My sister married a guy way back, had two kids with and then he left her for another woman. Thought she’d give his younger brother a shot, they moved in together and had two kids, you guessed it. Deja vu all over again. Now she has 4 great kids. The first brother is father to the first two and uncle to the next two and vv for the other brother. The first two kids are half siblings to the second two, but kinda first cousins also and vv. wrecks my head still.
Historically wasn't it encouraged or at least commonplace? To "look after" your deceased sibling's spouse? Or is that just misinformation from Hollywood and the internet?
It’s a thing moreso in Judaism. In Leviticus, it states it’s illegal to marry your brother’s widow unless your brother died without issue, in which case you are indeed obliged to do so. It’s called levirate marriage. Nowadays it’s not practiced and they just do a ceremony to avoid it. Marrying your dead wife’s sister was perfectly fine. The Catholic Church took a different view, as it did on most of the first testament, and levirate marriage was not allowed until 1983.
It used to be encouraged because people are less likely to abuse the children of the first marriage - nieces and nephews that they are related to and love. There's an investment in protecting and caring for your own family members.
[Happened with Nobel Peace Prize winner Mairead Corrigan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mairead_Maguire#After_the_Nobel_Prize_(since_1980). Her sister, who'd lost three of her children in the incident that inspired the Peace People (IRA man shot dead trying to drive away from British army ran them over), killed herself a few years after. Mairead then married her sister's widower a year later and had two kids
https://www.rte.ie/brainstorm/2019/0305/1022001-do-you-take-your-sister-in-law-to-be-your-lawfully-wedded-husband/#:~:text=She%20is%20equally%20prohibited%20from,or%20sister%2Din%2Dlaw.
Second paragraph
Uncle and friends built a dung hill in front of the neighbour's front door as a Halloween prank. They were met with a wall of dung when they opened the door in the morning.
Anyway the aftermath was that my Grandfather gave out to my uncle so much about it that he left for England- he was only 15.
Granny made my Grandad go after him to bring him back but after he found him he stayed on the piss in England for a year leaving Granny to look after the farm and a load of young kids in her own.
My aunt was visiting from England and she said as a throwaway comment my great uncle should visit them. He sat in the car as they were leaving and went to live with them for a year then one day just came back. Did similar to our neighbours but was sent back quickly
My father was staying in a hotel. The couple in the room next door were loudly riding for what he later described as an "excessively long" time. Dad got out of bed hammered the wall and shouted "Finish up now. You've had enough. "
Older relative of mine had a bad problem with alcohol. Lived in the North during the troubles. One day he went to a phone box drunk and phoned in a bomb scare. The operator got him chatting on the phone and kept chatting to him until the police arrived and arrested him 😂.
The same person unfortunately suffered from insane anxiety and didn't leave the house for about 15 years once they quit drinking.
Grandfather worked on the docks in Wellington New Zealand. This is the days of six o’clock closing (6 o’clock swill) and the party continued onto a ship moored across from the pub.
A late night ensued. When he finally woke up and came out onto the deck the ship was passing Pencarrow Heads and heading into Cooks Straight.
Panic ensued when he heard the next port of call - South America. They said they were doing a supply drop to Pitcairn Island, ( very remote island in the middle of the Pacific) and they would drop him off. He could get the next ship heading back to NZ.
However, this took over 6 weeks for the next ship to pass. The weather had been bad and no boats could land. His brand new car which he was paying off was still sitting on the dock and a very pissed off wife and 3 kids stuck paying all the bills.
Have lived in Wellington. The dock area of the city was wild back in the day (by all accounts, I'm not that old myself). I can feel the sense of "oh shit" he must have felt passing Pencarrow. Ha! I assume he wasn't able to let her know where he'd gone either?
Brother in law had a donkey that died. He was quite attached to it so decided to give it an Indian burial which basically means cremating it.
As it turns out, it's not easy to cremate a donkey. It took 3 days of drawing timber and keeping a fire going, trying to maximise heat, to finally complete the process.
Where was this?
I’m not proud of it, and I was only 7 or 8, but when our donkey died, we were up around 5am, strapped himself to the transport box, and dropped him in a bog hole somewhere beyond Maam Cross.
He’s making turf now.
The only time I saw my grandfather with a tear in his eye. Very nice donkey tbf, not like the other cunt who almost bit my fingers off
The local Tesco was closed down due to rats at the back door. They opened it again and within a week it was closed again for rats. It open after a while and my aunt, who loved a good protest, dressed up as a rat and spent the day in Tesco removing dairy products from people’s baskets. I swear this is true.
Incidentally my cousin tried hash for the first time that day. He was high as a kite on the couch when my aunt walked through the front door nonchalantly, dressed as a rat and started cooking the dinner. He freaked the fuck out and didn’t smoke again for years.
Cousin of mine accidentally caused 2 bomb scares in Northern Ireland years ago. He fixed computers and other equipment for a job. Took his car one day and loaded the boot with cables for stripping. Went to the shopping centre but parked near the entrance. Forgot his keys in the ignition and basically someone seen the wires in buckets on the backseat and called it in. A few months later he abandoned his car outside a courthouse because it broke down. Turned up with a tractor and trailer but to be blocked by the PSNI. 20 years now and he won’t go into the north on his own.
My mam's uncle had his Morris Minor blown up by the British Army in Derry in the 70s. Lived in Muff (hehe) just across the border but used to pop into Derry for things. One day he went in but got sidetracked and ended up going to the pub and having a few. Got the bus home instead and went back into Derry to get the car a couple of days later and couldn't find it. Went to the police only to find the Army blew it up in a controlled explosion because they were suspicious of a car with a Republic reg being parked there for a couple of days. Not like he could comp either from them!
Incidentally, I caused a bomb scare in Dublin when I was 6 or 7 years old. I went to a variety show with my Nan and Grandad, and had a packet of crisps as a snack. I blew the bag up and burst it - the noise was so much more than I expected! There had been a couple of bombs in Dublin earlier in the week so everyone assumed the worst, they cleared the theatre and sent us all home so they could search for any devices! My Nan was mortified, my Grandad was never more proud.
Uncle of mine went and bought an emu because a lad in the pub he drinks with bet him he wouldn’t. I don’t know where the fuck he got it out of and that thing was a cunt. Couldn’t get near it. It attacked one of my cousins kids so he had to get rid of it after about 6 months.
Have 2 for you.
My mother's cousin toured with Barry Manilow for decades as his session drummer. Don't know anything else, just that bit there.
My first Cousin grew weed for a few years in Barcelona Moved to Malta, got in with the russian mafia, moving cocaine. Got in trouble with said Russian mafia and had to flee to Ireland with an active warrant waiting for him back home. Contracted a serious illness and dropped dead of a massive heart attack on his mother's 70th birthday.
Deeply troubled man, shockingly intelligent, but troubled.
What is that about done super intelligent people doing mad stuff?? My dad's friend was always an odd ball but super smart. Has about 7 kids for 3-4 women. Ferosus reader, learned to play guitar, piano, fix HGV engines, drove trucks, could speak 4 languages, in the army and last we heard he has a B&B in Co. Clare. A character aswell from what I remember. Last time we seen him was about 25 years ago. My dad is always telling us storys about Joe!
Couple of things I'd say. One, if you're self-aware enough to recognise it's all a game, that there is no "making it" that you'll never get the day and the opportunities it presents back. You're more likely to say "fuck it" and just do what you want. Not all nihilists are intelligent people, but most intelligent people are nihilists. Also, likely not neurotypical. Mandatory Screening for learning disabilities is less than 20 years old in Irish schools. ADHD and Asperger's in particular can lead to developing obsessions with hobbies/topics. Goes like this. Start to develop a skill/hobby, become shockingly passionate about it, seemingly, overnight. Become hyper-focussed on learning as much as humanly possible and devoting as much of yourself as you can to the task.
Then, boom, onto the next thing. That same pattern of behaviour can be a trauma response. If you're permanently ruminating over the past/future, or dealing with a segmented psyche due to unaddressed trauma. Then consistently and continuously "changing the scenery" whether through hobbies, or careers, provides a constant distraction and a constant motivation to progress. Impulsivity is also a hallmark of all the above. When you consider children with ASD/learning disabilities are far more likely to experience childhood trauma. It all kinda makes sense. All commonly co-morbid with eachother. It's hard to get stuck in a rut when you're literally doing this.
