Lolly Night
There are and have been many rituals in my family over the years, but the best one by far would have to have been Lolly Night.

Every Saturday night when we were kids Dad would line us 3 kids up in front of the fireplace with his hands behind his back and sing.....

"I have got a present, a present, a present.
I have got a present that I will give to you.
Do you want it?"

With that we'd all shout "YES"

"Do you really want it"

"YEEEEESSSS"

"Are you sure?"

"YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS"

With that he'd whip his hands out from behind his back and toss/throw a bag of mixed lollies to us.

Sometimes it would be a gentle toss. Other times he throw them as fast as an Aussie Fast Bowler. This probably depended on how much we had annoyed him during the week. We never cared how hard he threw them or if you copped a bag in the head. Hell we were getting lollies.

God I miss Lolly Night and I miss him too.
(Gordon Shumway, Wed 26 Nov 2008, 4:46, Reply)

Car journeys
seem to bring about the family rituals like nothing else! I suppose it's a natural response to being trapped in a small space with each other for an inevitably long time.

Even now if me and my brothers are all in the car with my mum and stepdad, it is the law that within five minutes of setting off we all chorus "are we nearly there yet?" and I follow it by whining "I need a weeeeee!" (I am 32 and my brothers are 26 and 28).

When were little we used to be bagpipes to pass the time.
Two of us would drone and the other one would do the tune, usually Scotland the Brave but sometimes our own lovingly improvised epics. It started when we were taken to a Highland Gathering and the massed pipers made an impression on us. After that we did it on every long car journey, sometimes keeping it up for hours without a break, much to the bemusement of our parents.

Recently we've had a few journeys together and my mum has suggested resurrecting the bagpiping... I think she finds it preferable to my stepdad swearing at other drivers.
( warmfuzzies Isn't here, Tue 25 Nov 2008, 23:47, 3 replies)

Gurney Slade
My family all read The Meaning Of Liff a while ago and (as I'm sure everyone does who has read it) came up with a few of our own.

Gurney Slade is "to distort the face of a loved one, while they are unconscious on a sofa at a party, for the amusement of others".

My mum proudly coined that one and it stuck. We rarely actually indulge in Gurney Slade, more often use it as a threat.

Ooh, and that's another thing. Gurning.
When gathered together for any kind of family event where photographs are taken to remember the occasion, the instant a camera is pointed at any group of us we are gripped by a strange compulsion. We don't pose and smile... we gurn. With no direction or communication, we simultaneously pull the same face (and sometimes each others'). There are no normal pictures of us as a family since Christmas 2005.

Some examples:
Christmas 2006 1, 2
Christmas 2007 1, 2
My brother's wedding (note how effortlessly my sister in law fits in with us).
( warmfuzzies Isn't here, Tue 25 Nov 2008, 23:36, 10 replies)

Apparently
my family isnt the only one who play the " i saw the landmark first" competition in the car.

And they say brits are too straight laced eh??

My sister has to take the cake as every christmas (she is 30 now) all of her presents are set up in the living room like a shrine and must be left there for at least 10 days and god help the unfortunate individual who asks her to take them to her room. Also said room although having lied empty for 12 years due to studenting is exactly as she left it circa 1996.

Also my mother (total legend by the way) uses an electric wheelchair to get about and is referred to ( to her face) as Davros ( dalek ruler for those of you too cool/young/interesting to know)

Kooky?? thats the sparklehorse family....da da da da.
(sparklehorse is loving popping his cherry...again....honest, Tue 25 Nov 2008, 23:29, Reply)

Not perhaps so much a ritual
as a family trait...

Me and my brothers all seem to have sleep disorders.

Apparently I talk in my sleep. More accurately, I cuss in my sleep, (allegedly) telling the listener to "fuck off", "leave me alone" or "get off me". This can happen even when I am having nice dreams of kittums and things.

