My Family Are Becoming Their Own Little Fandom.
Hello! Sorry I went quiet for a while; I've actually been on holiday in Italy with my family for the past couple of weeks. It was good fun, although it turns out that it only takes finding one scorpion in your bedroom for you to start thinking of your bedroom as a seething nest of scorpions.
Tradition has it that I write up things that amused me during the holiday, so here you go! Cast: Harriet (me), Mum (my mother), Dad (my father), Joseph and Fred (my two younger brothers), Eleanor (Joseph's girlfriend), my uncle Tim, my aunt Pat, my cousin Patrick and Patrick's girlfriend Lily.
Alarmingly, my last entry of family holiday adventures had a couple of readers 'shipping my brothers. I fear this one will do nothing to deter them.
Out-of-Context Theatre:
Harriet: (to Eleanor) What I'm saying is that there's absolutely no need for you to worry about your weight, and also that I keep accidentally stealing your pants.
Joseph: (during a discussion about insect bites) I think something bit me on the scrotum.
Mum: Are you sure that wasn't Eleanor?
Dad: (to Fred) I would advise you to be like David Cameron and me and not wear jewellery.
Joseph: Well, with role models like that, who needs enemy models?
My brothers do not trust others to apply their sunblock; what if they draw offensive things?
Joseph: If you had a swastika drawn on you in sunblock, you'd look like you'd had a tattoo removed.
Fred: So they'd think you were reformed, and they'd like you.
Joseph: They'd see that you'd overcome so much racism! ...in you.
At one point, Dad said he would get in the swimming pool only if he was hot enough.
Fred: Make him hot, Joe. Say sexy things in his ear.
I began to walk away, towards the house. When I looked back, Joseph was dancing around Dad and singing 'Feelin' Hot, Hot, Hot'.
Mum's idea for a 'great feelgood movie' starring Eleanor: clumsy girl successfully becomes a Playboy croupier.
Eleanor: Everyone is very happy for her, apart from feminism.
Mum: So she drops the cards, and when she bends down to pick them up she finds that someone's hiding cards in his shoe...
(Eleanor has misplaced her sunglasses and is wearing an inferior pair.)
Harriet: That's right, the ones you were wearing on the drive down had a darker bridge, didn't they?
Eleanor: Yes, and they had a bit of gold at the edges, here.
Fred: And they didn't act as a boomerang, as in when you threw them away they didn't come back.
The car we'd hired had three rows of seats: front, middle and back. Joseph and Eleanor usually sat together, but for one journey Fred insisted on sitting with Joseph at the back, leaving Eleanor in the middle with me. Joseph and Eleanor held hands over the seats.
Joseph: I'm sorry Fred wouldn't let us be together.
Eleanor: I know. Fred's horrible. I hate Fred.
Joseph: Mm. (lets go of her hand) Hey, Fred, let's play!
(they start playing clapping games)
Eleanor ended up getting quite jealous of the amount of attention Joseph and Fred paid to each other. Eventually, Joseph 'broke up' with Fred and went to spend time with her.
Joseph: And then, when I want to spend time with him again, I can just break up with you!
Eleanor: Don't do that. It cheapens your relationship with both of us.
Joseph: (mock-distressed) Is that true, Fred?
Fred: No, Joe, you know I'll always take you back. My love for you is uncon... ventional.
Fred: Joe, do you want some relationship advice from the king?
Joseph: ...Elvis?
At one point I had to prevent Eleanor from taking a drink of water at a restaurant: 'I think there's an insect in that jug, which as a vegetarian you probably can't drink.'
Later we discussed a bad idea for a sitcom: Eleanor the Violent Vegetarian and Harriet the Mild Meat-Eater.
Joseph: How would this work? It would just be 'Eleanor goes to a restaurant, orders a salad and then punches the waiter! Harriet apologises and gets steak!'
Dad at one point attempted to persuade Eleanor that it was all right for a vegetarian to eat an egg that had a blood clot in it:
Dad: It's like eating your placenta.
Eleanor: Delicious!
Fred: Or an unborn foetus.
In one church we visited we saw a bizarre sculpture of a man apparently mid-jump next to the crucified Jesus, as if on a High School Musical poster. I still have no idea what that was about.
Eleanor: (pretending to be me) My name's Harriet. I'm really clever and I know all the punctuation.
