In This Land Of Strangers There Are Dangers...

So apologies for my last blog, this one will be a bit less angry…well just a bit.

Let’s start last weekend…in fact…let’s start last Saturday at about 3:20 am. I was in bed and suddenly I’m woken up by my mum’s phone ringing downstairs, whenever the phone rings at this time of night it either means bad news or that somebody’s drunk. I ran downstairs to see that it was my sister ringing my mum off her new phone. My sister had just got a new Nokia n95 and we just presumed that she was just trying it out seeing as she was upstairs at the time.

I went back to bed only to be woken up at 6:45 am by a blank text from my sister. Half asleep I closed the text and went back to sleep. 10 minutes later I get another text from her…

“Text me back its lisa”

…this seemed a little bit strange, but I texted back “Ok” and waited for a reply. A few minutes later I get a text back…

“Can we meet”

…shocked by the lack of punctuation and the fact that she was in the room next to mine, I decided not to text back but to go downstairs, that way she could hear me going down and meet me down there. I waited for a good few minutes before texting asking if everything was ok. Suddenly my phone rang…

“Hello?”
“Who’s that?…”
“It’s John…”
“What? Fucking Stechford John?…”
“Lisa’s brother John!”
“Oh…” *hangs up*

Even though the call came from my sister’s phone, it was Dean that was phoning me and it sounded like he was outside. I went back to bed only to hear him banging on the front door about half an hour later and my sister letting him in.

He claims he wanted to phone his aunt and rang me accidentally, although I get the impression that he doesn’t trust my sister. When my sister asked him why he keeps ringing us, he lost his temper and broke my sister’s brand new phone before walking out in a temper…

…Dick!

Anyway, enough about that. On with the blog.

That Saturday despite being half asleep I went into Solihull with Gaz to help him find a father’s day present for his dad. When we were going back to the car it started raining, despite the car not being far we got drenched. We had planned on going somewhere that day but due to the weather we all decided to watch a few DVDs round Adam’s house.

We rented out Epic Movie and National Lampoon’s TV: The Movie. The first film we watched was Epic Movie, I had the feeling it would be a load of crap and it lived up to all my expectations, not only were all the jokes old and predictable, but I found it slightly anti-white. All the white characters were portrayed and being slightly thick and the villain is called the ‘white bitch’ and she keeps everyone down.

After Epic Movie was over we watched TV: The Movie. This had to be one of the weirdest films I’ve ever seen, it featured some of the cast of Jackass doing these various sketches on a really low budget. I didn’t enjoy it much but it was a hell of a lot better than Epic Movie.

The next day we planned to go somewhere, we all got in the car but as we started off we realized that we didn’t know where to go. In the end we ended up at Earlswood, we walked around the lake and looking at all the dead fish before ending up in the playground again on the swings.

Adam and Marcus took the big swings while I was left with the baby one. As I sat on the top of it Adam dared me to climb into the seat, and being one to never turn down a dare I did just that. As I was getting into it though I managed to get stuck, and what made things even worse was turning round to see Gaz filming again…



…git!

Eventually I got to go on the big swing and just to show off I jumped off…



…hmm.

We then quickly climbed that tree again before heading back to the car and heading home. That night was my mum’s night off so we stayed in and watched Hot Fuzz, I could tell she enjoyed it by the fact she stayed awake all the way through.

Monday evening Gaz turned up at my house with Adam, Marcus and Jenny in the car, when I asked where Carl was Gaz told me he was in the boot, I laughed at first only to realize that he really was in the boot due to Jenny coming along last minute and there being a lack of seating.

We headed back to get Adam’s car and then went bowling, it was pretty dead there so we didn’t mind making prats of ourselves. I was trying my hardest to tolerate Jenny all night, even though she asked everyone for the deposits for the holiday right in front of me. She eventually pushed me over the edge though when she went to the jukebox and chose the most god awful songs ever, although anyone would do the same if somebody chose 2 dance versions of 80’s songs.