Brother Dan has developed somnambulism. He often works abroad and wakes up in foreign hotel lobbies wearing nowt but his boxers with no recollection of how he got there. Getting back into his room often proves an ordeal.
When my brothers shared a house a few years ago, Brother Rob, would wake up to find Dan lurking in his room, oblivious to Rob's bemused questions. Rob got used to it after a while and would accept that his brother would manifest at strange hours, mumbling "oh, it's Dan again, not a burglar" and going straight back to sleep.
When Dan was little he frequently hurled himself out of bed. In her infinite wisdom, my mum - rather than moving him to the bottom bunk - made a multitude of beanbags and strategically placed them so that when he landed he would just carry on sleeping.

Rob is mostly quite normal... but when we shared a hotel room in Albania he warned me before going to bed that he had been known to shriek in his sleep. Specifically shriek. Nothing else.
( warmfuzzies Isn't here, Tue 25 Nov 2008, 23:23, 2 replies)

Eddie Stobart game
Whenever we go on the motorway, we HAVE to play the spot-the-stobart-game. It's crap. I've tried explaining there's no skill and it's pure luck, but being the girl, no one listens. And you HAVE to play.
"You don't want minus one now, do you, clap?"
(I've got the clap has some cool sentence here, Tue 25 Nov 2008, 22:58, 3 replies)

Monopoly
It's not a game it's like a religion. No conversation just long long hours of playing the game with no mercy. Any other game... just normal.. but Monopoly, oh that was a different matter. I can't play it nowdays, because no one understand why I am sooo intense when I do.
(Captain_lambkin adifferent.me, Tue 25 Nov 2008, 22:50, 5 replies)

Back in the day
when my siblings and I were but wee little tykes, my Grandparents would come to visit every Friday bringing with them a bag of strawberry liquorice laces which we would have to divide up between the 5 of us, along with £1.25 pocket money, which would equate to 25p each. I can't even begin to explain how excited we all got....oh the small things in life!! If only my problems today could be solved with some liquorice and 25p!

A ritual that is still standing today is that on Christmas morning, we're not allowed to open any presents until the whole family is up, showered and dressed and gathered in the living room. This began when we were little, mother knew all to well that if we opened them as soon as we awoke, we'd be too distracted to go and get dressed etc! It was also a nifty way of getting us to help out with tidying up and preparing dinner..."the sooner everything's sorted, the sooner you can have your presents!"
(blubbergob09, Tue 25 Nov 2008, 21:21, 2 replies)

BHS
Like most of you here, as young'uns, my sister and I were dragged off to town every Saturday for the weekly family shopping outing. Mostly, we hated it. The highlight though, was when Dad used to try on woman's hats in BHS. My mum was always mortified, but we thought it was great.
(Woofie, Tue 25 Nov 2008, 20:43, 2 replies)

If you count Mr Bin and myself as a family
then I guess we have a few.

- if a news report says "a man has appeared in court/ before magistrates" then we go 'ping'. To represent him appearing by magic you see.

- if a news report refers to someone having 'not been named' or 'having been named by police' we remark on how remiss it was of the parents to not get round to naming the person involved.

- if it comes up in conversation as to whether an actor is dead or not we will say 'no, you're thinking of Denholm Elliot'.

It's a wonder we don't have any friends!
( Mrs Entity is in hiding., Tue 25 Nov 2008, 20:32, 3 replies)

Manners
I was brought up well. It's often mis-construed in the media, more so when I was a lot younger than now, that single parent families are rarely taught good manners.

With me, it was the opposite. Being brought up by just my mum, as opposed to my mum and dad (who was kicked out of the family home when I was seven and hasn't seen or spoken to me since I was nine.) meant that I have been majorly influenced by my mum. Although this manifests by me being very different in a lot of ways (quiet, shy and reflective, compared to my overly brash mum), it gave me a great start in life, as mum hated those that lied, and those that treated others badly. To this day I find lying hard to do, and if someone does it to me it can be the end of a friendship immediately.

