You can choose your friends, but...

The world is a different place when the sun is shining. Mr Kemp delivers the papers with a cheery ‘morning!’ rather than a malicious ‘don’t forget to pay me tomorrow, fatty’; the birds in the garden look joyous and proud, rather than windswept and grumpy; and even my mother seems less sweaty, overweight and toxic.
Well, alright, that last one was an exaggeration, but two out of three ain’t bad.
We had a near cataclysmic meltdown last night. At approximately 10.15pm, dearest mother ran out of Jim Beam and staggered over to the shoe-rack for the cheapo emergency half-bottle of Jacobite she keeps hidden in a welly. Trouble is, my Welsh cousin Gethin had accidentally found it at 9.45pm and had decided to help himself. Mum’s reaction was like a white dwarf erupting into supernova (see Hubble website for further details and examples)
I did what any child borne of an alcoholic parent has learned to do with bitter experience – I hid. Gethin, sitting half-comatosed on the sofa bed with a large cheese sandwich and a HobNob, stepped into the fatal trap that so many Welsh pseudo-criminals have fallen into before… he confessed.
He is now sporting a black eye, a bloody nose and wrist burns, and is on his way back to Wales as we speak.
In a strange way, I shall miss him; but in another, bigger way, I’m so glad he’s gone I could dance naked on a plinth in Sainsburys, and I hope I never see the fat, unpleasant bastard again.
Families, eh?

RC 29-5-08
1455 BST

Gethin and his Girl-thing

Another peachy pearl of homespun wisdom from my Welsh cousin Gethin this morning – “All woman want it, they just need someone to show them how much…”
Priceless.
We’d been discussing the relative merits of internet relationships, after my cyber-girlfriend Melissa Rhyke (27) sent me an e-card reminding me that she loves me, despite having only contacted me once in the last two weeks.
It turns out that Gethin and I share an unexpected relationship background – he too is in possession of an international cyber-partner in a romantic sphere of reference.. Gethin’s cyber-love is called Freta and she lives in a dark corner of Thailand. She claims to be half-Dutch and half-Thai. Judging by her photographs and messages I’d say she is probably half-Cretin and half-man, but it was a dark photo; and maybe ‘her’ intelligence was lost in translation somewhat.
Gethin says he is saving up to go and visit her. He’s working extra shifts at the Drive-Thru to pay for his flight. He thinks they’re going to make love like two rabbits locked in a sackful of aphrodisiacs. I think he’s likely to be very disappointed, and very uncomfortable. Two weeks after he lands, we’ll be getting letters begging us to send him his air fare home and some Vaseline. He’ll be stuck in a hellish world of anal pain with a butch Asian sadist and no discernible end in sight.
And I’ll be laughing my fat, spotty arse off…
I might lend him fifty quid to help him get there.

RC 26-5-08
0900 BST

It's been so long...

My friends, I have neglected you.
I am so sorry to have been away, but a few things happened that put a large barrier between myself and my internet scribblings.
First, Mother was taken to hospital. She necked her first snifter of the day, but had grabbed a bottle of Dettol instead of a bottle of Drambuie and ended up having her stomach pumped. Silly cow. The doctors have told her she should lay off alcohol for a few months. She said she would. Mind you, she also said she only drank ‘wine at the weekend’ so God knows how long that will last. About the same amount of time that a kitten lasts in a kettle I should imagine.
A few days later, my Welsh cousin Gethin (who for some inextricable, unforgivable and infuriating reason is still here) thought it would be funny to put fridge magnets all over my computer and monitor. If you’ve never seen the effect that such items have on sensitive electrical equipment, I should try and find some photos, rather than experiment yourselves. It was two weeks before they delivered replacements.
Gethin has sworn to pay for the damage. But then, Gethin swears a lot. Roughly every third word in everyday conversation, by my reckoning. He also thinks Buddha is a type of cheese, and that Winston Churchill is not the Greatest Ever Englishman because ‘I bet he couldn’t score a penalty in the semis’
As someone once said in a King Dong movie – “what a dick”

RC 22-5-08
0930 BST