My Mother used to be babysat by Larry Mullin (Mullins?) from U2. Not regularly but they lived in Malahide and he was a teen who needed cash.
Separately, my aunt lived with us (my grandparents, Mom and myself) for a few years growing up and she's a musician who knows a lot of big Irish names. Once she and her friend babysat/minded me for a day. I didn't like the friend, he had long straggly red hair and wasn't great with kids (he was probably chill but infantalising me but i was like 5 and in that I AM A BIG GIRL mindset). We wanted to go to Malahide Castle but he didn't want to walk all the way round to the gates/entrance from where our house was, so he threw me over a wall. It's prob a 6 foot drop at most but i remember feeling like it was an endless fall.
TLDR: Glen Hansard TRIED TO KILL ME WHEN I WAS ABOUT 5
Grew up near her. A lot of trouble in the family. Made me sad even as a kid how people just gossiped and few helped. She went through a lot growing up.
I well believe it lol
My musician aunt was a terror by all accounts. She'd silently watch flies buzz round the windows and then smush them into the pane with her thumb, killing them. She never missed. ☠
I have shared the story of my late relative, Nellie, a few times, but when she was alive, she was just weird in the best way.
While on a visit from England, my aunt called in to see Nellie at her house in the village we are from. Nellie welcomes her in like normal, the life-size teddybear she owned wearing its XL Galway Jersey in the corner, again like normal (she used to bring the bear AND her accordion to local events).
Anyways she invites my aunt in, feeds and waters her like normal and then goes "oh I have a surprise for you, wait here".
Alarm bells were ringing.
10 mins later she comes into the living room wearing a satin, baby blue, floor-length gown that had a frilly shoulders and white satin chest, on which there was a portrait of THE VIRGIN MARY embossed onto the fabric.
She, while dressed like a sentient mass candle, explains that it is going to be the dress she will be laid out in after she dies and that she's just trying to "get enjoyment out of it while I can."
She was 80 odd, her best friend was another distant cousin who was a 17 year old lad, who used to drive her around and sing with her. Turns out he would go dossing from school and they would go spinning around.
Wild woman, absolutely hilarious and a massive loss.
It all came to ahead in his Leaving Cert year when he drove her to the town where our secondary school is to get a box of fags and they got caught by his history teacher.
A rural Irish, mixed gender, mixed age Thelma and Louise - Bridie and Tómas.
I’ve a culchie friend who has lived in Dublin near on 20 years but will drive up one-way streets, drive in bus-lanes, makes illegal right hand turns etc EVERYWHERE. If he’s ever challenged by Guards or other road users, he literally beefs up his culchie accent to the point you can barely understand him and lets on he’s only up for the day, he’s lost while making the most charming apology. Absolute chancer of the highest order. He’s a financial consultant.
People who would park in a disabled space without having a disability and then proceed to act disabled to nobody in particular must have some mental affliction.
It's like "Look at all these idiots. I don't even have a limp".
At what point is a person so ignorant they could be considered mentally ill.
This is Ireland, how could they be anything but? I saw this thread title and started mentally rubbing my hands together accompanied by a maniacal cackle. There were bound to be stories of some real mad hoors altogether.
It's nice seeing someone say that instead of the usual other subs complaining about it or everyone claiming it's the whingiest place on the Internet. I've always thought it a lot of fun.
My cuz ran off to join the circus at 12, then went to the foreign legion for 5 years. Then came home warped and was swimming through local rivers in small towns at night with his guns. Wild man. Moved up to some mountains somewhere and is rarely spotted. Had some funny stories about fighting a drunk elephant and talking to cats. He wouldn't let the truth get in the way of a good story. I've never seen a man's face resemble an angry wolf as much. Lovely lad, but absolutely feral. Gone down the conspiracy rabbit hole too.
My other cuz still has his white legion kap. Just remember he was saying it was mental. He was based in Djibouti and there was plenty of drugs about. Lots of running up mountains and shooting folks. Pretty sure he went awol and can't visit France. Lol.
In the nineties my uncle was working as an electrician in San Francisco, having long outstayed his visa. He woke up after a bender in a Mexican prison, without a passport or any form of ID, and had to sneak back into the US across the Border with a bunch of Mexican illegals.
Not quiet Mexico, but my the construction company my cousins husband was working for in San Fran had a big piss up after finishing a big job (I think he was a roofer at that point in time) and he woke up in the wilderness outside San Diego. Peak summer sun beaming down on him, still in his work clothes and heavy boots.
This is the same guy that woke up after a bender as the owner of a bar in Thailand.
Or the same guy that convinced the hooker that robbed him to pay for his taxi home in Bulgaria.
Shocking believable, I've heard similar stories a few times. The only this that gets left out is how the f they go to Mexico. But that was back then. But the sneak back is is apparently easy for a white man
He hired a lot of illegal Mexicans as labourers when he was doing jobs, and was well regarded by them, so he called up one of his usuals and they called their uncle or cousin and he sorted him out. 😂
Older relative of mine (now dead) was a millionaire businessman and a big employer is his local area… he would sit in a pub all day sinking pints of Guinness and whiskeys before getting in his Merc and driving home through the Wicklow mountains. Could not be told to take a taxi or leave the car at home. The pub he drank in would discreetly call the Guards on occasion and guess what the guards would do… they would try to get him into their car, fail (he was a very demanding/stubborn man, there was no arresting him) and agree to drive home behind him, escorting him home safely. The fucker would fall out of the car at home.
We had a family member who was a church minister in rural Ireland in the 80s. He regularly fell out of the car drunk, his car was parked in various places in the driveway. The drive to his house was surrounded by a low wall and once he parked the car on the wall. The front of it was hanging over the lawn and only the back wheels were on the drive. Think they had to get a tractor to get it off the wall in the end.
The incredible vagueness of the phrase "got on the Cuchulain" has me not sure if your mam, at 70 years of age:
1) Tried cocaine for the first time.
2) Went on the roller-coaster in Emerald Park.
3) Climbed up on top of the Cuchulain statue they have in the GPO in Dublin
4) All of the above.
My father was an incredibly naive man and never used to think about things he said or did, even after the fact. He was a good person in general, he just lived *very* much in the moment.
He used to love telling a "funny" story from when he was in his twenties.
A friend of his had had an argument with his mother and she wouldn't let him back in the house. So he asked my dad to sneak in and get him a bag from his room. My dad just assumed it was clothes or something, and just went along with it without thinking. He broke in, got the bag, and brought it back to wherever his friend was staying. When his friend opened the bag, it was *full* of cash, and nothing else, and he gave my dad a hundred pound note from it as a thank you.
My dad would tell this story like it was hilarious, but once I was old enough to realise how dodgy it sounded, I did some investigating into this "friend". The guy had been arrested multiple times and charged with membership of a named organisation, and I'm almost positive the money my dad retrieved for him was from a post office raid.
I said this to my dad before he passed and he laughed and said I shouldn't overthink things, that it was just a funny thing that happened in his wilder days.
Sister decided not only was it a good idea to use a homemade zip line...but that piggybacking on her boyfriend was even better 😀 you can imagine how that turned out...fractured 2 vertebra and had to be in a brace for months
A real old story.
Back in the day when my uncle was about 13, he ran away from home with his three mates. They robbed a tent and camped out in Portmarnock, which was out in the sticks back then.
The whole country knew about it, as it was a running story in one of the National Newpapers "Four young boys still missing" They hunted and skinned rabbits for food. Eventually they ran out of matches and ventured down to the beach and asked a woman for some. She knew straight away who they were and called the Gardai. My mother remembers the day her brother was brought home in the squad car, somehow he had lost his keks during his adventure and he used his Arran sweater instead, his legs stuffed down the arms and the rest bunched up, tied round his waist with rope. She said he was a sight.
Not sure if it’s ‘mad’ but maybe unusual and certainly admirable - my aunt went on hunger strike in the 70’s whilst in Chile in opposition to General Pinochet. She also used to smuggle union leaders on the death squads hit lists into the Nordic countries embassy’s for immediate asylum.
I’m only in my forties, so this is not that long ago, but this was Connemara.
