Paid Members LaGoosh Posted February 24 Paid Members Posted February 24 Had the sister in law round the other day. She's very weird and an idiot. She was round with her two young children. The elder of the two had a bright blue tongue and the sister in law started freaking out, panicking that she was having some kind of medical emergency, maybe she drank some kind of toxic household chemical. She even went under the sink and pulled out a bottle of Rinse Aid and exclaimed "she must have drank this!". My wife pointed out that it's probably because the kids had all just been eating blueberries and that was probably the cause of the blue tongue. The sister in law was having none of it and immediately ran to the chemists down the road to ask for help. So anyway she finally came to her senses and calmed down then a few hours later one of her daughters, a 2 year old, is in the loo in what sounds like pure agony and misery. I ask if everything is ok and the sister in law says "yeah she's been pooing blood for the past week and is in quite a lot of pain when she goes to the toilet at the moment". I ask "what did the doctor say?" and she replies "oh, we haven't taken her. I'm sure it'll sort itself out"!!! Utterly baffling. Quote
Paid Members Devon Malcolm Posted February 24 Author Paid Members Posted February 24 That's even more idiotic than my brother who, having being diagnosed with a case of vertigo and ordered to rest and not drive for a week, then drove my mum to Home Bargains the next day. Quote
Paid Members BomberPat Posted February 24 Paid Members Posted February 24 my half-brother's kids somehow all managed to get scabies while staying with their mum. Quote
Paid Members Supremo Posted February 24 Paid Members Posted February 24 Always good fun being the family’s Tech Support. My aunty earnestly asked me the other day that if she gave a false confession to an A.I. about committing a crime (the example she provided - an armed robbery of McDonald’s) would the A.I. call the police. Of all the risks, worries and unknowns about A.I. this was her primary concern. ChatGPT grassing her up to The Feds for a crime she hasn’t committed. Quote
Paid Members BomberPat Posted February 27 Paid Members Posted February 27 My brother is a historian. A proper one with a doctorate and everything, not like me. He's been doing some family history stuff lately. He's traced back both lines of the family back to 3x great-grandparents, and where job information is available, every male ancestor until my Dad was a farmer, farm labourer, or shepherd, with the exception of one market gardener, a thatcher, and a blacksmith. I've always taken great amusement from the fact that my Grandad listed his job on the 1939 census as "COWMAN". In all that time, before my Gran came into the picture, none of the family had come from or moved to anywhere very far from East Yorkshire - nobody further south than South Yorkshire or further north than North Yorkshire, and nobody even getting as far west as West Yorkshire. My Mum's side of the family is massive - she's the youngest of thirteen kids, with the oldest having recently turned ninety. As an aside, her uncle, my great-uncle, just turned 100 this year, and celebrated at a local care home with another bloke turning 100, who had signed up for the RAF on the same day as him. So there's a lot of them, and their a long-lived bunch, I have long since lost track of how many cousins, half-cousins, and all the rest of it I even have. She's also been married three times, so there's half-brothers and their extended families to factor in. My Dad's side, by contrast, is tiny. We're a dying breed. He has one sister, who has one child. He has some cousins on my Gran's side, and had vague recollections of distant family on my Grandad's side, but Grandad was an only child and not close with his family; his Mum, my great-grandma, died young before my Dad was even born. Back to the family history stuff, then. My brother was doing his research, and found that quite a few times great-grandma's name would pop up with different dates of birth, and that was suspicious - she didn't have a common name, and the broader context was enough to make it clear that it was definitely the same person. After a lot of digging and cross-referencing, he found a birth registered for her first child, with the father listed as "Unknown" - two years before her marriage to my great-grandad. That child's middle name was the surname of a lodger who had been staying with the family the previous year, so it's not too difficult to figure out what might have happened there. The following year, that child is listed as living with great-grandma's sister, and pops up associated with the family a few times. The year after that, great-grandma is getting married to great-grandad in Hull, and lists her birthdate as later than it actually was, and her father as "deceased" - he very much wasn't. So, adding it all up, my Grandad had a secret half-brother that nobody in the family ever knew about. Grandad died twenty years ago, and the brother a few years ago. The brother's son died last year. So there's a vanishing number of people who might be able to shed any light on this. We don't know if Grandad ever knew he had a brother. My working theory is that the kid was given up to be raised by an already married sister, so would presumably have been raised as if he had been her child - in which case, if Grandad ever knew him at all, he would have thought they were cousins. But Great-Great-Grandad being listed as deceased on the marriage record when he wasn't suggests that great-grandma potentially cut off all ties with the family when she ran away to get married and to work in Hull, so there may never have been any contact with that side of the family at all. By all accounts Great-Great-Grandad was a nasty drunk and a bit of a bad'un. My dad, aunt, and their cousin, are meeting next week to discuss all this, to try and work out if there any clues in their past (my Dad says he vaguely remembers talk of distant family in Bridlington), and to come to a decision on whether they should reach out to the grandchildren of grandad's brother, to raise the question with them. What I find amusing about all of this, though, is that there's all this scandal of a child born out of wedlock, a potentially secret second wing of the family, and of great-grandma running away from home to escape the family and make her way in the big city...and nobody's moved more than 25 miles away from each other. Grandad lived most of his life in Nafferton, one train stop away from the secret family in Bridlington, then eventually moved to Bishop Burton, all of half an hour's drive away. The furthest anyone in this story got was Hull. Quote
