Gone to the Dogs

Last Saturday I saw my aunt in Sainsbury's. I said I'd been off work for the past week and that we hadn't really done anything, just relaxed. She said she'd been to the bowls and the dancing with my mum and their respective partners. You've got to keep yourself busy in retirement, haven't you?

I said, "Oh God, yes. There's nothing worse than daytime television. All that shouting!"

She agreed.

So my mum's now online and tentatively trying emails. She sent me an email to say she'd heard I'd met my aunt in Sainsbury's. I sent her one back to say, yes, we'd discussed daytime television and we'd agreed it is full of people shouting on programmes like The Jeremy Kyle Show.

Yesterday evening, we visited my mum. She said she thought my email was funny and that she'd told my aunt that when I'd met her in Sainsbury's I thought she was like one of the people on The Jeremy Kyle Show.

"You wait till I see him," said my aunt.

I asked my mum how my uncle's birthday do at the dog track went. She said the steak was well done, in fact it was so well done it was black. She said she was placed on a table with my step dad, my aunt, my aunt's male companion, and the birthday boy's best friend who'd travelled all the way from Cornwall (although he is not Cornish, nor related to the Cornish side of my family, nor to any side of my family) as a birthday surprise.

The best friend of mein host is tight as arseholes apparently, and did not volunteer to pay for any drinks, not even his own. As soon as they were seated around the table, he proceeded to completely dominate the conversation and spent the whole three hours talking about sex and his wonderful, beautiful, younger wife who'd stayed at home, probably glad of a night's peace.

The man was completely obsessed with telling sexual stories which all petered out into a vague nothingness but had moments which he found so exciting that he had to grab hold of my aunt's arm as with a mouth full of pudding, he spat "masturbation" and "viagra" all over my aunt's lemon pie.

My step dad won £28 on a couple of races, my mum broke even, and it sounded like a fucking good time was had by all.

Maybe next time they'll invite me.