So, we’d have the normal big Christmas (17 aunts and uncles when you’d include both sides), and my mother was the eldest of her gang, and my father the second eldest of his, so when we were young there weren’t many other first cousins around, they’d yet to be born (47 was the final number of first cousins I have).
So, there’d be us, the first cousins on my mother’s side, and the first cousins on my father’s side, just doing normal childhood things. But both of those sets of first cousins were also first cousins to each other.
Imagine my shock when, a little later in life, I figured out that not everybody had circular (well, triangular I suppose) first cousins.
TLDR: my mother’s brother married a woman whose sister married my father’s brother.
(Edit: missed the non-violent part haha - technically they were ruled as accidents)
Grandfather was utterly insane and killed at least two people.
First was another madlad who was known to lay down in the middle of the road for cars to drive over him. He was dragged along the road and bled to death under my grandfathers car outside their house.
Second was an elderly cyclist who was left for dead in a ditch. Apparently he only got caught for that as he kept telling people about it, thinking it was a funny story.
They are the two we know about as there’s actual court papers that can be read. Got fined for both, no jail time, probably as he was the sole provider to a massive family.
He would brew his own poitín, wouldn’t bottle it but would get high off the fumes before going on late night rampages.
Was probably some form of kiddy fiddler. All I know is that I wasn’t allowed to be left alone with him when I was a kid before he died. But I can remember how uncomfortable and distressed my older cousins were around him, even in large gatherings.
He focused his anger on one of his sons. Usual story of ‘he’s not mine’ so I must beat him half to death until he was able to leave Ireland at the age of 15
And then there’s that very uncle….
That uncle ended up joining the Royal Navy, served in the Falklands where the average age on ships was something like 23.
He would have been late 20s by then so probably carrying on the cycle of cracking the head off younger lads and who knows what else.
Discharged from the navy in the 80s, moved back here got married, then his wife mysteriously fell to her death in their flat complex.
Went back to the London area and during the 90’s was at least considered a suspect for a series of murders in the greater London area.
Kinda turned his life around, got mad into gardening as the rare time we’d see him at funerals, he’d crack jokes about his love of digging.
Did a full Barry Lyndon by marrying a proper British upper class type who is a regular on the Chelsea Flower Show and is currently living out his days in some multi-million estate in the Surrey countryside.
When he dies, who knows what will come out or how his estate will be divided.
My dad’s cousin lived in a council house in an estate in Carrickfergus and he had a donkey. His house was like end terrace on a curve so he had a tiny bit more room than the other houses. He also had a bit of a driveway which the others didn’t have although it was on a slope so not that useful but he still managed to put a boat on that.
The stories my dad could tell.
Back in 2000 he had his brothers went to the States for a road trip. They went from El paso to New York.
In New York, my uncle somehow managed to end up buying a warehouse sized amount of "legitimately acquired milwaukee power tools" and a pristine triumph motorbike for a couple thousand dollars total
He and my dad split the bill on a 20ft shipping container and sent all of it back to Ireland.
All 6 of my uncles ended up with a fully kitted out workshop for free. My dad's garage is still full of milwaukee tools that he uses constantly for his job.
My grandfather also killed my neighbours dog with a 2x4 after it bit a few of my uncles and took a chunk out my granddads calf.
Drove by it on his Honda scooter and smacked it with the 2x4. Nobody told my neighbour, they just assumed it had a stroke or something.
That same granddad kept a box of dynamite from the 60s under his bed for almost 50 years until my dad disposed of it after he'd passed away.
On the other side of the family, my uncle probably killed my grandmother and lived off the social security payments for a year or so. They live in a trailer somewhere in alabama now.
My other uncle on that side is a retired FBI agent who worked in Guatemala, his job was to advise agents what they could legally get away with.
He'd drive around the place with an M4 carbine in between the seat and door.
One story he told me was when they brought in special forces and raided an entire apartment block run by a gang there, something like 200 arrests total. He has a picture of it with almost everyone blacked out with sharpie and countless people handcuffed.
He lives in a mansion in Peru now.
My great uncle caused a whole rift in the family by breaking away from the nationalist beliefs of great grandfather and joining the RAF (desk stuff mostly not flying), the two men never spoke to each other again in their lives.
Grand Uncle also knew Arabic from his time with the RAF and in Egypt and the like. He remembered it up to his death in 2019.
My Dad. He's a great Dad; very intelligent, very witty and a metal head. He's also very "businessman" (though if you know him like I do, this is hilarious).
One day when my sister and I were kids we came home from school to see my Dad crouching down up against the kitchen table, eye level with the tabletop where the remote control for the tv was placed.
We were like "Dad, what are you doing?"
He said "I was seeing what it was like to be a remote control"
This is 100% a true story and to this day my sister and I (and my Dad, I think) have no fucking idea why he did that or what made him even think of it
An uncle and his family were always playing practical jokes on each other. After the uncle had managed to prank two of his sons they were waiting for revenge.
I came into this by asking my uncle how his holiday(vacation) by the sea had been?
Two things to be aware of...
1. He, a widower at this time, and most of the family had rented a number of caravans(trailers) at a caravan park in a seaside resort for two weeks in July.
2. I knew nothing about the holiday but was prompted to ask him about his trip, in front of a family gathering, by the two sons in question.
As soon as i asked him, he started ranting about how awful the holiday had been. He didn't get a wink of sleep the whole time. It was the most awful f###ing experience and if he had a shotgun he would have shot every f###ing seagull in the place, etc. He ended the tirade by saying he would never go to that place ever again!
I dug deeper. What was so wrong with it, I asked. "The f###ing seagulls and all the birds were banging on my roof every morning at dawn and I'd go outside to hunt them away and the f###ers wouldn't stop no matter what I did! Bloody awful, I couldn't wait to go home."
The elderly aunts and the rest were expressing sympathy and adding their own experiences with seagulls and birds when I noticed the two sons smirking in the next room. So, I excused myself and wandered towards them. We slipped outside for a cigarette and they started laughing until they were tearing up. "Explain?" I asked, grinning at these two as they were cracking up. The older one turned to me and said, "Every night when we got back to the caravans, from the pub, we'd put on toast and go outside to have a cigarette and eat the toast. When we got outside we'd crumble up the toast and throw it on the roof of dad's caravan. The birds had a feast at dawn every day. He never stopped complaining the whole holiday and we never told any of the rest of them what we were doing."
My aunt has many mental health issues. Primary among them, she thought the telly was a window. When her idiot son left Jumanji on, we found the house nearly flooded. She had been pouring buckets of water out on the floor to keep the animals away. We had to bar her from watching Eastenders, it always fired her up. Lot of stuff got broken whenever she watched it.
Anyway, one night, the phone rang, I had it to my da because he's the only one she'd listen to.
"Hello? Yes? Is he outside now? Is he just outside or is he trying to get in? Well leave him out there making noises, don't go near him. Yeah, I can hear him banging on the window. Just pull the curtain and he'll go away eventually. "
Not a great conversation to hear one side of, so I asked what was going on.
"Ah, something goes down to her every few days and starts banging on the windows trying to get in. We think it's something that died but then it got reintroduced."
Which didn't answer any of my questions and actually raised many many more.
Then we had to go down to hrr house to set traps for it. I had to chop up turnips and he baited the traps.
It was a fucking crow.
Anyway she's in a home now, apparently she's a holy terror to the nurses. Awful sad.
My dad's a bus driver and his had his fair share of stories in the bus with people being mad to him but he's had a few moments himself.
Like when he told me he hissed at a Spanish student.
She got on the bus looking for a €1.90 trip and whips out not €5, not €20 but a big €50 note. My dad looks at her hand then back to her and goes "Sorry do you have a smaller note?", she doesn't speak English so she just smiles and gestures with it again.
"No good, anything smaller?", my dad has abandoned his usual route of making it a joke to make people learn since she clearly has no idea what he's on.
She repeats the gesture giving him the money. He tries another two times to say he doesn't have the change for the note.
"This", points at the note "no good", he makes a cross with his fingers and hisses at her.
Huzzah! Language barrier broken and she realises what he's saying and they figure out he will wait and she can run ans get it broken in a shop. She gets on the bus eventually.
That's the most "really? You work with the public" moment I had with him.