I also grew to be polite and respectful of others. That's not to say I don't have a horrible habit of overusing the word "cunt", or that road rage passes me by. What it does mean is that I expect a certain level of politeness around me. Cut me up on the road and cause me to almost crash and you'll learn some new swear words. Immediately put your hand up by way of an apology and you'll calm me down within seconds. Yes, you fucked up, but you are big enough to realise it and say sorry.

Anyone who knows me will know that almost every day I go to my local Costa and have a large skinny latte. It doesn't matter that I can never remember if it's pronounced lar-tay or lat-tay, or that the staff in there all know me well enough that they prepeat (no idea if that's a word, but if it's not then it should be) my order to me as I reach the till. It's my local coffee shop, it's a haven from work for an hour and everyone in there has a smile on their face and the manners you'd expect from a retail place.

But going in there today, not only is there a massive queue, but there's also a brash, loud and arrogant guy behind the counter who isn't normally there. This guy, who I'll call A, is serving the customers, just asking their order, enquiring if they want any extra cakes or whipped cream on their hot chocolate and generally being quite smarmy, before immediately turning to guy B, a yard to his left and taking payments on the till, and repeating the order and then shouting to guy C, about five yards away making all of the coffees, the same order.

This process normally runs quite smoothly without guy A involved, as guy B can take orders and process payments whilst retaining the ability to not make me want to jean over and give him a slap. I've no idea why it was changed today but guy A, I'm guessing, is higher up the food chain and seems to have a point to prove.

As I ponder this in the queue, having just given my order "large skinny latte to drink in please" to guy A, I hear guy C ask a customer if they wanted whipped cream on their hot chocolate. They said that they did, so that's what they got, but not before Guy A had shouted -louder than he shouted the orders - "I've already told you to put cream on them. Listen! Ok? I need you to listen to what I'm saying in future!". All delivered with an over the top look-at-me flourish. The noise in the shop dropped momentarily, guy C caught my eye for a split second, and I'm sure he rolled his eyes slightly before turning away in embarrasment,

Point made, knob jockey A, we know who's in charge, and it's just a shame that you haven't fucked up as I'd like to see you respond to embarrasment like that.

I reflected on what had just happened. Should I say anything? Should I just be short and curt? Or should I ignore it? My train of thought was interrupted by guy A.

"So that was a small skinny lat-"

"LARGE skinny latte." i interrupted.

No apology: "LARGE skinny latte," he repeated, "to go.". His voice was raised slightly again, as he was once more directing his orders to guy C. Guy B has already rung the correct product at the correct price for me, and seemed as though he was about to turn to guy C to tell him that it was actually to drink in, not to go.

Too late.

"To drink IN," I corrected, raising my voice as I did, hoping to God that I sounded authoritative rather than pissed off.

The shop's volume fell again, "Listen, ok," I started, and with a huge grin on my face - visible only to the three guys behind the counter, and not to any customers - I continued, slowing my words so that the pronunciation was clear: "I need you to listen to what I'm saying in future..."

And that has cheered me up no end today :)
( SeasonTicketless is too often the statue, and rarely the pigeon., Tue 25 Nov 2008, 20:30, 9 replies)

Haulage.
I think I was in my mid teens when I realised that not all families were oblidged to say 'Eddie Stobart - that bastard' whenever they saw one of the lorries.

To my knowledge no one in our family ever had dealings with said company or had reason to question the parentage of the owners and the true reason why - if any - was lost with my Dad.
(Tugnut I got them all..., Tue 25 Nov 2008, 19:59, 4 replies)

Total offensive randomness
My family and I have some rather odd and offensive rituals which I still indulge in when I go home to visit.

Upon walking through the door I usually greet whoever's home with "Alright slags/whores/bitches?" to which my mother will sigh wearily and my sister/brother/dad will respond in kind.