After bowling, Gaz dropped me back home while Adam gave Carl, Marcus and Jenny a lift home. As Adam was about to go the normal way back though, Jenny told him to go down Houndsfield Lane, the trouble with this though is not only this road is really out of the way, but the road is almost always flooded…especially after several days of continuous rain.

Unsurprisingly, as Adam was going through the ford his car managed to grind to a complete halt. Now what is the worst thing you can do when you’re in a car that’s about 3 feet deep in water?…

…that’s right…open the door!…

…and Jenny did just that. Adam’s car was flooded from the inside too now. They phoned Gaz who helped them push the car out of the water, eventually by 3am the car was working again, but still soaked.

The next day we all went round Carl’s house, everyone was still knackered from getting to bed so late. We played on Halo 2 and Wii sports before all getting too tired and going home.

On Thursday I needed to go into Solihull, my sister had been to Toni and Guy a couple of days before and had her hair done, the only problem was that when she went to pay by cheque she managed to mess up the last cheque in her book and when she went to pay by card it was declined, so they kept her card until she paid up. Because my sister was now back at work I had to take the cheque in to them and get her card back.

When I walked into Toni and Guy I walked up to the reception desk…

“Hi, my s…”
“Ah yes, Lisa’s brother!”
“…Huh?…um…yeah…”

God knows how they knew I was Lisa’s brother, I don’t think we look that much alike…although maybe if I had long blonde hair…or maybe not.

Yesterday was my aunt and uncle’s silver wedding anniversary. It’s quite weird to think they were celebrating 25 years of being married, on the day of the wedding I was there and only 9 months old. The plan was to get to the all saints church centre in Sutton Coldfield for 7pm…no problem!…although we are talking about my family here…

I was ready for 6, no problem there. However, my mum and sister were still rushing round panicking about what to wear by 7 and weren’t even ready until 8. We were going to get a people carrier with my nan, aunt, uncle and cousins, but even when we were ready they still hadn’t started.

At about 8:30 my cousin decided that it would be easier to drive us there first, so he turned up in his brand new Mercedes CL class coupé. Now, this car had it all, in fact, there wasn’t a lot it couldn’t do…however it was missing one thing…a middle seat in the back, I spent the whole half hour journey there sat on this plastic tray thing, by the time we reached Sutton Coldfield my leg was numb and I had to drag it behind me as we walked in.

It was weird to see members of the family that I’d not seen in years, it was even weirder when they have to ask who you are. After a while we helped ourselves to the buffet and a drink when suddenly there was a rush to one corner of the room, it was like a stampede, then I realized…they’d put the cake out.

After helping myself to the last few crumbs of cake I sat back down only for my aunt, uncle and cousins to finally turn up (this was about 10 pm) when suddenly the lights went out and this cloud of smoke formed, only to hear the DJ say…

“It’s time to turn this party up a notch!”
*strobe lights start but no music*
“What are you doing?…Turn it off!”
*strobe lights stop*

At this point my mum took her hands from over my eyes and the DJ started playing some Tina Turner. At these kind of occasions the only people who go on the dance floor are kids and grandparents, although after a while my mum and aunt were up there dancing with my nan while me, my sister and my cousins were all sat there embarrassed, although my nan did manage to out-dance nearly everybody there which isn’t bad for a 90 year old.

At the end of the night my aunt drove us home, she took the quick route which took 30 minutes longer than the way my cousin went. As soon as I got home I watched an episode of Harvey Birdman and then went straight to bed and slept for a good 10 hours.

In case you’ve never seen it, here’s an episode…

Harvey Birdman - Trial of Scooby Doo

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As for my last blog, well nothing’s been said since. I’m getting the impression that Jenny imagines that I tell her I can’t go anywhere. I’m not even going to start talking about it because it makes me unbelievably angry.

Until next time…

…Nobody wears dungarees anymore!