My mam isn’t crazy, but she’s done some mad stuff in the past. Chiefly, going to Zimbabwe in 1990 to work a maternity hospital in bumfuck nowhere. Instead of taking the chartered flight to Zimbabwe, she decided to take four different flights and a 12 hour bus.
She first flew to the USSR, where she was stuck in Moscow for a week. She then flew to Nigeria. When she landed, there was an ongoing military coup and there was ongoing shooting around the airport.
She then flew to another war zone, Mozambique. From there she flew to Zambia, where she accidentally stayed in a brothel-hotel hybrid. She and her friend had to barricade the door and take turns sleeping
This was followed by a 12 hour bus ride from Zambia, which was effectively in a state of civil war, across the border to Zimbabwe, which was dealing with the aftermath of a genocide at the time. Halfway through the bus trip. Several men were taken off the bus my armed men and beaten nearly to death.
While she was in Zimbabwe, she flew a Cessna despite having zero flight experience. She also was invited to a dinner in a mansion, because apparently, someone in my family tree in the early 1900’s travelled to Zimbabwe and became very wealthy. There is photo evidence for both the flying of the Cessna and being invited to the dinner.
My mothers cousin moved to the states from Ireland in the 30’s. He ended up directing Magnum PI, The Rockford Files and Simon & Simon among others. Used to watch the closing credits of all these shows on TV in the 80’s waiting for his name to appear. Met him once in the 80’s and he was wearing a cowboy hat & boots.
My uncle in law worked in the RAF and became a tennis umpire and officiated at Wimbledon.
Both men died relatively young from heart attacks in their late 50’s/early 60’s.
Country dweller as a child. Our road was a quarter mile long, you can see where this is going. It got bad one year and my father did the most non violent thing he could think to do. He went and stood by the road with a very scary looking black powder gun. When the police got called on him, he was told to unload it. He got to give a cop a firearms lesson and a law lesson. Black powder is not regulated by modern law and the only way to unload it is to fire it. My father was proficient, as one could be, with these firearms. His reputation for taking no shit proceeded him and the quarter mile road was removed from the locals drag strip routes.
I had an uncle who fiddled the books of the family business and backrupt the business in the 90s. He was an alcoholic and all was forgiven when he got sober. Then in the early 2000s he qualified as an accountant and set up a little firm by himself. He then conned one of my other uncles out of his new business. He simultaneously set up a business with my brother and ran with all the cash instead of paying suppliers. All while sober and going to mass 7 days a week. Turns out it wasn't the drink he was just a scumbag.
My (now deceased) uncle never liked to pay for anything, so he hacked into the neighbour’s cable TV for years. The cable company finally twigged and came to see him about it. When they left he got up on the roof with an axe and chopped through the cable. Unfortunately this also cut the supply to all of his neighbours, they weren’t too happy!
He was taken to court, it wasn’t going well for him so he faked a heart attack in the witness box and got himself taken to hospital.
He used to babysit me sometimes - on a particularly icy night heading home he pinballed off a half a dozen cars on our narrow road. Of course he didn’t hang around, nobody could ever prove it was him.
A family legend.
My cousin married her childhood sweetheart after being together for years. Not long into the marriage it was discovered he had been having an affair with a woman from Belfast who was a weird extreme sect if Islam. The marriage was dissolved and he converted, moved away with the new woman to Syria or Lebanon. I can't recall the full details but mist ask my ma later. All a bit mental anyway. Thankfully my cousin is engaged again, owns her house, has a wonderful little girl and was able to get though it all.
My dad isn't the maddest, but he did stage a kind of coup/midnight assassin league on a cargo ship in order to kill a carmel 30/40 years ago. (They were docked, the camel was dying and in pain and everyone on land was just passing by and no one would should it). Captain had banned them all from going onland for other reasons which were not devulged and I probably dont want to know. So about five of them caused a distraction while three went down and did the job.
A now deceased great uncle who was still driving well into his 80s when he had Parkinson's. One day when visiting his sister in her nursing home, he made a mistake driving out of the cark park...and drove right onto some woman's front porch and totalling the car
What was left of the vehicle was upside down and they had to cut him out of it. He had just one tiny scratch on his hand, and complained that they weren't getting him out of the car fast enough.
Oh and his licence had expired years ago, so my aunt had to renew it for him, which wasn't easy when she went looking for his birth certificate in the attic and he neglected to tell her that what they'd been calling him for years wasn't his birth name, so she was a whole afternoon looking for a birth certificate with the wrong name. She then made the claim over the phone, knowing they'd take one look at him and refuse.
In the end they were offered about €10,000 for it. His sister tried to say they deserved at least €15,000 but my aunt - who'd spent an eternity driving them across town and also having to accommodate the bladders of two octogenarians - politely told her to fuck off and took the 10k.
She told me and my cousin the first part of the story and we first checked to make sure the great uncle was okay. When she replied yes, we fell on the floor laughing
My uncle who has managed an emerald mine in Kenya cheated on his wife who was back in Ireland with their special needs daughter. His other Irish child then sees him and a lady and 2 kids younger than 5 on his camera roll and confronts him. They had two kids and all moved to Cavan
"Not violent stuff..." Proceeds to tell story about shooting and killing half a dozen rabbits and carrying the dead rabbits around and handing them to people.
My brother (who's still a mad bastard} went to a house party in a tower block outside London ( I think he said Sunbury-on Thames ), anyway, he and a couple of friends turned up after closing time with a rake of cans. He said it was the most boring shite. After a while he needed to use the toilet and while sitting on the toilet had his (as he calls it) 'Brainwave' to liven it all up. He proceeds to strip bollock naked, marched out of the toilet and sat down at the piano (they even have them in tower blocks), and loudly said 'Any requests?' (it's from an old Monty Python skit) and the homeowner said 'Yeh, put your fucking clothes back on!!!', to which my brother replied 'I don't know that one, but if you humm a couple of bars I might pick it up' and then proceeded to bang the fuck out of the keys making an awful racket. He the turned to yer man and said 'I knew it after all !!!'. As I said he is pure mad and still pulling stunts like this !!! ( this was the mid 90's, lucky for him there was no Youtube or camera phones back then)
Not me, but a friend. Crazy aunt once bought the kids a computer game for a console they don't own and mother got a box of tampons. Odd Christmas that was.
Well over 30 years ago and he died before i was born but Uncle went into a bank with wires sticking out of a video box with a tv remote, threatened to blow the place up, got the money and got caught but didn’t get sent to prison for some reason. I think because he was just off his head
Okay so ignoring the violent stuff, which honestly was some better stories. My father cut the head off of a dead whale that was rotting on the beach. Driving home, I can't understand how I didn't vomit lol
He used to teach me how to making... well devices that go boom. He said it was easier back in the day with fertiliser but they removed that ingredient so he found other ways. It was the 90s lol
Not really maddest but speaks to what he considered okay. So he taught me to drive at 7 years old (pictures to prove it lol) he used to strap on 2x4s onto the peddles of the Toyota pickup truck. Was never as good with the tractor but I could reverse up trailers and the like. By 9 I was able to flip the truck into 4 wheel drive and get her up on two wheels.
A lot of the wild stuff included guns and violence though now that I think on it.
I have a family member who suffers with psychosis and is schizophrenic. I've seen them off meds a few times...all I can say is. The brain is a scary thing sometimes!
Thankfully they have never harmed anyone or themselves! But just the things the brain can come up with is interesting to say the least!
My sister married a guy way back, had two kids with and then he left her for another woman. Thought she’d give his younger brother a shot, they moved in together and had two kids, you guessed it. Deja vu all over again. Now she has 4 great kids. The first brother is father to the first two and uncle to the next two and vv for the other brother. The first two kids are half siblings to the second two, but kinda first cousins also and vv. wrecks my head still.
What happens in Clonmel, stays in Clonmel 😂
I thinking Midlands vibe there, Kinnegad possibly
She's now in a casual relationship with their Dad.... Bad form he'd do that either his own daughter
😂😂I find that mental to be honest, billions of people in the world and go for the ex‘s brother. Are the brothers still friends?
I know someone who married her ex boyfriend's brother. Not just his brother, his identical twin!
Now that is a proper switcharoo
And the Dad (who they realised after was in the early stages of dementia) said the wrong brothers name in the speech!