In turn, my father will get home, allow our arthritic and lumpy old labrador to circle him several times making a noise we refer to as "nonsense", before walking past the lounge into the kitchen, stopping momentarily to say "gay" at whoever is occupying the room.

This has of course, backfired when we have guests and the returning party doesn't realise. Especially if they're my mum's friends. She is rarely impressed with us.

Another ritual I follow with my siblings is that of the High School Musical merchandise. We are all (and I'm sure we're not alone with this) spectacularly creeped out by Zac Efron and the whole HSM extravanganza. So we started buying each other horrid and tacky HSM items for birthdays/Christmases to wind each other up. It started with a karaoke HSM microphone, which would play two of the songs from the film when you pressed a button - which we soon turned into a "High School Musical Bomb". Whenever I had to get up early for work and I knew my sister or brother were enjoying a lie in, I would quietly open their doors, press the button and lob it as hard as possible at the bed. The inevitable result was that the microphone would crash down the side of the bed, meaning brother or sister would have to blearily crawl under their bedframe and try and retrieve the bloody thing just to get it to shut up. Needless to say the same was often done to me. We have so many HSM things in the house now it's getting beyond a joke.

Along with a lot of other posters, we also had a ritual where we would travel to see my grandparents in the Cotswolds, and whoever saw the little church in their village first would have to yell "NORTHLEACHCHURCHISAWITFIRST!!!". I usually saw it first, as I was the oldest and would often elbow my siblings out of the way, and they were as blind as bats too.

For one of my sister's earlier birthdays she got a ragdoll from one of her friends. We called it Rosie after the girl that gave it to her (spoilt brat - horrid child), and over the next couple of years Rosie the ragdoll got a voice (a mannish quality to it), a "face" (my sister would pull this face whenever Rosie was coming to get us, it involved flaring ones nostrils and developing a severe overbite) and a propensity to lose her limbs (I decided to play golf using her as the ball - the doll, not my sister - and one of her legs flew off. We buried it in the garden). After several years of abuse including setting fire to her hair and burying her "alive", she had basically disintergrated and is now located somewhere in the garden of our old house. I wonder if our successors ever did any serious landscaping and found her?

Other quick family oddities:

- Drawing a smile and a pair of sunglasses on a hollow Limpet shell and calling it Dave, giving him the personality of "serious party goer" and telling stories of how he moved so slowly that by the time he got to any parties they had already finished. My mum threw him away by accident. We never forgave her.

- Sneaking downstairs at 6 in the morning to steal the change out of my dad's coat pockets

- Making up songs that my dog would sing if she had a voice

- Singing along, operatic style, to the Lloyds bank advert tune

Ah family rituals - I didn't really even think about them until this QOTW!
(posage As I turned the corner I felt muscular and compact, Tue 25 Nov 2008, 19:39, 2 replies)

Mr Maladicta and I are evolving our own traditions.
Usually, these days, when I say something he disagrees with, he glares at me, and slowly points, followed by the cry of "KITCHEN!", mainly because he reads 4chan too much, but also because the first time he did it it was just too funny to not let it become a running joke.

I've tried to retaliate by pointing at him and going "Osuwari!", which is Japanese for "sit", like you say to a dog, but it's not worked so far.

(The first person to understand why I tell him "Osuwari!" will win the internets.)
( Maladicta, Tue 25 Nov 2008, 18:54, 8 replies)

'I saw it first'
Every time there is a car journey with two or more members of my immediate family in the car this game is played, even today. Often ending in horrific arguments.

About 20 minutes from home there is a large penis shaped monument on top of a large hill. The Hode monument on Hode Hill to be exact. The first person to see it has to shout 'I saw it first'. But to see it you need to go around another hill for it to come in to view. So everyone pretty much sees it at the same time.

Ive played this game since I was able to speak and a lot of people I know play it because its a nice little marker to know you're nearly home.

