Families aren’t boring, you just need to look harder!

Most people think families are boring. I have spoken before about the quieter ones in ours. There are those families where stories are either never told or told so gently you cannot quite hear them. But maybe they are not boring at all. Maybe you are just used to people’s quirks, and you do not realise how unusual some of them actually are until someone points it out. 

Because every family has the ones who stand out. The ones who are not scared to tell you about their lives—about the things they have done, survived, regretted, laughed at, and then laughed about again later. 

For me, that was my granddad. 

We used to go around on Saturdays, and without fail, he would roll out the same stories again and again—each one delivered like it had just happened. How he lost one of his stripes in the war because he managed to lose his tank. How he survived being run over by a slow-moving train. (Which, I often joke, is probably why I am accident-prone—genetics and storytelling clearly share a gene pool.) 

And then there were his Italian “adventures.” He once claimed he was liberating oranges from an orchard. You can probably already guess how that went… because the “oranges” turned out to be lemons. He told it like a victory anyway. 

With granddad, it was not that he did not have new stories—it was that he had the same old stories he clearly enjoyed reliving. Maybe somefamilies keep photos. Ours kept legends. 

Then there are the ones who create funny, ad-hoc stories—little moments that happen so unexpectedly you cannot plan how you’ll react. You just end up laughing, even if your first instinct is disbelief. 

When the other half’s grandad passed away, we started going to see his grandma every Wednesday evening around 5pm after work, and every Sunday morning around 10am. She knew what time to expect us, which sounds normal… until you realise what happens when time suddenly doesn’t behave. 

One particular Sunday we were running late—about an hour. We arrived as usual: me, Debs, Master & Miss Linda & Debs. 

But the door was not open. That was not unusual in itself—people do forget. So, Debs did what any sensible person would do: he leaned through the letterbox and shouted to grandma. 

She told him to get the key out of the lock box because she could not get to the door. 

So, Debs got the key. He opened the door. And there, in the hallway, sat grandma—tangled in one of those old-fashioned wooden airers, with her washing piled around her like it had decided to become part of the furniture. 

Now, grandma had one of those alarm chains around her neck. If she pressed it, someone would come and help. 

But she was patient. She was also stubborn. And she knew it was nearly time for us. 

So, she did not want to waste anyone’s time. 

Except… we were an hour late. 

Debs untangled her and, honestly, she stayed good-humoured the entire time. It still makes us laugh now. But it also taught us something important: if you say you will be somewhere at a certain time, try not to test whether “nearly time” really means anything. 

And then—because every family needs at least one absolute chaos legend—there was my late niece. We will call her S. 

S was vivacious. Effervescent. Feisty, bold, and fearless—like she came with her own soundtrack and absolutely zero interest in anyone else’s opinion about what was sensible. 

When Debs used to go to an afternoon drinking session at S’s dad’s house, S would sometimes walk with him back to mums for his dinner. It was about a 20-minute walk to my mum’s house. (Possibly a bit longer if you were inebriated, like Debs… though Debs has always maintained he was only “slightly affected.”) 

But S did not just lead the way—she made it a challenge. 

She would find shortcuts. Ginnels full of nettles. Routes that most people would avoid—not because they were dangerous in theory, but because they sounded like a bad idea the moment you imagined them. 

And I think part of it was about trust. She enjoyed seeing how much Debs would believe her. How far she could push it. Whether Debs would still follow when the route got increasingly ridiculous. 

It worked every time. 

And every time he arrived back at dinner, there was a story to tell. Something to laugh at. Something to retell later. Something that turned “just a walk” into a family myth. 

Which brings me to my mum. 

You will have heard before about her speeding fine just before she turned 75. But one day after her 75th birthday, I rang her and she announced—very calmly—that she had tried “Baby Guinness” for the first time that day. 

Now, you might think fair play to the lady. It was her birthday. She deserved a little treat. 

Except it was 10am. 

And she had had it at 9. 

The reason? Not because she was going rogue in the usual way. Not because she was living life in total chaos. 

She was simply trying it out for her birthday party at the weekend. 

Nine in the morning, taste-testing alcohol like a responsible adult. 

I can already imagine that mum will have plenty more stories for these blogs. 

Because our families are not boring. 

They are just… full of people with quirks you only understand once you have been close enough to hear them properly. 

Thank you so much to Pink Grass for playing at Mum’s birthday party! What an apt song to choose—everyone loved it.

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