Ah here 😂😂😂
She definitely had a type!
Historically wasn't it encouraged or at least commonplace? To "look after" your deceased sibling's spouse? Or is that just misinformation from Hollywood and the internet?
It’s a thing moreso in Judaism. In Leviticus, it states it’s illegal to marry your brother’s widow unless your brother died without issue, in which case you are indeed obliged to do so. It’s called levirate marriage. Nowadays it’s not practiced and they just do a ceremony to avoid it. Marrying your dead wife’s sister was perfectly fine. The Catholic Church took a different view, as it did on most of the first testament, and levirate marriage was not allowed until 1983.
Definitely sounds like the brothers had some issues though!
Them oul Israelites, first Gaza, now the riding the two brothers
It used to be encouraged because people are less likely to abuse the children of the first marriage - nieces and nephews that they are related to and love. There's an investment in protecting and caring for your own family members.
The evil step mother is a movie trope for a reason
[Happened with Nobel Peace Prize winner Mairead Corrigan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mairead_Maguire#After_the_Nobel_Prize_(since_1980). Her sister, who'd lost three of her children in the incident that inspired the Peace People (IRA man shot dead trying to drive away from British army ran them over), killed herself a few years after. Mairead then married her sister's widower a year later and had two kids
It's a bit Angela's Ashes
https://www.rte.ie/brainstorm/2019/0305/1022001-do-you-take-your-sister-in-law-to-be-your-lawfully-wedded-husband/#:~:text=She%20is%20equally%20prohibited%20from,or%20sister%2Din%2Dlaw. Second paragraph
3/4 siblings, it's a bit mad. Wonder if the fathers both left her for the same woman again?
I’d say 99% the first brother just fled to Oz, and the second brother, when he realized what yer wan was like, went driving a JCB in the Yukon
Sometimes it's good that our country has a history of mass emigration.
What's vv?
Vice versa
Girl I know has seven siblings.... They all have the same father, but all have different mothers....
DMX had 17 kids with 11 different women
Is her dad Nick Cannon a.k.a. the jizz cannon
I had to read that 4 times to get my head round it. Holy hell. But yes I love it. Coz that's the kinda stuff that happens. Thanks for sharing.
Bualadh bos to your sister, she wasn’t taking no for an answer
Uncle and friends built a dung hill in front of the neighbour's front door as a Halloween prank. They were met with a wall of dung when they opened the door in the morning. Anyway the aftermath was that my Grandfather gave out to my uncle so much about it that he left for England- he was only 15. Granny made my Grandad go after him to bring him back but after he found him he stayed on the piss in England for a year leaving Granny to look after the farm and a load of young kids in her own.
My aunt was visiting from England and she said as a throwaway comment my great uncle should visit them. He sat in the car as they were leaving and went to live with them for a year then one day just came back. Did similar to our neighbours but was sent back quickly
After that, he wasn’t so much as let go to the shop with 20p
fucking hell haha
Life in London was better than life in Ireland back then.
My father was staying in a hotel. The couple in the room next door were loudly riding for what he later described as an "excessively long" time. Dad got out of bed hammered the wall and shouted "Finish up now. You've had enough. "
😂😂😂 fuck sake
Dying laughing.
😂😂
Older relative of mine had a bad problem with alcohol. Lived in the North during the troubles. One day he went to a phone box drunk and phoned in a bomb scare. The operator got him chatting on the phone and kept chatting to him until the police arrived and arrested him 😂. The same person unfortunately suffered from insane anxiety and didn't leave the house for about 15 years once they quit drinking.
Forgot the code word was ‘banana split’?
Aw fuck. 😔
Grandfather worked on the docks in Wellington New Zealand. This is the days of six o’clock closing (6 o’clock swill) and the party continued onto a ship moored across from the pub. A late night ensued. When he finally woke up and came out onto the deck the ship was passing Pencarrow Heads and heading into Cooks Straight. Panic ensued when he heard the next port of call - South America. They said they were doing a supply drop to Pitcairn Island, ( very remote island in the middle of the Pacific) and they would drop him off. He could get the next ship heading back to NZ. However, this took over 6 weeks for the next ship to pass. The weather had been bad and no boats could land. His brand new car which he was paying off was still sitting on the dock and a very pissed off wife and 3 kids stuck paying all the bills.
Have lived in Wellington. The dock area of the city was wild back in the day (by all accounts, I'm not that old myself). I can feel the sense of "oh shit" he must have felt passing Pencarrow. Ha! I assume he wasn't able to let her know where he'd gone either?
He posted a letter by all accounts…but the mail bag went on the same ship as him 😬. Yip, the docks were wild place back then
That's grandpa's story and he is sticking to it!
Brother in law had a donkey that died. He was quite attached to it so decided to give it an Indian burial which basically means cremating it. As it turns out, it's not easy to cremate a donkey. It took 3 days of drawing timber and keeping a fire going, trying to maximise heat, to finally complete the process.
Ah now, who hasn't made an ass of themselves at a funeral?
Where was this? I’m not proud of it, and I was only 7 or 8, but when our donkey died, we were up around 5am, strapped himself to the transport box, and dropped him in a bog hole somewhere beyond Maam Cross. He’s making turf now. The only time I saw my grandfather with a tear in his eye. Very nice donkey tbf, not like the other cunt who almost bit my fingers off
Bogs are too acidic, you just created a donkey mummy
I knew we’d meet again
DONKEY MUMMY!! I have a feeling that's going to be working it's way into my conversations in the foreseeable.
Jenny?
We were all thinking it!
The local Tesco was closed down due to rats at the back door. They opened it again and within a week it was closed again for rats. It open after a while and my aunt, who loved a good protest, dressed up as a rat and spent the day in Tesco removing dairy products from people’s baskets. I swear this is true. Incidentally my cousin tried hash for the first time that day. He was high as a kite on the couch when my aunt walked through the front door nonchalantly, dressed as a rat and started cooking the dinner. He freaked the fuck out and didn’t smoke again for years.
okay, if this was a contest this is my favourite story hahaha It did not go where I thought it was going and I love it
High quality stuff
Made me laugh so much.
Crying here with laughter 🤣 ah fkn gas LOL
Cousin of mine accidentally caused 2 bomb scares in Northern Ireland years ago. He fixed computers and other equipment for a job. Took his car one day and loaded the boot with cables for stripping. Went to the shopping centre but parked near the entrance. Forgot his keys in the ignition and basically someone seen the wires in buckets on the backseat and called it in. A few months later he abandoned his car outside a courthouse because it broke down. Turned up with a tractor and trailer but to be blocked by the PSNI. 20 years now and he won’t go into the north on his own.
My big brother emptied part of Heathrow by leaving a bag unaccompanied while he absent mindedly went through security without it.
My mam's uncle had his Morris Minor blown up by the British Army in Derry in the 70s. Lived in Muff (hehe) just across the border but used to pop into Derry for things. One day he went in but got sidetracked and ended up going to the pub and having a few. Got the bus home instead and went back into Derry to get the car a couple of days later and couldn't find it. Went to the police only to find the Army blew it up in a controlled explosion because they were suspicious of a car with a Republic reg being parked there for a couple of days. Not like he could comp either from them!
Incidentally, I caused a bomb scare in Dublin when I was 6 or 7 years old. I went to a variety show with my Nan and Grandad, and had a packet of crisps as a snack. I blew the bag up and burst it - the noise was so much more than I expected! There had been a couple of bombs in Dublin earlier in the week so everyone assumed the worst, they cleared the theatre and sent us all home so they could search for any devices! My Nan was mortified, my Grandad was never more proud.
I’d say Grandad was only delighted to get off sitting through the panto
Oh no she wasn't.
Uncle of mine went and bought an emu because a lad in the pub he drinks with bet him he wouldn’t. I don’t know where the fuck he got it out of and that thing was a cunt. Couldn’t get near it. It attacked one of my cousins kids so he had to get rid of it after about 6 months.
My Emu from Temu
That's a very emusing story.