There were many winding roads around the villa where we were staying. On one particularly sharp bend, a folder flew out of the car window; Dad stopped the car and Mum got out to retrieve it. The folder contained all the family's European Health Insurance cards... apart from Fred's. Mum was convinced that the card hadn't been in the folder in the first place; Fred was convinced that it had flown out of the folder and was now lost.
Somehow, most of the car ended up improvising songs about Fred's missing health card.
Mum: (to the tune of 'Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep') Where's your health card gone? Where's your health card gone?
Fred: ('Our House') My health card, in the middle of the road!
Joseph: ('Like a Virgin') Like a health card, lost for the very first time...
Fred: How much is that health card in the window?
Joseph: ...woof woof?
Joseph: ('Starships') Health cards were meant to flyyyyyy,
Stand back and watch it dieeeeee.
Fred: The car continues to driiiiiive.
Both: Let's look there one more time. BA DA BA BA BA BA BA DA...
Harriet: (SpongeBob SquarePants theme) What's sitting quite safely in this blue folder? Not your health card!
Fred: ('Safety Dance') You can find my health card if I want it! You can leave those others behind! 'Cause those health cards aren't mine and if they're not mine then they're no health cards of mine!
Joseph and Fred: ('The Gambler') You've gotta know when to find 'em, know when to lose 'em, know when to drive away, know when to stop. You'll never count your health cards sittin' on the car seat; there'll be time enough for countin' when you look down on the street.
Fred: How do you like your health card in the morning? I like mine in a car. Boiled or fried? I'm satisfied as long as it's in my car.
At Eleanor's request, I rescued a bee from the swimming pool and watched it until its wings were dry enough for it to fly.
Harriet: Eleanor! The bee flew away. Happy ending!
Eleanor: Yay!
Fred: What if that bee had some kind of bee disease that it didn't want to be around for the end of? You're like the British government and the pool's like...
Joseph and Fred: Dignitas.
Tim, Pat, Patrick and Lily arrived for the second week, heralded by an absolutely apocalyptic thunder-and-hailstorm. After the storm had passed us, we saw far-away lightning flashes long into the night. Joseph and Eleanor sat side-by-side, watching. Fred crept up behind them and put his hand into Joseph's. It took Joseph a while to realise he wasn't holding Eleanor's hand.
Mum: Was he tenderly stroking it?
Fred: He was, actually.
The next day, Joseph and Eleanor were walking hand-in-hand through a small town. Joseph passed her hand to Fred. She didn't notice the switch until she turned to look lovingly at him and started in horror.
Pat: Tim's having a bath at the moment, so I'll wait [to bathe] until he's finished.
Mum: I'm sure you could fit in there with him, Pat.
Pat: Oh, I might, actually.
Joseph: Let's all go!
Mum was bitten or stung by something nasty, and her foot swelled up quite badly (the first pharmacist we visited said that it was a snake and definitely not a scorpion, the second that it was a scorpion and definitely not a snake; we still don't know what it was, but it seems to be healing). Dad's terrible recommendation was to pour boiling water on it. I suggested pouring boiling water on her other foot, to take her mind off it, which frankly wasn't much worse.
I had my birthday during the holiday. For his birthday present to me, Fred made Dad buy a three-pack of Lion bars from the supermarket and then ate them all himself.
When I told Tim and Pat this story:
Tim: So you're big on Lion bars, are you, Harriet?
Harriet: I enjoy Lion bars.
Tim: But it would have been nice to have eaten them yourself.
Harriet: That would have made it a slightly better present.
Fred: (to Joseph) Your face looks like a thousand angels were squished into a space the size of your face, and then they were ground up until they were just angel flesh, and then someone just shat on your face.
Joseph: And what happened to the angel flesh?
Fred: I don't know.
Joseph: Why were you talking to Eleanor about her vagina?
Fred: (shrugs) Just conversation.
Joseph scrunched up some of Eleanor's hair and then pretended to hack a hairball into his palm; Eleanor gestured at it and sang 'Hair!' It was like a terrible magic act with Eleanor as a rather poorly employed glamorous assistant.
Pat: Are we going to make our ascent down, then?
Harriet: I tried a bit of home-grown tomato to see whether tomatoes and I could be friends. It turns out we still can't.
Eleanor: But tomatoes are a basic thing that everyone should eat, like, all the time.