Paid Members Devon Malcolm Posted March 11 Author Paid Members Posted March 11 My dad, who you may recall has had a liver transplant, a cancer scare, a diagnosis of diabetes, is 73 years old and announced his retirement 2 years ago, is now back more or less working full-time. A few months ago he also told me "Oh I don't need to work anymore, I'm happy with my pension". The other day my mum came out with the actual sentence, completely without irony, "I think your dad's way of coping with retirement is to work." I just do not understand these people on any level. They're mental. Quote
deathrey Posted March 11 Posted March 11 You know, I honestly think some of them don't know how to do nothing as it's never really been an option in their lives. My parents are similar to this and can't just sit down and relax. The word relax is literally not in their vocabulary. My sister and I do a spa day once a year and my husband once asked me why we don't take my mum, it would be her worst nightmare. Sitting around actively doing nothing and switching off, she doesn't even understand the concept of it. I physically don't think she would be able to do it, she'd start cleaning or making people cups of tea. She just can't sit with her thoughts .... Holidays with my parents are so much fun! Quote
Paid Members Jesse Posted March 11 Paid Members Posted March 11 Yeah, this is me. I'm taking my first 5 consecutive days off work in over 12 months and every day so far I've put some muscle into growing a personal social media account. I don't know what to do with myself if I'm not doing something. Quote
wordsfromlee Posted March 11 Posted March 11 Theres a 89 year old bloke who works at my local ASDA pushing trollies a couple of days a week. He started the job for something to do with his time and get him out of the house after he retired early due to selling his business. He's been there for over 35 years now. He's nearly worked longer since he retired, than before he had. Quote
Paid Members TheBurningRed Posted March 11 Paid Members Posted March 11 When my grandad retired, he spent every day painting his shed. A new colour a week. Because he was so bored and had no idea what to do with himself. He’d only take a break to watch the horse racing, the only thing he had an interest in doing. 2 hours ago, wordsfromlee said: Theres a 89 year old bloke There’s a bloke who is 85 and was still working security at night, 7 nights a week at the shopping centre next to where I used to work. I’m not sure if he’s still alive, but good chance he’s still going. He had to be told/forced to take days off. Quote
Paid Members LaGoosh Posted March 13 Paid Members Posted March 13 On 3/11/2026 at 8:50 AM, Devon Malcolm said: My dad, who you may recall has had a liver transplant, a cancer scare, a diagnosis of diabetes, is 73 years old and announced his retirement 2 years ago, is now back more or less working full-time. A few months ago he also told me "Oh I don't need to work anymore, I'm happy with my pension". The other day my mum came out with the actual sentence, completely without irony, "I think your dad's way of coping with retirement is to work." I just do not understand these people on any level. They're mental. Bloody hell. I just spent my entire morning commute in misery about how fed up I am of working and I'm desperate to stop but have another 30 FUCKING YEARS left and these mad oldies just won't stop working even when they can. Quote
Moderators Chest Rockwell Posted March 13 Moderators Posted March 13 2 hours ago, Ralphy said: My tv is currently broken, so i asked my dad to get a spare one out of my grandparents house, as both are long gone. My grandparents had a habit of keeping things even if they are broke. I asked him to turn it on at the wall (it was already set up) to see if it worked, but he couldn't be bothered, drove 4 miles back home, gave it to me, then i plugged it in to find it didnt work like i thought . All that effort instead of pressing a power button the mains, arghhhhh He's still driving 8 miles to do you a favour either way, right? Quote
Paid Members mim731 Posted March 13 Paid Members Posted March 13 (edited) 4 hours ago, Ralphy said: My dad does not like soup if its done in the microwave, but likes it done on the hob as the microwave method is "too hot" I mean, i am not a rocket scientist, but i am fairly sure that either method of heat doesn't really matter As I understand it, and a quick Google backs this up, microwaving a liquid works differently from a hob, as you get an even temperature from the bottom-up method of the hob, whereas the direct interaction heating of a microwave means it's not always a consistent temperature throughout. This can lead to cold spots, some parts of the soup being hotter than others and parts being burnt or overcooked due to the inconsistency of the heat. This is why you are supposed to stir microwave dishes halfway through. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with microwaving soup, but in the interest of fairness, there's definitely a potential difference between the hob and the microwave in terms of the end result. Edited March 13 by mim731 I will never say. Quote
Paid Members Devon Malcolm Posted March 13 Author Paid Members Posted March 13 47 minutes ago, LaGoosh said: Bloody hell. I just spent my entire morning commute in misery about how fed up I am of working and I'm desperate to stop but have another 30 FUCKING YEARS left and these mad oldies just won't stop working even when they can. If I get a slight cold I'm all like "Oh god I can't possibly look at a screen all day!" while my pensioner dad would be fixing someone's gutter in the pissing rain. Quote
Members SuperBacon Posted March 13 Members Posted March 13 My Dad never took a day off sick in his entire working life. Mental innit? Quote
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