| The Laundry ~ Mad Dad, Bad Mum

Mad Dad, Bad Mum

25 January 2007 By Rachel 1 In People & Places

I know we have been banging on about Dad’s for some time now - but they are such a fruitful subject. We got loads of replies - I am featuring my fabvourite from Serena Beckett who seems to have the best/maddest Dad EVER. Here are her stories…

“One of my father’s most unusual habits is to do with the car. He and I share a very tired and battered little Fiat, and when he comes to London every couple of weeks he uses up all the petrol and adds to the dents. He is quite a mad driver. When he has used the car I find handfuls of conkers in the driver’s door pocket. The first time I noticed them I threw them away, but they kept being replenished - every autumn he makes sure he picks up at least 30 or 40 which he hoards in a plastic bag and sticks under the passenger seat. I asked him why the conker obsession, was he challenging other conker players in competitions? Did the dog have a particular penchant for them? But no, he said that he likes to throw them. “At what?” I asked. “Other people’s cars” he replied. It turns out that if someone is driving “in an annoying way, such as sitting in a yellow box, or using up two lanes at the traffic lights” my pa winds down the window and lobs a couple of conkers at the offending car. He says that it works a treat, the person moves out of the way and it causes no harm to the paintwork.

So next time you are causing a minor obstruction at a junction and hear a “thunk” sound, look in your rear view mirror. If you see a tall man with a cross expression in a small white car, you know you’ve been conkered“

I thought that was so funny I laughed and water spurted out of my nose (I was drinking at the time - not a mutant) - but Lo there is more from Serena:

“When I was little he decided it would be much quicker to get to work from Fulham to the City by river.

So he bought a two-seater orange hovercraft and hovered to work. He’d tie it to a lamppost or something similar, go to the office and then hover home again. But it wasn’t very reliable (it was an early model) and he had to row ashore a couple of times, so he sold it to some gullible Danes after about a year. Much to the relief of my mother. Everyone wanted to come to our house for tea because we had the best toy imaginable parked outside. So you see, he can be a little eccentric. I won’t even begin to tell you about the plane with detachable wings…“

I’m now trying to think up some stuff about my mum that will out trump Serena’s story - my mum is definately also a mentalist. My mum had cartilage removed from her left knee five years ago - it’s really painful, her knee is around the size of a canteloupe and she has to wear a tubie grip everyday, but every time she goes out and gets drunk she dances like she is posessed by the spirit of an apache….native american - it’s the combination of the hops and claps that does it. We were at a wedding recently and she did a dance solo up on stage and attempted to moon walk. She is also a poet in her spare time, she once made up a rap about people in Shrewsbury (where she lives) that she likes to describe as the “herb people/basket women” because they name their children things like willow, taryn and the like - the rap went something like:

The white rastafarians

And all those vegetarians

There was another poem that was bit more agressive - too rude to publish here but these were the first two lines

All men are ****s

All they think about is *****s and ***s

That was in the 80s new wave feminism and all - hope haven’t offended anyone - any hoo any stories about mums greatly appreciated.

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