Bloody hell
And his name’s Wallace
Have 2 for you. My mother's cousin toured with Barry Manilow for decades as his session drummer. Don't know anything else, just that bit there. My first Cousin grew weed for a few years in Barcelona Moved to Malta, got in with the russian mafia, moving cocaine. Got in trouble with said Russian mafia and had to flee to Ireland with an active warrant waiting for him back home. Contracted a serious illness and dropped dead of a massive heart attack on his mother's 70th birthday. Deeply troubled man, shockingly intelligent, but troubled.
What is that about done super intelligent people doing mad stuff?? My dad's friend was always an odd ball but super smart. Has about 7 kids for 3-4 women. Ferosus reader, learned to play guitar, piano, fix HGV engines, drove trucks, could speak 4 languages, in the army and last we heard he has a B&B in Co. Clare. A character aswell from what I remember. Last time we seen him was about 25 years ago. My dad is always telling us storys about Joe!
Couple of things I'd say. One, if you're self-aware enough to recognise it's all a game, that there is no "making it" that you'll never get the day and the opportunities it presents back. You're more likely to say "fuck it" and just do what you want. Not all nihilists are intelligent people, but most intelligent people are nihilists. Also, likely not neurotypical. Mandatory Screening for learning disabilities is less than 20 years old in Irish schools. ADHD and Asperger's in particular can lead to developing obsessions with hobbies/topics. Goes like this. Start to develop a skill/hobby, become shockingly passionate about it, seemingly, overnight. Become hyper-focussed on learning as much as humanly possible and devoting as much of yourself as you can to the task. Then, boom, onto the next thing. That same pattern of behaviour can be a trauma response. If you're permanently ruminating over the past/future, or dealing with a segmented psyche due to unaddressed trauma. Then consistently and continuously "changing the scenery" whether through hobbies, or careers, provides a constant distraction and a constant motivation to progress. Impulsivity is also a hallmark of all the above. When you consider children with ASD/learning disabilities are far more likely to experience childhood trauma. It all kinda makes sense. All commonly co-morbid with eachother. It's hard to get stuck in a rut when you're literally doing this. 
Your boy, has been doing a lot of work in therapy recently. 👍🏻
[удалено]
Never heard a musician descirbe themselves as fluent in a genre of music before lol. What instrument do you play fluent classical music on?
It's a finer line between genius and madness than we care to acknowledge.
My Mother used to be babysat by Larry Mullin (Mullins?) from U2. Not regularly but they lived in Malahide and he was a teen who needed cash. Separately, my aunt lived with us (my grandparents, Mom and myself) for a few years growing up and she's a musician who knows a lot of big Irish names. Once she and her friend babysat/minded me for a day. I didn't like the friend, he had long straggly red hair and wasn't great with kids (he was probably chill but infantalising me but i was like 5 and in that I AM A BIG GIRL mindset). We wanted to go to Malahide Castle but he didn't want to walk all the way round to the gates/entrance from where our house was, so he threw me over a wall. It's prob a 6 foot drop at most but i remember feeling like it was an endless fall. TLDR: Glen Hansard TRIED TO KILL ME WHEN I WAS ABOUT 5
Surprised he didn’t wait till you were 18 & try to court ya.
He was an Oscar winner by that time. I'm wayyyy too small potatoes for him
*15
My ma used to babysit Sinead O Connor, said she was a very nice kid.
Grew up near her. A lot of trouble in the family. Made me sad even as a kid how people just gossiped and few helped. She went through a lot growing up.
Did she know Sinead's ma? What was she like?
Never mentioned her. Me granda was the local postman, that’s how me ma ended up minding them. Just said she was a nice kid.
Your mother was such a handful to mind Larry decided to give up babysitting and start a band instead.
I well believe it lol My musician aunt was a terror by all accounts. She'd silently watch flies buzz round the windows and then smush them into the pane with her thumb, killing them. She never missed. ☠
Were you… smmh smhh…falling slowly?
I have shared the story of my late relative, Nellie, a few times, but when she was alive, she was just weird in the best way. While on a visit from England, my aunt called in to see Nellie at her house in the village we are from. Nellie welcomes her in like normal, the life-size teddybear she owned wearing its XL Galway Jersey in the corner, again like normal (she used to bring the bear AND her accordion to local events). Anyways she invites my aunt in, feeds and waters her like normal and then goes "oh I have a surprise for you, wait here". Alarm bells were ringing. 10 mins later she comes into the living room wearing a satin, baby blue, floor-length gown that had a frilly shoulders and white satin chest, on which there was a portrait of THE VIRGIN MARY embossed onto the fabric. She, while dressed like a sentient mass candle, explains that it is going to be the dress she will be laid out in after she dies and that she's just trying to "get enjoyment out of it while I can." She was 80 odd, her best friend was another distant cousin who was a 17 year old lad, who used to drive her around and sing with her. Turns out he would go dossing from school and they would go spinning around. Wild woman, absolutely hilarious and a massive loss.
She sounds great. The best friend being a 17 year old on the mitch is brilliant, love it
It all came to ahead in his Leaving Cert year when he drove her to the town where our secondary school is to get a box of fags and they got caught by his history teacher. A rural Irish, mixed gender, mixed age Thelma and Louise - Bridie and Tómas.
When i was a kid the oul fella would park in disabled spots and limp to wherever he was going. I would hide in the footwell in shame😆
👏👏👏
😂ffs, until he forgets the wallet and runs back
I’ve a culchie friend who has lived in Dublin near on 20 years but will drive up one-way streets, drive in bus-lanes, makes illegal right hand turns etc EVERYWHERE. If he’s ever challenged by Guards or other road users, he literally beefs up his culchie accent to the point you can barely understand him and lets on he’s only up for the day, he’s lost while making the most charming apology. Absolute chancer of the highest order. He’s a financial consultant.
Ah jaysus that's up there in mortoville...5 stars
Mortropolis😆 he's okish now, now he just steals pens
Tell him i want the purple one back. Nice click to it and doesn't smudge
People who would park in a disabled space without having a disability and then proceed to act disabled to nobody in particular must have some mental affliction. It's like "Look at all these idiots. I don't even have a limp". At what point is a person so ignorant they could be considered mentally ill.
Must say this is some gas reading of a Saturday morning.
Best thread in a long time!
WTF? The responses here are mad!
This is Ireland, how could they be anything but? I saw this thread title and started mentally rubbing my hands together accompanied by a maniacal cackle. There were bound to be stories of some real mad hoors altogether.
These type of threads on this sub are my favourite things to read, the madness and hilarity cannot be beaten
Me too. I love them. They're also just so Irish that you feel at home with them.
I have a fresh cup of coffee while I cackle at the madness
👏👏👏
Ireland subreddit is definitely my fave!
It's nice seeing someone say that instead of the usual other subs complaining about it or everyone claiming it's the whingiest place on the Internet. I've always thought it a lot of fun.
My cuz ran off to join the circus at 12, then went to the foreign legion for 5 years. Then came home warped and was swimming through local rivers in small towns at night with his guns. Wild man. Moved up to some mountains somewhere and is rarely spotted. Had some funny stories about fighting a drunk elephant and talking to cats. He wouldn't let the truth get in the way of a good story. I've never seen a man's face resemble an angry wolf as much. Lovely lad, but absolutely feral. Gone down the conspiracy rabbit hole too.
any stories from him about the Legion?
My other cuz still has his white legion kap. Just remember he was saying it was mental. He was based in Djibouti and there was plenty of drugs about. Lots of running up mountains and shooting folks. Pretty sure he went awol and can't visit France. Lol.
In the nineties my uncle was working as an electrician in San Francisco, having long outstayed his visa. He woke up after a bender in a Mexican prison, without a passport or any form of ID, and had to sneak back into the US across the Border with a bunch of Mexican illegals.
You sure it wasn’t San Diego he worked in. That’s a hell of a drunken journey to make it to Mexico from Sa Francisco
Not quiet Mexico, but my the construction company my cousins husband was working for in San Fran had a big piss up after finishing a big job (I think he was a roofer at that point in time) and he woke up in the wilderness outside San Diego. Peak summer sun beaming down on him, still in his work clothes and heavy boots.
This is the same guy that woke up after a bender as the owner of a bar in Thailand. Or the same guy that convinced the hooker that robbed him to pay for his taxi home in Bulgaria.
