What's your family been up to now?

[mim731]

5 minutes ago, Arch Stanton said:

That's absolutely how the insult is meant, but it is only a funny line, I don't think anyone ever used it, or took it, with genuine offence.

Oh I'm sure it wasn't intended with malice, people used to say far worse without meaning any more by it, but it just feels attached to an aspect of culture that feels a bit antiquated for me and it always seemed a bit cringe if that makes sense?

[I Bent My Wookie]

Just now, mim731 said:

Oh I'm sure it wasn't intended with malice, people used to say far worse without meaning any more by it, but it just feels attached to an aspect of culture that feels a bit antiquated for me and it always seemed a bit cringe if that makes sense?

Makes complete sense, in the way that its hard to watch comedy routines from a few years back that just seem outdated and lazy now. Its probably a praise on how society continues to mature and better itself. 

That being said I don't think I'll ever not take a chance to shout it when trying to make a mate smile when life sucks but I'm a moron. 

[DCW]

My auld lad is of the 'not being able to do anything but work' ilk too. He could have retired 3 years ago with a golden public service pension and a nice tax free lump sum, but instead is still driving the length and breadth of the country doing his map making. He stays in the most miserable bed and breakfasts too, to 'save on his sub and mileage ' even though he has no hobbies whatsoever and nothing to spend his money on.  He was a man for the ladies when he was younger, so half of me reckons he just can't let the past go and still likes to be the new arrival in all these one street villages. 

I'm the complete opposite of him and can't understand working when you don't need to anymore. 

Edited March 13 by DCW

[SuperBacon]

23 minutes ago, DCW said:

still driving the length and breadth of the country

This is what would drive me mad in my Dad's latter working years. Mad bastard would drive from Reading up to say Grimsby and then back down to say Kent and then home again, all in a day, just to survey sites. Wouldn't even stop over, unless he REALLY had to.

Having said that when I was younger, he'd travel all over Europe for 5 days a week, so is used to driving long distances.

I think it's a sense of worth and importance that keep them wanting to work. Some people like to keep busy.

I'm pleased him and my Stepmum got a dog (despite them never ever being 'dog people') as that takes up most of their time. He's definitely not the type to be watching Countdown of a day, so he's probably got some mental projects on the go that I don't know about. He did finally sell his Vespa, that he'd spent years restoring and adding all original pieces to. Within 2 months he'd bought another one ffs.

[Jazzy G]

My mum spent a day at home in bed sick rather than ask for us to call her an ambulance because she didn't want to cause a scene during a birthday party we had booked in the pub. The day after when I asked her what she wanted to have for tea she said "nothing, call me an ambulance" because she knew it'd be quiet enough that it wouldn't upset too many people. 

[I Bent My Wookie]

My Gran was very much of that ilk. She passed away recently but I last spoke to her Xmas Day where she was quite happy having a day to herself, no fuss, was doing some housework and was going to have a bit of a rest in front of the TV as she had washing to do. Went into hospital 24 hours later after the family found out she was actually super ill she just didn't want to ruin anyone's Xmas Day and didn't want a fuss being made. Pretty sure she once asked the nursrs at the hospital if they needed their uniforms ironing. The woman nearly caused generations of diabetes with her magical biscuit tin that was never empty and always full. 

Her funeral was the first time I've seen a load of family in time and my sister or Dad especially (Gran was Mums side and I initially refused to go when Dad invited himself) since I cut off his alcoholism and her enabling and guilt tripping since Nov 2024. Despite living within 3 miles of each other. 

Well until Mum told her I'd moved to North Wales yesterday and when she asked how long I'd been gone because of her own memory issues answered with "around the funeral" (its been 6 days not 3 weeks) but also when my sister asked if my Dad knew got the response "well you don't so I doubt it". 

[LaGoosh]

That stubbornness seems to be pretty common of the women of that generation. I remember my Nan literally in the process of dying of pneumonia on our couch and when we had told her that we had called her an ambulance she just went "Nooo, I'm fine!".

The blokes on the other hand was a different story. My Granddad was probably one of the toughest blokes around in his day, former paratrooper, renowned local hard-nut who loved a scrap more than anything, but as an old man even the slightest malady and he was convinced he was on deaths door. 

[BomberPat]

My grandparents always remind me of Raymond Briggs' Ethel & Ernest - Grandad was a bit of a rogue, working class Yorkshireman with an opinion on everything, while Gran was a Southerner who would be mortified at the suggestion that she was working class, even though she was a cleaner at one of the big houses in the village. A bit of a Hyacinth Bucket type, too - the house was always spotless, and she wouldn't dare go out without a full face of make-up on, even if she was just going to the village shop, which was literally next door (for his part, I rarely saw Grandad not in a shirt, tie, and sweatervest). She was ditzy, always taking three or four tries to get anyone's name right, and a worrier - any illness (for her or anyone else) was life or death, and she'd stay up worried sick if you were out late. Yet, when she ended up in hospital towards the end, the doctors pointed out that she had almost certainly had a stroke some time before that, and she just cheerily replied, "that would explain why I've been having headaches!".

