Oh Brother

Us bloggers stick together you know. We have to. We’re all quiet little wallflowers who wouldn’t say ‘boo’ to a goose and therefore we write our postings to get our messages and thoughts out without fear of anybody taking issue with us in person.

But then of course we sometimes meet our readers and we get it – full in the face. ‘Crap’, ‘Boring’, ‘Too Long’, ‘Too personal’ …….and these are the comments I can put in print! But I don’t care. I really don’t. The blogs are for me (to keep me cerebrally active) and for my family so they can see what I’m up to without having to resort to daily phone calls, but even then, my family can be cruel. My eldest son, Stephen, is very complimentary, says it is one of the first things he does each day (reads my blog – good job he works for his mother !) and then you have my brother who says it is ‘absolute *****’ but as he’s only just learnt to read, I suppose his comments are only to be expected.

I was reading yesterday’s posting of a fellow blogger, Allison,  (I use the word ‘fellow’ in a literal sense as she’s quite a delightful girl judging by her picture and her postings) who was both celebrating and moaning about the festive seasonal visit of her brother Pat who, crime of crimes, ate all the left-over Pizza which made me think of my brother Robert.

Only last night, as the whole family sat on the sofa in front of a roaring log fire watching Mama Mia and singing along with the words, J said, ‘Ohhhhh I wish Robert could be with us this Xmas’. ‘What prompted this outpouring of family longing was his slushy, pink, feminine looking Xmas card which had arrived earlier in the day, addressed to ‘Mrs T Cupples’, and which made only a passing reference to the other members of the family including myself – his only brother!  As J bemoaned the news that her relatively new brother-in-law would not be visiting this Xmas, I celebrated the fact by manipulating my misshapen knuckle which unfortunately was broken into several pieces when my fist accidentally hit his head quite a few years ago! I also thought of the scar on his temple which is the exact replica of a Hornby Dublo curved section of railway track which I threw at him one day and which, most unfortunately, stuck in his skull! I can still see that section of model railway track arcing through the air and sticking in his head – ha!

But don’t think this is a one-way-street. He’s had plenty of opportunities to get his own back, the most recent being when we went for a haircut the morning after we’d had a ‘boys night out’ in Paisley (see post of 18^th Oct). Needless to say, and given that we’d only crawled into bed about 3am,, arriving at the hair salon at 9am was a bit ambitious….but we made it. I knew Robert had told the girl who owned the salon that I was his brother but that was that. We arrived and the owner immediately came up to me and said in a very slow speaking voice, ‘oh… you …. must ….. be … Thomas. It’s …. sooooooo ….. nice to meet you Thomas. Here – we have a lovely big leather armchair over here. Would you like to sit in that nice big chair Thomas?’

Now I was still pretty well-oiled from the night before but even I could work out that something wasn’t quite right here. The owner continued, ‘now be a good boy Thomas and sit here whilst I get you a drink. Would you like a nice glass of lemonade?’ Lemonade ? Lemonade ? What happened to the mug of coffee I was told to expect, but I let it go and accepted my lemonade. She continued…..’now Robert says you like your hair nice and short Thomas. You sit here, nice and still and we’ll give you a nice short haircut. That’s a good boy.

I was now thinking something was amiss but as I was still inebriated, I let it go. No point in embarrassing myself. Then the clippers came right up the back of my head and right over the top. Although a bit blurry in the mirror, I could see a follicle massacre taking place here, but again I was too hung over to bother. Anyway, the haircut (???) ended and I was helped out of the chair. The owner said I had been a ‘very good boy’ and I could come back sometime and she’d make sure I’d get the big leather chair again. I was still thinking about this stupid infantile language she was using but put it down to the fact that we were in a rather outlying bit of Glasgow where in-breeding is the norm, but I mentioned it to my brother as we left the salon.

He laughed uncontrollably and said he’d told the owner that his brother (me !!!) had been in an institution since the age of five, had had a terrible illness which gave him a mental age of seven years old and that he knew very little of what was going on around him. Everything which had happened for the last 30 minutes fell perfectly into place. Touché.