used to tether their horse to the bottom floor balcony and they let it in the flat to drink out of the bath. I went to a primary school in a fairly posh part of the area (St Margarets) and when one of my schoolmates visited my flat for the first time and then the next day told my classmates "There is a horse where Superbacon lives" they all then replied "Oh we have horses" as they all lived in fuck off houses with stables and things.

I had to beg my friend not to elaborate further 😆

He also asked why we couldn't have pizza delivered and had to walk to get it and I had to explain that the takeaways refused to deliver there anymore after too many robberies.

Ivybridge estate forever x

 

[davertfnewman]

Those stories provoke two thoughts:

1. "Send 'em up Manningham Lane, it's the best place for 'em!"

2. The episode of In Bed With Medinner where the council had to go round a bloke's house who had stolen a bunch of signs from the local area, including putting up "Dumping in this area will result in prosecution" in the toilet and "No ball games" above the bed.

[Devon Malcolm]

My dad who, and I quote, "retired" at the start of last year, insists he's still "retired" having just travelled to Leek for two weeks to build a new bathroom in a farmhouse. On his own. He's also recently had an operation to remove a severely enlarged prostate which they thought was cancer. Mad old bastard.

[SaitoRyo]

On 11/24/2025 at 3:12 PM, SuperBacon said:

One of the other funniest stories is we had several traveller families living in the flats, one who used to tether their horse to the bottom floor balcony and they let it in the flat to drink out of the bath.

Are you Karl Pilkington?

[Browser Brady]

I have one sibling , a brother who is 2 years older than me. Even though we look alike people always comment how different we are. 
 

Growing up we seemed like 2 people who just lived in the same house and since the age of 18 we’ve grown further apart. He takes no interest in me , never asks about me and i don’t think he could tell you what i do for a living. We never had a big bust up or argument and it’s more a case that i pulled away from him and he has just left me be.

He has never been a “big brother” to me in anything but the literal sense. Never showed me how to do anything, Never played with me, never let me tag along with him, never opened up to me, never stuck up for me or never really helped me out or done anything positive for me in any way. 

 

When we engage now it’s nearly always hostile and curt. Being around him is quite stressful as he is quite tightly wound up and seems to have a problem with a lot of things. He works extremely hard and provides a good life for his family. He works 7 days a week at his own business.

Our father is still alive and i think when he dies we’ll essentially go our separate ways and that will be it. And i’m not overly sorry about that. His kids are great and i would be in their lives more but any interaction with him immediately stresses me out to the max.

 

He is a big strong personality talks to me like i’m an idiot and with complete disrespect at times but i have no interest in confronting him or letting him know my true feelings as i don’t want to pursue a relationship with him. 

 

Very sorry to ramble and there is no real point to what i am saying. I just felt like i needed to vent anonymously. 

Edited February 24 by Browser Brady