Grandad was a worker, too. He worked on a farm for most of his life, bar a stint in the army. Once he was officially "retired" from that, he still worked for the same landowners, trapping moles and other pests, as well as doing ironwork and carpentry - I didn't know until after he died that he had hand-built half the furniture in their house. Even once that was behind him, he kept doing jobs for the family he'd pretty much always worked for - anything from putting up shelves to clearing out gutters, just a go-to odd jobs bloke. He only really slowed down once he got sick, and we knew he was sick because he excused himself from helping my cousin put together a bookcase. 

My great-uncle's worse. He turned 100 recently, and it wouldn't surprise me to hear he's still working. He was a carpenter - used to make horse boxes and carriages - and was still making picture frames and ornamental bits a couple of years ago, and still getting out to buy all his own materials. Madness.

 

I thought my Dad would be different and would just busy himself with little projects once he retired. He sort of has - he worked on the house for years, and when that was done, got himself a trainset, and more recently a fishtank. But he'd been retired maybe 18 months before he started taking on part-time work, and the part-time became gradually less part-time, to the point that he's generally working three or four days a week now, and harbouring fantasies of opening a B&B. I just can't imagine it. If I could stop working tomorrow, assuming I could live at more or less the level of comfort I have now, I'd pack it all in instantly. 

Edited March 13 by BomberPat

[ReturnOfTheMack]

I never knew either of my grandads to work, one had been a miner and the other on benefits after getting injured falling off of a power plant cooling tower (presumably not from the top). My grandma didn't work, but my nan worked up until the year she died - school dinner lady, pub cleaner, whatever she could do. I dont think I ever saw her without a cigarette in her mouth and curlers in her hair.

[I Bent My Wookie]

I genuinely love this place. Haven't spoke about my gran since she passed as the other cousins were closer but have so much calm here. 

[Frankie Crisp]

Wait until I tell you all about digging up my Nan’s ashes in the rain with my hands next to her long-deceased husband’s grave, because my Auntie forged her signature to get her own Mum in the grave with my cousin, which we only found out about when my Nan died.

[Browser Brady]

“It is what it is”

 

Christ i hate that expression.

Have a family member terminally ill and one sibling’s constant and consistent contribution on the situation is that ……… “It is what it is”.

 

I get the point but it still drives me potty.

[johnnyboy]

The tales of my dad's friends in the 60s leaving a job in the morning to start a new one after lunch never ceased to amaze me as a kid.  My dad got a job straight out of school and literally did it until he retired.  I'd like to retire at the earliest possible opportunity, but I'm not sure if the world or myself will exist by the time I'm due my state pension book.

If anyone wants to be my Sugar Parent so that I can jack in the day job please drop me a line.

Edited March 15 by johnnyboy

[davertfnewman]

I had a great-uncle who, in fairness, was a tremendously hard-working man and kept his energy going well into his eighties until cancer took him out of the game about a decade ago. However, the good advice he gave worked for him but wouldn't in the modern day, so when I'm a teenager and he's telling you to go knocking on doors and to ask if there's any work it was without the current knowledge of stuff like the internet and job applications and the protocols you had to follow. He had his own shop at one time, which also makes me wonder how much he adhered to regulations and how much he just opened the door at eight and sold as much as he could and then shut it at five and took everything home.

[BomberPat]

13 hours ago, johnnyboy said:

I'd like to retire at the earliest possible opportunity, but I'm not sure if the world or myself will exist by the time I'm due my state pension book.

Yeah, whenever the topic of retirement comes up at work, my stock answer tends to be, "well, I doubt there'll be a retirement age by the time I get there". 

My Dad was awful for the "just get out there and knock on doors!" stuff when I was unemployed. He knew that Jersey's government's website had a job listings page, and we had a blazing row when he asked if I had checked it that day, and I said I hadn't - he saw that as me just not trying, while I kept pointing out that they only update it twice a week so there would have been literally no point checking it that day when I had already done it yesterday. He never got his head around the fact that the jobs listed at the job centre were the same ones on the website, either, so was always adamant that I wasn't taking things seriously if I wasn't checking both. 

I was applying for dozens of jobs every week and getting nowhere, and whenever he'd run out of ways to insist that I obviously wasn't trying that hard or applying for anything as I wasn't getting anywhere - I think I've talked on here before about how he refused to believe that you could possibly get a job interview and them not bother telling you that you hadn't got the job, to the point that he accused me of lying about getting an interview when I said they never got back to me afterwards, as if I'd have lied about every step of the process but been too thick to come up with, "yeah, they called and said I didn't get the job" - he'd fall back on the whole "just knock on doors", or "go into that shop and ask if they're hiring/give them a copy of your CV". He just couldn't accept that nowhere operates like that any more, and that the majority of job applications won't even accept CVs anyway, as you have to do everything on their janky bespoke application systems instead.

If we had been on better talking terms then, I'd have sat him down in front of a PC and just said, "okay, find a job and apply for it". See how long it took him, if he could even figure it out.