Fred: People who don't like tomatoes should be put in, like, a camp where they can, like, concentrate on eating tomatoes.
Eleanor: That's a great idea, Fred. And as the runner of this camp, you'll need a nickname. Something that really packs a punch, maybe something starting with 'hit'...
Patrick and Lily made an excellent lemon tart. When there was some left over:
Pat: Patrick, could you find something to put that tart in? ...I didn't mean you, Lily.
Fred: Hey, Eleanor, you know what your face looks like? It's like a thousand angels-
Eleanor: Pooed on it?
Fred: Eurgh. (in a tone of realisation) Oh, yeah!
Eleanor: Pat's really enthusiastic about everything. She likes everything. So the teacher she didn't like must have been really horrible.
Mum: Yes, Pat always sees the silver lining.
Fred: That's funny, because she said she doesn't like Eleanor.
Eleanor: Thanks, Fred.
Mum: No, I quote: 'Eleanor's lovely.'
Fred: And I also quote: 'That was the best pizza I've ever had.'
Eleanor: I'm not my star sign at all.
Harriet: What's your star sign?
Eleanor: Virgo.
Fred: Does it mean you're sort of a nice person?
When we were driving back to the airport, we passed the notorious Health Card Bend. Fred suddenly produced his health card.
Fred: It just flew in through the window!
As it turned out, all our European Health Cards had expired.
My family and associates were aware that a write-up of the holiday would appear on my blog, so whenever I started writing in my notebook they'd all go 'wait, why are you writing? Is this going on your blog? Have we been funny?'
Eleanor: What are you writing? Have we done something amusing now? Shall I dance up and down like a monkey? I can lick you.
Towards the end of the holiday, I expressed the concern that I might not have enough material.
Eleanor: Harriet says we might not have been entertaining enough to appear on her blog.
Mum: Oh no!
Eleanor: Although, to be fair, I think we're at least more entertaining than Final Fantasy fanfiction.
Joseph: Yeah, Harriet, some of the stuff that appears on your blog...
Speaking of which, I spent quite a bit of the holiday working on a Final Fantasy VIII/Final Fantasy XIII crossover AU. It's going to have to be chaptered, I think. My record for finishing chaptered fanfiction is notoriously poor, but I've already written the ending, so at least I know what I'm aiming for. Fingers crossed!
Tradition has it that I write up things that amused me during the holiday, so here you go! Cast: Harriet (me), Mum (my mother), Dad (my father), Joseph and Fred (my two younger brothers), Eleanor (Joseph's girlfriend), my uncle Tim, my aunt Pat, my cousin Patrick and Patrick's girlfriend Lily.
Alarmingly, my last entry of family holiday adventures had a couple of readers 'shipping my brothers. I fear this one will do nothing to deter them.
Out-of-Context Theatre:
Harriet: (to Eleanor) What I'm saying is that there's absolutely no need for you to worry about your weight, and also that I keep accidentally stealing your pants.
Joseph: (during a discussion about insect bites) I think something bit me on the scrotum.
Mum: Are you sure that wasn't Eleanor?
Dad: (to Fred) I would advise you to be like David Cameron and me and not wear jewellery.
Joseph: Well, with role models like that, who needs enemy models?
My brothers do not trust others to apply their sunblock; what if they draw offensive things?
Joseph: If you had a swastika drawn on you in sunblock, you'd look like you'd had a tattoo removed.
Fred: So they'd think you were reformed, and they'd like you.
Joseph: They'd see that you'd overcome so much racism! ...in you.
At one point, Dad said he would get in the swimming pool only if he was hot enough.
Fred: Make him hot, Joe. Say sexy things in his ear.
I began to walk away, towards the house. When I looked back, Joseph was dancing around Dad and singing 'Feelin' Hot, Hot, Hot'.
Mum's idea for a 'great feelgood movie' starring Eleanor: clumsy girl successfully becomes a Playboy croupier.
Eleanor: Everyone is very happy for her, apart from feminism.
Mum: So she drops the cards, and when she bends down to pick them up she finds that someone's hiding cards in his shoe...
(Eleanor has misplaced her sunglasses and is wearing an inferior pair.)
Harriet: That's right, the ones you were wearing on the drive down had a darker bridge, didn't they?
Eleanor: Yes, and they had a bit of gold at the edges, here.