Mine is the only family I know of to have the game escalate to arguments and have punches thrown (between myself and my sibling).

My dad is possibly the worst person ever to play this game with. He's over 50 now and if he loses he throws a paddy like a child... It keeps us occupied I suppose.
(i should have joined myspace, Tue 25 Nov 2008, 18:46, 7 replies)

At first, I didn't think my family had many rituals or codes.
That is until I went home last night and greeted my mum in the traditional way by walking through the door and shouting "ello Mary Poppins" in my best Dick Van Dyke voice.
I then remembered The Morning Song. The Morning Song is simple yet effective. It involves knocking on someone's bedroom door and singing "time to wake up, and make a cup, of lover-ley tea, just for meeeeee." You then wait for the person you've sung to to get up and make you a brew.
It is also a bad idea to ever stand up in my house, if someone sees you are on your feet you will be asked to put the kettle on. Every. Single. Time. (We drink a lot of tea)

I then got thinking about christmas and how generally it seems to be a time for family traditions, some good, some not so good. There's always an aunt with a moustache bigger than Geoff from Biker Grove's just desperate to kiss you, presents you wish people hadn't bothered wasted their money on as you're never going to use them and the pressure to be civil. Don't get me wrong, I love my immediate family. I just don't much care for the other people I'm related to.
I could never understand why my uncle made such a huge deal about us being together at that time of year when he couldn't give a shit about seeing us at any other time. The excuse 'because it's christmas' doesn't sit well with me.

Boxing day was always the day for seeing the family. I wouldn't say I hated it, more I just found it pointless. I much prefer christmas day at home with just my Mum, Dad and two brothers for a few reasons. My family are ace, there's a lot of good banter and we do things for each other we know the recipient will find funny.

Every christmas morning for as long as I can remember I've opened my bedroom door to find a small pile of chocolate coins which then become a trail leading down the stairs, through the hall, into the front room and to the fire place and christmas tree. My mum told me years ago it's because Father Christmas has a hole in his pocket and the coins fall out as he makes his way about our home. (I have often wondered why in the 20 plus years he's been coming to our house he hasn't simply sewn the hole up!)

One year I was working nights in a club. I came home at about 5am on christmas day to discover my mum had, in true Adam & Joe style recreated the nativity scene in our front garden using soft toys, cardboard boxes and straw.

A few years ago my brothers and I went for a christmas eve drink. On the way home we passed some roadworks and decided that what was missing in our Dad's life was a men at work road sign.
After lovingly placing his gift in the hall we all went to bed only to discover in the morning that the miserable sod had worked out where we had acquired the sign from and taken it back! And so a new ritual was born. Last year we managed to get a shopping trolley tucked away under the stairs before he woke up and took it back to Tesco. I hope this year we find him another gift I'm sure he'll appreciate, a traffic cone perhaps?

The little things like the morning song and the chocolate coins remind me that despite all of my flaws my family still love me. I know the casual thievery annoys my Dad a bit, but he still can't hide the smile on his face in the morning.

If I ever have children, Father Christmas will have a hole in his pocket every year and if they ever steal a road sign for me I shall laugh and then put it back in it's rightful place before they wake up.
( wanderlust, Tue 25 Nov 2008, 17:50, 6 replies)

There was an imaginary ghost in our house
We lived in a mad rambling victorian villa when i was little, and out the back there was a daft wee staircase that led to the maids quarters. A lodger lived there and she was really very unhinged but that's another story.

I don't know who started it, i suspect it was my dad, but someone said that at 10pm precisely the ghost would leave the maids quarters and go hunting for virgin blood. So of course, if me or my brother was up about then, we would hear the clock in the living room tolling and fucking leg it up the stairs because the only way to prevent some kind of spectral massacre on the stairs was to be in our rooms by the final toll of the clock with the lights out and in our beds.

I'm writing this and i'm realising what manipulative bastards my parents were.