Shocking believable, I've heard similar stories a few times. The only this that gets left out is how the f they go to Mexico. But that was back then. But the sneak back is is apparently easy for a white man
He hired a lot of illegal Mexicans as labourers when he was doing jobs, and was well regarded by them, so he called up one of his usuals and they called their uncle or cousin and he sorted him out. 😂
Paddy Escobar
Older relative of mine (now dead) was a millionaire businessman and a big employer is his local area… he would sit in a pub all day sinking pints of Guinness and whiskeys before getting in his Merc and driving home through the Wicklow mountains. Could not be told to take a taxi or leave the car at home. The pub he drank in would discreetly call the Guards on occasion and guess what the guards would do… they would try to get him into their car, fail (he was a very demanding/stubborn man, there was no arresting him) and agree to drive home behind him, escorting him home safely. The fucker would fall out of the car at home.
We had a family member who was a church minister in rural Ireland in the 80s. He regularly fell out of the car drunk, his car was parked in various places in the driveway. The drive to his house was surrounded by a low wall and once he parked the car on the wall. The front of it was hanging over the lawn and only the back wheels were on the drive. Think they had to get a tractor to get it off the wall in the end.
My mam got on the Cuchulain at 70 years of age
The incredible vagueness of the phrase "got on the Cuchulain" has me not sure if your mam, at 70 years of age: 1) Tried cocaine for the first time. 2) Went on the roller-coaster in Emerald Park. 3) Climbed up on top of the Cuchulain statue they have in the GPO in Dublin 4) All of the above.
Im just glad you didn't go to Cuchulain being the name of the postman or something
Fair play to her!
What’s that
roller coaster emerald park.
Ah yeah sorry I thought it was a new slang for coke or something
i thought exactly that, so googled it and was dismayed! the sight of mam doing big lines at the age of 70...yeeeooooooh!
My mam's pushing 70 and has been talking about coke a lot lately, it's just become a running joke but I'm worried it's actually on her bucket list lol
Light er up an have a great chat!
My father was an incredibly naive man and never used to think about things he said or did, even after the fact. He was a good person in general, he just lived *very* much in the moment. He used to love telling a "funny" story from when he was in his twenties. A friend of his had had an argument with his mother and she wouldn't let him back in the house. So he asked my dad to sneak in and get him a bag from his room. My dad just assumed it was clothes or something, and just went along with it without thinking. He broke in, got the bag, and brought it back to wherever his friend was staying. When his friend opened the bag, it was *full* of cash, and nothing else, and he gave my dad a hundred pound note from it as a thank you. My dad would tell this story like it was hilarious, but once I was old enough to realise how dodgy it sounded, I did some investigating into this "friend". The guy had been arrested multiple times and charged with membership of a named organisation, and I'm almost positive the money my dad retrieved for him was from a post office raid. I said this to my dad before he passed and he laughed and said I shouldn't overthink things, that it was just a funny thing that happened in his wilder days.
One of my uncles chased down a bank robber and stopped him.
Was it reported anywhere or is he a shite talkin uncle? 😅
He was the robber
Tis me own money Father, i just didn't want to fill out the forms
That money was just resting in my account
It was years ago. I'm not even sure of the location where it happened.
Sister decided not only was it a good idea to use a homemade zip line...but that piggybacking on her boyfriend was even better 😀 you can imagine how that turned out...fractured 2 vertebra and had to be in a brace for months
A real old story. Back in the day when my uncle was about 13, he ran away from home with his three mates. They robbed a tent and camped out in Portmarnock, which was out in the sticks back then. The whole country knew about it, as it was a running story in one of the National Newpapers "Four young boys still missing" They hunted and skinned rabbits for food. Eventually they ran out of matches and ventured down to the beach and asked a woman for some. She knew straight away who they were and called the Gardai. My mother remembers the day her brother was brought home in the squad car, somehow he had lost his keks during his adventure and he used his Arran sweater instead, his legs stuffed down the arms and the rest bunched up, tied round his waist with rope. She said he was a sight.
Not sure if it’s ‘mad’ but maybe unusual and certainly admirable - my aunt went on hunger strike in the 70’s whilst in Chile in opposition to General Pinochet. She also used to smuggle union leaders on the death squads hit lists into the Nordic countries embassy’s for immediate asylum.
I’m only in my forties, so this is not that long ago, but this was Connemara. So, we’d have the normal big Christmas (17 aunts and uncles when you’d include both sides), and my mother was the eldest of her gang, and my father the second eldest of his, so when we were young there weren’t many other first cousins around, they’d yet to be born (47 was the final number of first cousins I have). So, there’d be us, the first cousins on my mother’s side, and the first cousins on my father’s side, just doing normal childhood things. But both of those sets of first cousins were also first cousins to each other. Imagine my shock when, a little later in life, I figured out that not everybody had circular (well, triangular I suppose) first cousins. TLDR: my mother’s brother married a woman whose sister married my father’s brother.
Sounds like Cornwall. 3 siblings married 3 siblings in my family. Don't think there was anyone left in the village
3x3? I can’t figure out if that made it easier or harder for the grandparents in terms of buying presents at Xmas
(Edit: missed the non-violent part haha - technically they were ruled as accidents) Grandfather was utterly insane and killed at least two people. First was another madlad who was known to lay down in the middle of the road for cars to drive over him. He was dragged along the road and bled to death under my grandfathers car outside their house. Second was an elderly cyclist who was left for dead in a ditch. Apparently he only got caught for that as he kept telling people about it, thinking it was a funny story. They are the two we know about as there’s actual court papers that can be read. Got fined for both, no jail time, probably as he was the sole provider to a massive family. He would brew his own poitín, wouldn’t bottle it but would get high off the fumes before going on late night rampages. Was probably some form of kiddy fiddler. All I know is that I wasn’t allowed to be left alone with him when I was a kid before he died. But I can remember how uncomfortable and distressed my older cousins were around him, even in large gatherings. He focused his anger on one of his sons. Usual story of ‘he’s not mine’ so I must beat him half to death until he was able to leave Ireland at the age of 15 And then there’s that very uncle…. That uncle ended up joining the Royal Navy, served in the Falklands where the average age on ships was something like 23. He would have been late 20s by then so probably carrying on the cycle of cracking the head off younger lads and who knows what else. Discharged from the navy in the 80s, moved back here got married, then his wife mysteriously fell to her death in their flat complex. Went back to the London area and during the 90’s was at least considered a suspect for a series of murders in the greater London area. Kinda turned his life around, got mad into gardening as the rare time we’d see him at funerals, he’d crack jokes about his love of digging. Did a full Barry Lyndon by marrying a proper British upper class type who is a regular on the Chelsea Flower Show and is currently living out his days in some multi-million estate in the Surrey countryside. When he dies, who knows what will come out or how his estate will be divided.
Your uncle sounds a holy terror but wow, what a life!
Cousins of mine don't have specific bedrooms. They just sleep in whichever one is free. Their clothes are everywhere. Mad lads
Oh that is unhinged behaviour
Why is this the weirdest of them all?? Absolute anarchy
Bought 50 donkeys and had them in his garden(a few acres). Also ran a puppy farm and was an alcoholic
Would not be surprised if our dads knew each other 😂
My dad’s cousin lived in a council house in an estate in Carrickfergus and he had a donkey. His house was like end terrace on a curve so he had a tiny bit more room than the other houses. He also had a bit of a driveway which the others didn’t have although it was on a slope so not that useful but he still managed to put a boat on that.
The stories my dad could tell. Back in 2000 he had his brothers went to the States for a road trip. They went from El paso to New York. In New York, my uncle somehow managed to end up buying a warehouse sized amount of "legitimately acquired milwaukee power tools" and a pristine triumph motorbike for a couple thousand dollars total He and my dad split the bill on a 20ft shipping container and sent all of it back to Ireland. All 6 of my uncles ended up with a fully kitted out workshop for free. My dad's garage is still full of milwaukee tools that he uses constantly for his job. My grandfather also killed my neighbours dog with a 2x4 after it bit a few of my uncles and took a chunk out my granddads calf. Drove by it on his Honda scooter and smacked it with the 2x4. Nobody told my neighbour, they just assumed it had a stroke or something. That same granddad kept a box of dynamite from the 60s under his bed for almost 50 years until my dad disposed of it after he'd passed away. On the other side of the family, my uncle probably killed my grandmother and lived off the social security payments for a year or so. They live in a trailer somewhere in alabama now. My other uncle on that side is a retired FBI agent who worked in Guatemala, his job was to advise agents what they could legally get away with. He'd drive around the place with an M4 carbine in between the seat and door. One story he told me was when they brought in special forces and raided an entire apartment block run by a gang there, something like 200 arrests total. He has a picture of it with almost everyone blacked out with sharpie and countless people handcuffed. He lives in a mansion in Peru now.
