My Family and Other Animals
Written at 9:38 a.m. on 2006-11-13
My Family and Other Animals
The rolling circus that is my family has once again found the road of lunacy and is happily trekking along it.
First we have Andrew, my cousin and his Malawian wife. When Andrew and she got married they had their service and honeymoon in her hometown in Malawi which is lovely except for one tiny little detail � the bride�s visa ran out 3 years ago, she�d been staying in the country illegally so when they arrived back at Heathrow the new bride was promptly dispatched back to Lilongwe by immigration officials. Along with her daughter. Her daughter who might be her daughter by her first husband or might be her sister�s child, no one is entirely sure as both stories have been used. Anyway, my uncle goes to Lilongwe and after much wrangling and rather a lot of cash being paid out to various departments he gets her back in the country on a temporary visa while her actual visa is debated and decided. Any normal person would keep their head down while immigration made their decision but not these two. A couple of months ago they decided to go on holiday � to Malawi and Jamaica. Less than a month later and immigration are back on the doorstep and they aren�t at all happy. Because she�s been taking the piss her visa application has been transferred from the �Urgent� pile to the �Have a look at this is there�s nothing else to do and you�re bored of surfing the internet� pile. Well that�s not the official term, they actual said her visa is no longer a priority case but according to my brother who is an immigration advisor that is the gist of it. The trouble seems to be that in Africa any problems with immigration can be solved with a friendly chat over a drink and a brown envelope stuffed with US dollars. Rather unfortunately British immigration doesn�t work quite the same so there is every chance the dozy mare will be deported again. Along with her sister who is staying with them who claimed to be 19 when she arrived and subsequently turned out to be 14.
Then we have my aunt and uncle and the continuing saga of the family caravan in the Lake district which no one can ever get into on a bank holiday coz my aunt Sue�s family book up every one for the whole year at the start of January. The caravan, which caused my mum and her sister to fall out for a whole 2 months and caused my mum to tell my uncle Peter (not a man given to swearing) to piss right off. The cause of this heinous row must surely be something serious you would think. And you would be wrong. The cause � I left a couple of toast crumbs in the grill. I�m not joking either. I left a few toast crumbs in the grill, my cousin (their son) went up, rang his mother in disgust that I had left toast crumbs in the grill, she told her husband who rang my mum and told her that she needed to get control of her children and teach them to clean up after themselves because it wasn�t on that Rob had had to put up with 4 crumbs in the grill and the rule was that we all cleaned up after ourselves and she should have taught me that. Mum, who was a little stressed at the time because granddad was dying, told him he was a patronizing pillock and he should piss right off, then hung up. And so it went on.
Anyway, when granddad died Sue and Peter took over the management of all caravan funds. Mum, my other uncle and Sue all paid some money into the �caravan fund� and there should have been enough money in there to pay off the balance on the caravan and the site fees until the lease is up (about 4 years). We added it up and there should have been enough. This year Sue and Peter went to Canada for 3 weeks. Next year they are spending a few weeks going through Switzerland on the European equivalent of the Orient Express. I saw what a weekend on the Orient Express cost my dad and it was nearly �2000. This week Sue and Pete have announced that the caravan fund is several thousand pounds short and mum and Ian will have to stump up more cash but they won�t send out detailed accounts of where the money has gone. There has been talk of their management of grandma�s finances before and suspicion is spreading through the family.
And this is just a tiny section of the weirdness that my family have indulged in. I�d write a book about it but no one would believe me.