10 o'clock at night - until i was 15
( Animanga, Tue 25 Nov 2008, 17:41, 2 replies)

I can see the sea!
this is what the person to see the sea would have to say on our family holidays or else...well, or else they'd turn and go "oh yeah". It wasn't that strict a ritual.
(MrChimp previously Monsieur, Tue 25 Nov 2008, 17:30, Reply)

Old time christmas.
Before my parents divorced, christmas was
AWEEESOME. Me and my two brothers would
clamber downstairs at 8ish, walk into the front room and see our huge piles of presents. My dad made fancy word art, christmas A4 sheets with our names on and placed them amongst our presents. It was the 90s, what can I say? Word art used to be cool. Yeah, that was about it.
(I've got the clap has some cool sentence here, Tue 25 Nov 2008, 17:10, 1 reply)

The Lynx Java Blues
The latest familial memory that has escaped from the mindbleach is this quirk from my dad.

When I was a wee kiddy and before my first conviction, we all used to go shopping at our local Safeways every Saturday afternoon. On Saturday morning, my dad would make the shopping list. This was a very serious business, as if you weren’t present to outline your case, then you couldn’t have it. Don’t get me wrong, my dad wasn’t mean. If you could justify it in person, then it would go on the list and you could have it with no problems.

But if it wasn’t on the list, then oh dear. Oh dearie me.

This used to lead to horrendous situations whereby I would be playing with my friends at someone’s house on a Saturday morning then I would suddenly realise with bowel-gripping horror that it was almost list writing time. I would have to peg it around to my house to grab my empty tube of hair gel and request another one in order to avoid the ignominy of having flat un-spiked hair, or to squirt the stale butane out of my can of Lynx Java to prove that I needed another can.

My father did used to come unstuck sometimes as he lived by the sword and died by the sword.

I will never forget one Saturday afternoon where me, my two sisters, and mother would physically restrain him from picking up safety razors as they weren’t on the list.

We must have looked like loonies.

BUT THEY WEREN’T ON THE LIST DAD, SO NOW WHO’S LAUGHING?

*foams*

*gibbers*

*twitches*
(powervator and NONE SHALL PASS, Tue 25 Nov 2008, 17:06, 2 replies)

Cats
Here was the morning cat ritual we had for years:

- The cats wake me up by standing on my chest and meowing
- I get up and let the cats out of my room
- The cats run into my parents' room and wake them up
- I go downstairs to get some breakfast and the cats follow me, always nearly running me over on the stair
- I sit down for breakfast and my parents come down
- Fat Girl sits in the chair next to me and my dad lets Zorro out the back door
- Fat Girl howls until I start patting her back. Then she bites my hands - She liked it, because she was purring, but she would bite. We called her the "Mad Patter."

Every single morning.
(Ay, Why, Kay, Jee, Oh, Tee, Ell bcdefhijmnpqrsuvwxz, Tue 25 Nov 2008, 16:45, 1 reply)

Paul McCartney's Beard
Until the age of nine I didn't realise there were other things to listen to apart from the Beatles, my dad loves um and is completely obssessed with um circa '63-'65.

Fast forward twenty-odd years and I bought my old man a copy of Abbey Road for Christmas, and some book about the Beatles going to India and getting heavily into drugs and Yoko Ono and all that.

'What do I want with this shit?!?'

Was my dad's way of saying thank you.

I forgot that my old man doesn't actually believe the Beatles did anything after '65.

'It all went to pot when they started messin' about with facial hair.'

Was his explination.
( SpankyHanky, Tue 25 Nov 2008, 16:41, Reply)

Natural Goodness
My mum only ever let us watch the BBC because she thought adverts were evil, and we never had any sweets in the house - even Ribena was banned. We just had fruit. Me and my brother used to sneak into the cupboard and eat vitamin pills because they were the sweetest thing we could find.

