My nan and the Spanish cannot hold their wine at all, despite 50 years of practice, so they were really pissed. They can, therefore, be excused for their ridiculous stories and drunken screeches. My grandad, however, was the designated driver, and therefore the reason for his telling the following Karl-Pilkington-Worthy story are unclear. Apart from he is amazing.
"When I used to work at the animal rendering plant, we used to get all sorts in. We had monkeys, an elephant..."
"AN ELEPHANT?"
"Yeah, a small one. Anyway, there was this bloke, Bob Nugget, who was as lazy as anything. He'd always be going over to people saying 'Oh, he's a lazy one, that Barney McBurger, he never does any work,' but he was the one who never did anything."
"Anyway, we found out that he was always sneaking off to the toilets, so over a few weeks we found out which was his favourite toilet to go in."
"So as I say, we used to get monkeys in, so one day we got this big bugger in, so we put it in Bob's toilet. It had clothes on, we'd put trousers on it and it had a cigarette hanging out of its mouth. We waited until the time that Bob would go to the toilet and put it in there."
"Now it was quite dimly lit in the toilets, so Bob went in, shut the door and everything and then went to sit down..."
"...and he sat on somebody's lap..."
"... and he turned around and it was the monkey, sat on the toilet, with his cigarette."
"So he yelled the place down and came out effing and blinding at us, asking who it was. But as I say, we used to get all sorts. There was an alligator once."
And that is how I spent my Mothering Sunday.
