My family and their friends
Where to start...

My Uncle Frank was actually my Auntie Francis, but she was the third girl and her parents really wanted a boy, so she was always dressed in boy's clothes and called Frank.

My great uncle Wallace insisted on children up to the age of 18 eating in a separate room to the adults. The first time he met me he got out his 'pig book' and estimated my value, if I'd been a pig, based on my height and width.

My great aunt Edie and her husband (who's name I sadly cannot remember) would cook a huge turkey at Christmas, just for the two of them, which would then last until about March. By the end they would be scraping the mould off it before carving.

Mrs Boyd (who lived in the same village as most of my mother's side of the family) would leave at about 7am to catch the train. Before she left she would stand outside and shout up to her husband, still in bed, "Boyd, I've left the house key under the doormat" so that the whole village (probably the whole county) heard.

The shopkeeper in the village was some old biddy who was very nosy. Her shop was mostly empty shelves so she had very little business. There was a high wall around the shop, so the only window in the whole shop which was clean was one corner high up - she would stand on the counter to look over the wall, and kept that one pane clean to see what was going on in the village.

The lady who lived next door to the school was Mrs Whittingham - she used to wear about 7 hats all piled one on top of the other. Whenever a football got kicked over the wall into her garden she punctured it. The boys' (outside) toilets was up against her garden wall so the boys would pee over the (low) wall onto a big bush in her garden, which only served to make her even more angry. The story goes that one boy kicked the ball into her garden, then rushed round to try to get it back before she punctured it. Just as he got into the garden she appeared, so he dived into the pee-soaked bush, which I suppose served him right.
(Smale is stuffed, Thu 6 Nov 2008, 10:15, Reply)