Totally backfired though; now I love adverts more than actual telly, and eat the most synthetic E-number laden food I can find. Ha! Take that, mum!
(ne0n, Tue 25 Nov 2008, 16:40, 6 replies)

Jet Propelled
Like many children my sister and I were dragged off to the supermarket for the weekly shop every Saturday.

Mum would always make sure she parked on the top level of the multi story car park so as we left we’d be entertained by going down the big spirally ramp in the middle shouting “Jet Propelled”. What felt fast as a youngster was probably only about 10 MPH.

Cut to twenty years later and although I have a driving license I don’t have a car and so drive very infrequently, however on collecting my hire car from Hertz the other week I couldn’t resist shouting “Jet Propelled!” rather loudly as I went down the ramp in the car park.

What is it they say about simple things?
(bill, Tue 25 Nov 2008, 16:40, Reply)

Distracting my mum from the television
The woman zones out completely whilst watching tv and so I keep talking, making up outrageous lies until she pays attention to me.

"Mum...mum...mum..Do you want a cup of tea?...I love horses...mum...the chimneys on fire...mum...mum...I'm going to masturbate into the bathroom curtains"
"What was that dear?"
"Cup of tea?"
(Cylon Bum Raider already knows how this will end, Tue 25 Nov 2008, 16:29, 2 replies)

Whenever I'm with my sister
Or if we're on the telephone and one of us needs to drop the kids off at the pool we have to announce it in a silly voice and call each other the wrong name.

"I need a poooooooo Gerald!"
(Cylon Bum Raider already knows how this will end, Tue 25 Nov 2008, 16:25, Reply)

Fish
When growing up, for tea on a Sunday we had tinned tuna sandwiches. Couple of tins of tuna (usually in oil, maybe in brine) made into sandwiches of white bread cut into quarters. Followed by jelly and ice-cream. Cheapest of the cheap ice-cream. For a while, my mum used to dribble a bit of cochineal onto the ice-cream so it looked like raspberry ripple. It doesn't taste like raspberries. It tastes like dead insects.

Every Sunday without fail since when my brothers were very young and we're talking early to mid 60s here. Even now, even though we all left home over 15 years ago, my parents still have the tuna.

The only exception is when it's Xmas/Boxing Day/New Year's Eve/Day. In which case, it's tinned salmon for tea and the sandwiches are diagonal instead.

and with the addition of a plate of Tuc biscuits.
( sandettie light vessel automatic New Twitter - @bollocksreally, Tue 25 Nov 2008, 16:24, 1 reply)

What's his is ours until he sobers up.
Years ago when we all lived together in the same house, my step-father would come home at the weekend pissed as a fart, lie on the floor and empty all the money from his pockets. He usually had quite a lot left. He would then force upon myself and my sisters all his wordly goods, reminding us that it was all earned for our benefit. In the morning this charade would follow with us quietly and discreetly returning the money to his trouser pockets so he didn't have to ask for it back.

This carried on for quite a few years till we left home and he stopped getting rat-arsed so often.

Sometimes we would wait till lunchtime the next day before returning the money just to watch him squirm for a while.
( girlinthehole, Tue 25 Nov 2008, 15:20, 2 replies)

Holiday food
We always HAVE too eat the local specialties no mater where we are - I find it teadious and the food is never the same in hotel resort restaurants - besides we could have had more fun watching TV with the kids!

It's not even like the wife likes tapas ...
(Biff..., Tue 25 Nov 2008, 14:35, 2 replies)

My dad
has pretenses of being middle-class.

Words and phrases that are banned in our house include:

- "Coffee Table". It's a "Low Table", daaaahling.
- "A grand". No, it's "a thousand pounds".
- "Wacky Backy", "Weed" and "Ganja". It's "Dope" instead. (Why one would get on their high horse about the naming of what's in the joint that's coming their way escapes me).
(Half of Stephen Fry's right buttock pissed on your dog on, Tue 25 Nov 2008, 14:31, 5 replies)