Siblings

More complex anecdotes from my brother’s skiing holiday. He managed to annoy his instructor by getting into some mild difficulty on the chairlift. I am not quite sure how this happened but he placed himself so that the instructor ended up sitting on his lap and had to jump off the lift from a height.  Apparently this had never happened to the ski instructor before in 20 years instructing. How empty his life must have been.

It appears that the ski instructor was a bit of a rough character and he started telling his class racist jokes.  My brother said to me “I didn’t know where to look”. I was a bit surprised by this, because my brother is a bit of a lad and I would have thought that hearing racist jokes would have formed part of his past experience. But this is not all. My brother decided that something would have to be done and that night while buying drinks at the bar, he said to the ski instructor “You know man [favourite word of my brother’s – it works very well in a Cork accent], you can’t tell those racist jokes”. Gobsmacked, I asked “what did he say?” “Well” said my brother ” I thought he might be a bit annoyed but in fact he said – yeah, I suppose you’re right”. And that, apparently, was that. No more racist jokes for the week.  I am quite proud of my laddish brother. Whereas I, bleeding heart liberal that I am, would have been appalled but never had the nerve to say anything.

My brother came for a lightening mid-week visit.  It was very nice to see him.  I find that family make for relaxing visitors.  My brother arrived and slung his coat over the chair and I barked “hang that up”.  With other visitors, I tend to say “Will I hang that up for you or would you prefer to leave it there on the chair?”  He went out with some friends on Wednesday night and I said to him “Take off your shoes when you come in and tiptoe down the corridor.  I swear to God, if you wake my baby, I will rend you limb from limb”.  With other visitors, I tend to say “ok, see you later then, we might be in bed when you come in, but we’ll leave a light on and, oh, don’t worry about the baby, she sleeps like a log”.  Still, I don’t think many visitors would ring me in the early hours of Thursday morning and say without a trace of guilt or shame “Where is it you live again, I’ve forgotten and the taxi driver needs to know”.

Swings and roundabouts then.

yep… really.

My goody bag has just arrived from the publishing executive.  And it is wonderful.  I am so pleased.  It has three books including a very well reviewed just published hardback and loads of books on tape.  Oh yay.  I am thrilled.

Also, I wish to post a correction to my previous entry about Mr. Waffle’s brother.  I know what side my bread is buttered on.  Text supplied by the pub exec:

“…blog talks about how ‘like his brother’ he speaks perfect French. Like his brother AND SISTER, I think you meant! We have a new French inmate in our flat so I have been practicing with her, it’s very improving.” Yes, yes, of course that’s what I meant.  Must go off now and investigate my haul further.

Today the following sniffy mail arrived:

My brother is one of these people who always lands on his feet.  Even though he’s feckless. Very feckless. He was in London with a friend recently and he left his wallet on a table at the entrance to an art exhibition.  He decided that it was bound to be whipped so he went up to a random policeman to ask where he should go to report it lost and yer man looked at him asked him his name and where he lost it.  Inevitably some virtuous londoner had just given it to the policeman and he handed it over. How lucky is that?

However, got this mail from him yesterday: “”Lost my damn phone on Friday, left it on the roof of my car with my wallet and drove off- Aaaarrrrggghie. Unlike you I haven’t found that the absence of a mobile phone has had a liberating effect on the spirit.  Will probabally get a new one tomorrow.” Or he could just wait until someone drives round to his house to give him back the old one.