Friday, April 09, 2010

Family History*

*what? family history is fascinating.

These are my grandfather's Officer's Club cufflinks, which my grandmother gave me when we went round for lunch today (we took her Subway - she said, "I have heard such a lot about Sub Way, but have never met it" and then made an absolute glutton of herself, which I think you're allowed to do when you are 93 and have never before met cookies which look crunchy but are actually chewy).

In general I think family history is pretty boring* (and Shem begat Ham begat Sham begat Wham!) but my grandparents are pretty cool. Or were, back in the day. Now Nana is old and Grandad is Passed Away (can you still be cool when you are Passed Away?) but when they met they were both in the Army and it was very romantic and so on.

*although it is mildly interesting to think that I am descended from a long line of Methodist ministers, who are currently spinning in their graves like so many skeletal rotisserie chickens.

You may remember that my grandfather was pretty smooth with his smoking jacket but were you aware that for their first date, he took my grandmother on a night ride around the mother-fucking Pyramids? (To be fair, they were in Egypt at the time. But still, that's pretty classy.) Apparently they went out in some sort of horse (camel?) -drawn contraption, and every time they passed a roadside inn (inn seems the wrong word, but so does hotel) the driver, who was a local, would turn around and leer at Grandad and say, "Nice place for a honeymoon."

Just so you know the standard of date I expect.

In faintly related news, yesterday an ex-smoker friend told me about the time he made a blunder purchasing Camel cigarettes - walked up to the Middle Eastern dairy owner and asked blithely, "Do you sell Camels?"
. . .

In completely unrelated news, oh my God I am bad at entertaining myself. I have been on holiday for four whole days now and I am about to chew my hands off. CHEW THEM OFF AND MAIL THEM TO YOU*

*a little bit each.

6 comments:

Jenny said...

Totally didn't know about the pyramid date - very awesome. Must've been hard to top when they got back to NZ.

OMG Subway cookies. Apparently you can make biscuits soft by adding pudding mix but mine always end up going crunchy after a while. :-(

Anonymous said...

I've never eaten a Subway cookie. Now I'm afraid about what happens when I wait for that until I'm old.

Michelle said...

yay, a little bit of chewed off hand!

wv: 'eyebo': martial arts for the eyeballs

Chris Rees said...

The "Middle Eastern dairy owner" - I would love to walk into a corner shop in the middle of the Egyptian desert, and see everything perfectly NZ - everything Pams and Watties, the chocolate fish, pottle of pipis, hokey pokey icecream, cans of L&P etc. Snort.

Joff said...

Can we choose a specific part of hand, like a pinky finger? Or do we just have to take what we are given?

wv: clate - a classy date. Like at the Pyramids

IT IS ALLY said...

Jenny - I know! I wonder if Nana was always secretly expecting great things on their anniversary

musket - I would say wait. She seemed pretty excited.

Michelle - Yeah! You can have the THUMB

Chris - Oh, alright, a dairy owner of Middle Eastern descent. Pedant. (Also, that would be cool with the NZ-style dairy in the desert - and why not? see: asian supermarkets. I should start one.)

Joff - You may have the MIDDLE FINGER.