Fred: And they didn't act as a boomerang, as in when you threw them away they didn't come back.
The car we'd hired had three rows of seats: front, middle and back. Joseph and Eleanor usually sat together, but for one journey Fred insisted on sitting with Joseph at the back, leaving Eleanor in the middle with me. Joseph and Eleanor held hands over the seats.
Joseph: I'm sorry Fred wouldn't let us be together.
Eleanor: I know. Fred's horrible. I hate Fred.
Joseph: Mm. (lets go of her hand) Hey, Fred, let's play!
(they start playing clapping games)
Eleanor ended up getting quite jealous of the amount of attention Joseph and Fred paid to each other. Eventually, Joseph 'broke up' with Fred and went to spend time with her.
Joseph: And then, when I want to spend time with him again, I can just break up with you!
Eleanor: Don't do that. It cheapens your relationship with both of us.
Joseph: (mock-distressed) Is that true, Fred?
Fred: No, Joe, you know I'll always take you back. My love for you is uncon... ventional.
Fred: Joe, do you want some relationship advice from the king?
Joseph: ...Elvis?
At one point I had to prevent Eleanor from taking a drink of water at a restaurant: 'I think there's an insect in that jug, which as a vegetarian you probably can't drink.'
Later we discussed a bad idea for a sitcom: Eleanor the Violent Vegetarian and Harriet the Mild Meat-Eater.
Joseph: How would this work? It would just be 'Eleanor goes to a restaurant, orders a salad and then punches the waiter! Harriet apologises and gets steak!'
Dad at one point attempted to persuade Eleanor that it was all right for a vegetarian to eat an egg that had a blood clot in it:
Dad: It's like eating your placenta.
Eleanor: Delicious!
Fred: Or an unborn foetus.
In one church we visited we saw a bizarre sculpture of a man apparently mid-jump next to the crucified Jesus, as if on a High School Musical poster. I still have no idea what that was about.
Eleanor: (pretending to be me) My name's Harriet. I'm really clever and I know all the punctuation.
There were many winding roads around the villa where we were staying. On one particularly sharp bend, a folder flew out of the car window; Dad stopped the car and Mum got out to retrieve it. The folder contained all the family's European Health Insurance cards... apart from Fred's. Mum was convinced that the card hadn't been in the folder in the first place; Fred was convinced that it had flown out of the folder and was now lost.
Somehow, most of the car ended up improvising songs about Fred's missing health card.
Mum: (to the tune of 'Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep') Where's your health card gone? Where's your health card gone?
Fred: ('Our House') My health card, in the middle of the road!
Joseph: ('Like a Virgin') Like a health card, lost for the very first time...
Fred: How much is that health card in the window?
Joseph: ...woof woof?
Joseph: ('Starships') Health cards were meant to flyyyyyy,
Stand back and watch it dieeeeee.
Fred: The car continues to driiiiiive.
Both: Let's look there one more time. BA DA BA BA BA BA BA DA...
Harriet: (SpongeBob SquarePants theme) What's sitting quite safely in this blue folder? Not your health card!
Fred: ('Safety Dance') You can find my health card if I want it! You can leave those others behind! 'Cause those health cards aren't mine and if they're not mine then they're no health cards of mine!
Joseph and Fred: ('The Gambler') You've gotta know when to find 'em, know when to lose 'em, know when to drive away, know when to stop. You'll never count your health cards sittin' on the car seat; there'll be time enough for countin' when you look down on the street.
Fred: How do you like your health card in the morning? I like mine in a car. Boiled or fried? I'm satisfied as long as it's in my car.
At Eleanor's request, I rescued a bee from the swimming pool and watched it until its wings were dry enough for it to fly.
Harriet: Eleanor! The bee flew away. Happy ending!
Eleanor: Yay!
Fred: What if that bee had some kind of bee disease that it didn't want to be around for the end of? You're like the British government and the pool's like...
Joseph and Fred: Dignitas.
Tim, Pat, Patrick and Lily arrived for the second week, heralded by an absolutely apocalyptic thunder-and-hailstorm. After the storm had passed us, we saw far-away lightning flashes long into the night. Joseph and Eleanor sat side-by-side, watching. Fred crept up behind them and put his hand into Joseph's. It took Joseph a while to realise he wasn't holding Eleanor's hand.
Mum: Was he tenderly stroking it?
