Escapee brother and too much information
Written at 12:31 p.m. on 2005-10-12
I was talking to my brother on Microsoft messenger this morning (what a good invention that is, I can waste ages on it! I am so going to get fired one day.) Anyway I was asking what he's been up to recently. He was telling me about 'Asylum Awareness Day' that his church was running. I should probably explain here (long story cut short) that my bro got dumped for god by his girlfriend the beginning of last year and after pining after her for 6 months he decided to find out what she was on about by joining a church. Only instead of joining a nice normal church he joined a New Frontiers International Plc (yes, plc, they are indeed a company registered at companies house and with a hell of an income)church full of fanatics run by a couple called Matt (big ears, hint of madness in the eyes) and Pip (heavily pregnant, facial twitch). In typical Mike fashion he has become completely obsessed to the exclusion of everything else, including finding a job (he graduated in May and is still on the old parental handouts). Anyhow, now that's explained, he was doing 'Asylum Awareness Day' for the church and we got talking about issues connected to that. "Well" he says "I don't think it would be too much to expect the immigration service to have the forms printed in languages other than English". I explained the difficulties of hundreds of dialects, lack of literacy and the inability of a civil servant in Croyden to read Swahili. so he moves on and comes out with "There's a terribly patronising attitude in the immigration service. It puts me in mind of a Somali woman I met on one of our missionary trips into Leeds who was claiming asylum because she was from a Somalian tribe that didn't speak Somali so she was hounded out. When she got here, Johnny Desk-Boy didn't believe her and refused her asylum". Quite apart from the fact that I don't see it as unreasonable to expect a Somalian to speak Somali, "Johnny Desk-Boy"? I suddenly realised that my brother was an escapee from the 1950s. Tragic.
Why is it that old people feel obliged to share things with you that you never wanted to know. Was visiting my grandma in her nursing home the other day, with my mum and the dog (they all love my dog) and on the way out we walked past a woman called Nellie that mum talks to when she visits. Nelllie immediately launches into a disgustingly detailed discussion about her bowels over the last few days, how often they've been active, what they've produced and things I'm not even going to mention here. Why on earth would anyone think I want to know that? It's hideous and left me with a mental image that disturbed me for days. Grim.
