Tuesday 10 August 2010

Holidays, Camping, and My Evil Family - two blog posts in one

So, I just got back from holiday, and I'm off again tomorrow to go camping with a few thousand of my friends in a great big field. So it's no surprise that this post's going to include a few sun soaked anecdotes and theorising - and to make up for the absences, it's essentially a DOUBLE PLUS GOOD blog post today. Ie, it's longer.

I'm not actually going to talk about the holiday I just went on. Not because it was boring, but because if I start blogging about what actually happened recently in a relatively normal way, that's one step away from blogging about my feelings and how no one understands me and starting to talk about my muse. I might even start painting watercolours, writing serious poetry and using the phrase "my heart bleeds" non ironically.

So instead I'll tell you about how my aunt assassinated a world leader.

Everything you are about to read is true, and is reconstructed from my interviews with a key witness - known to me as "Mum".

In one Summer, my mother and her family were visiting some Mediterranean country - I can't remember which. One of those places which is deeply Catholic, and where all the women are either devastatingly beautiful or old and toothless and wearing black, with no middle ground. One of those places where outside every beautifully scenic village is a log with four old men sitting on it. One of those countries.

They arrived on a Saturday night. Now, one of the things peculiar to this area of the world is that not only, because of the Catholicness of it all, is everything closed on a Sunday, but everything's always closed on a Monday too. I've no idea why. But all this left my Aunt rather exasperated.

"We can't buy any food now, it's far too late," said she, "and we obviously can't buy any tomorrow, it's Sunday. Nowhere's ever open on a Monday, and I bet on Tuesday, that the... that the pope will die and we won't be able to get anything then!"

Guess what happened on Tuesday?

My Aunt, a lovely woman, killed the pope. I don't know how. Maybe she's a witch. But she's responsible for the death of the leader of the Catholic Church.

I am never, ever, getting on the wrong side of my aunt ever again.

As for the camping, I'm sure it'll all go great. Sure, my tent is large and complicated and I've never gone camping before, but, well, what could possibly go wrong? Just because I don't know the terminology...

Friend: Have you checked the tents this morning?
Me: Yeah, they're rocking up in a pretty tentlike fashion. Come on, let's do camping people things!
Friend: No, I mean... the tents, is everything tense?
Me: You're asking me if the tents are tents?
Friend: Yes, I'm asking you if the tents are tense.
Me: Seriously?
Friend: Well of course!
Me: Well, what do you expect them to be?
Friend: Not tense, if we're not careful.
Me: What, you're expecting them to turn into hyenas or postage stamps and just wander off?
Friend: What the hell are you talking about?
Me: Well, how would they become not tents all of a sudden?
Friend: Don't you know anything? Tents don't stay tense all the time if you leave them up.
Me: Everything I thought I knew about the universe is shaken and changing.

Nope. I see no problems at all...

3 comments:

  1. I just checked, and no Pope over the last 80 years has died on a Tuesday. Pope John XXIII did die on June 3, 1963, which was a Monday, so I guess that's what you were talking about?

    Yes, I just had to research that. D:

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  2. FU, ASH! IT'S A BRILLIANT STORY! ONE WHICH I WILL CHERISH ALWAY!

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  3. my mum was born in 1959, that's pretty unlikely.

    the details may be slightly fudged in the story my mother's told me, but I'm pretty sure it was John Paul I or the one before him. I researched and came up with one that fitted the time bracket and time of year.

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