Fred: He was, actually.
The next day, Joseph and Eleanor were walking hand-in-hand through a small town. Joseph passed her hand to Fred. She didn't notice the switch until she turned to look lovingly at him and started in horror.
Pat: Tim's having a bath at the moment, so I'll wait [to bathe] until he's finished.
Mum: I'm sure you could fit in there with him, Pat.
Pat: Oh, I might, actually.
Joseph: Let's all go!
Mum was bitten or stung by something nasty, and her foot swelled up quite badly (the first pharmacist we visited said that it was a snake and definitely not a scorpion, the second that it was a scorpion and definitely not a snake; we still don't know what it was, but it seems to be healing). Dad's terrible recommendation was to pour boiling water on it. I suggested pouring boiling water on her other foot, to take her mind off it, which frankly wasn't much worse.
I had my birthday during the holiday. For his birthday present to me, Fred made Dad buy a three-pack of Lion bars from the supermarket and then ate them all himself.
When I told Tim and Pat this story:
Tim: So you're big on Lion bars, are you, Harriet?
Harriet: I enjoy Lion bars.
Tim: But it would have been nice to have eaten them yourself.
Harriet: That would have made it a slightly better present.
Fred: (to Joseph) Your face looks like a thousand angels were squished into a space the size of your face, and then they were ground up until they were just angel flesh, and then someone just shat on your face.
Joseph: And what happened to the angel flesh?
Fred: I don't know.
Joseph: Why were you talking to Eleanor about her vagina?
Fred: (shrugs) Just conversation.
Joseph scrunched up some of Eleanor's hair and then pretended to hack a hairball into his palm; Eleanor gestured at it and sang 'Hair!' It was like a terrible magic act with Eleanor as a rather poorly employed glamorous assistant.
Pat: Are we going to make our ascent down, then?
Harriet: I tried a bit of home-grown tomato to see whether tomatoes and I could be friends. It turns out we still can't.
Eleanor: But tomatoes are a basic thing that everyone should eat, like, all the time.
Fred: People who don't like tomatoes should be put in, like, a camp where they can, like, concentrate on eating tomatoes.
Eleanor: That's a great idea, Fred. And as the runner of this camp, you'll need a nickname. Something that really packs a punch, maybe something starting with 'hit'...
Patrick and Lily made an excellent lemon tart. When there was some left over:
Pat: Patrick, could you find something to put that tart in? ...I didn't mean you, Lily.
Fred: Hey, Eleanor, you know what your face looks like? It's like a thousand angels-
Eleanor: Pooed on it?
Fred: Eurgh. (in a tone of realisation) Oh, yeah!
Eleanor: Pat's really enthusiastic about everything. She likes everything. So the teacher she didn't like must have been really horrible.
Mum: Yes, Pat always sees the silver lining.
Fred: That's funny, because she said she doesn't like Eleanor.
Eleanor: Thanks, Fred.
Mum: No, I quote: 'Eleanor's lovely.'
Fred: And I also quote: 'That was the best pizza I've ever had.'
Eleanor: I'm not my star sign at all.
Harriet: What's your star sign?
Eleanor: Virgo.
Fred: Does it mean you're sort of a nice person?
When we were driving back to the airport, we passed the notorious Health Card Bend. Fred suddenly produced his health card.
Fred: It just flew in through the window!
As it turned out, all our European Health Cards had expired.
My family and associates were aware that a write-up of the holiday would appear on my blog, so whenever I started writing in my notebook they'd all go 'wait, why are you writing? Is this going on your blog? Have we been funny?'
Eleanor: What are you writing? Have we done something amusing now? Shall I dance up and down like a monkey? I can lick you.
Towards the end of the holiday, I expressed the concern that I might not have enough material.
Eleanor: Harriet says we might not have been entertaining enough to appear on her blog.
Mum: Oh no!
Eleanor: Although, to be fair, I think we're at least more entertaining than Final Fantasy fanfiction.
Joseph: Yeah, Harriet, some of the stuff that appears on your blog...
Speaking of which, I spent quite a bit of the holiday working on a Final Fantasy VIII/Final Fantasy XIII crossover AU. It's going to have to be chaptered, I think. My record for finishing chaptered fanfiction is notoriously poor, but I've already written the ending, so at least I know what I'm aiming for. Fingers crossed!