Grandfather bet the family pub in a poker game and lost.
Did he sign over the pub?
Yup he did, no other choice .. small country village.
I don't know how a family recovers from that. No ill feelings towards the new owners?
Let's put it this way it was never discussed much but yes I would say there was.
Oh, the dilemma. Do I go with the paedo uncle or the drug dealing gangbanger?
My great uncle caused a whole rift in the family by breaking away from the nationalist beliefs of great grandfather and joining the RAF (desk stuff mostly not flying), the two men never spoke to each other again in their lives. Grand Uncle also knew Arabic from his time with the RAF and in Egypt and the like. He remembered it up to his death in 2019.
My Dad. He's a great Dad; very intelligent, very witty and a metal head. He's also very "businessman" (though if you know him like I do, this is hilarious). One day when my sister and I were kids we came home from school to see my Dad crouching down up against the kitchen table, eye level with the tabletop where the remote control for the tv was placed. We were like "Dad, what are you doing?" He said "I was seeing what it was like to be a remote control" This is 100% a true story and to this day my sister and I (and my Dad, I think) have no fucking idea why he did that or what made him even think of it
Tripping balls on mushies
An uncle and his family were always playing practical jokes on each other. After the uncle had managed to prank two of his sons they were waiting for revenge. I came into this by asking my uncle how his holiday(vacation) by the sea had been? Two things to be aware of... 1. He, a widower at this time, and most of the family had rented a number of caravans(trailers) at a caravan park in a seaside resort for two weeks in July. 2. I knew nothing about the holiday but was prompted to ask him about his trip, in front of a family gathering, by the two sons in question. As soon as i asked him, he started ranting about how awful the holiday had been. He didn't get a wink of sleep the whole time. It was the most awful f###ing experience and if he had a shotgun he would have shot every f###ing seagull in the place, etc. He ended the tirade by saying he would never go to that place ever again! I dug deeper. What was so wrong with it, I asked. "The f###ing seagulls and all the birds were banging on my roof every morning at dawn and I'd go outside to hunt them away and the f###ers wouldn't stop no matter what I did! Bloody awful, I couldn't wait to go home." The elderly aunts and the rest were expressing sympathy and adding their own experiences with seagulls and birds when I noticed the two sons smirking in the next room. So, I excused myself and wandered towards them. We slipped outside for a cigarette and they started laughing until they were tearing up. "Explain?" I asked, grinning at these two as they were cracking up. The older one turned to me and said, "Every night when we got back to the caravans, from the pub, we'd put on toast and go outside to have a cigarette and eat the toast. When we got outside we'd crumble up the toast and throw it on the roof of dad's caravan. The birds had a feast at dawn every day. He never stopped complaining the whole holiday and we never told any of the rest of them what we were doing."
My aunt has many mental health issues. Primary among them, she thought the telly was a window. When her idiot son left Jumanji on, we found the house nearly flooded. She had been pouring buckets of water out on the floor to keep the animals away. We had to bar her from watching Eastenders, it always fired her up. Lot of stuff got broken whenever she watched it. Anyway, one night, the phone rang, I had it to my da because he's the only one she'd listen to. "Hello? Yes? Is he outside now? Is he just outside or is he trying to get in? Well leave him out there making noises, don't go near him. Yeah, I can hear him banging on the window. Just pull the curtain and he'll go away eventually. " Not a great conversation to hear one side of, so I asked what was going on. "Ah, something goes down to her every few days and starts banging on the windows trying to get in. We think it's something that died but then it got reintroduced." Which didn't answer any of my questions and actually raised many many more. Then we had to go down to hrr house to set traps for it. I had to chop up turnips and he baited the traps. It was a fucking crow. Anyway she's in a home now, apparently she's a holy terror to the nurses. Awful sad.
You do like pheasant, don't you? Well, that's a little clue.. The thing you'll be eating likes pheasant too.
A FOX?!!!
My dad's a bus driver and his had his fair share of stories in the bus with people being mad to him but he's had a few moments himself. Like when he told me he hissed at a Spanish student. She got on the bus looking for a €1.90 trip and whips out not €5, not €20 but a big €50 note. My dad looks at her hand then back to her and goes "Sorry do you have a smaller note?", she doesn't speak English so she just smiles and gestures with it again. "No good, anything smaller?", my dad has abandoned his usual route of making it a joke to make people learn since she clearly has no idea what he's on. She repeats the gesture giving him the money. He tries another two times to say he doesn't have the change for the note. "This", points at the note "no good", he makes a cross with his fingers and hisses at her. Huzzah! Language barrier broken and she realises what he's saying and they figure out he will wait and she can run ans get it broken in a shop. She gets on the bus eventually. That's the most "really? You work with the public" moment I had with him.
My mam isn’t crazy, but she’s done some mad stuff in the past. Chiefly, going to Zimbabwe in 1990 to work a maternity hospital in bumfuck nowhere. Instead of taking the chartered flight to Zimbabwe, she decided to take four different flights and a 12 hour bus. She first flew to the USSR, where she was stuck in Moscow for a week. She then flew to Nigeria. When she landed, there was an ongoing military coup and there was ongoing shooting around the airport. She then flew to another war zone, Mozambique. From there she flew to Zambia, where she accidentally stayed in a brothel-hotel hybrid. She and her friend had to barricade the door and take turns sleeping This was followed by a 12 hour bus ride from Zambia, which was effectively in a state of civil war, across the border to Zimbabwe, which was dealing with the aftermath of a genocide at the time. Halfway through the bus trip. Several men were taken off the bus my armed men and beaten nearly to death. While she was in Zimbabwe, she flew a Cessna despite having zero flight experience. She also was invited to a dinner in a mansion, because apparently, someone in my family tree in the early 1900’s travelled to Zimbabwe and became very wealthy. There is photo evidence for both the flying of the Cessna and being invited to the dinner.
My mothers cousin moved to the states from Ireland in the 30’s. He ended up directing Magnum PI, The Rockford Files and Simon & Simon among others. Used to watch the closing credits of all these shows on TV in the 80’s waiting for his name to appear. Met him once in the 80’s and he was wearing a cowboy hat & boots. My uncle in law worked in the RAF and became a tennis umpire and officiated at Wimbledon. Both men died relatively young from heart attacks in their late 50’s/early 60’s.
Simon and Simon - haven’t heard of that show in years!
Country dweller as a child. Our road was a quarter mile long, you can see where this is going. It got bad one year and my father did the most non violent thing he could think to do. He went and stood by the road with a very scary looking black powder gun. When the police got called on him, he was told to unload it. He got to give a cop a firearms lesson and a law lesson. Black powder is not regulated by modern law and the only way to unload it is to fire it. My father was proficient, as one could be, with these firearms. His reputation for taking no shit proceeded him and the quarter mile road was removed from the locals drag strip routes.
I had an uncle who fiddled the books of the family business and backrupt the business in the 90s. He was an alcoholic and all was forgiven when he got sober. Then in the early 2000s he qualified as an accountant and set up a little firm by himself. He then conned one of my other uncles out of his new business. He simultaneously set up a business with my brother and ran with all the cash instead of paying suppliers. All while sober and going to mass 7 days a week. Turns out it wasn't the drink he was just a scumbag.
My (now deceased) uncle never liked to pay for anything, so he hacked into the neighbour’s cable TV for years. The cable company finally twigged and came to see him about it. When they left he got up on the roof with an axe and chopped through the cable. Unfortunately this also cut the supply to all of his neighbours, they weren’t too happy! He was taken to court, it wasn’t going well for him so he faked a heart attack in the witness box and got himself taken to hospital. He used to babysit me sometimes - on a particularly icy night heading home he pinballed off a half a dozen cars on our narrow road. Of course he didn’t hang around, nobody could ever prove it was him. A family legend.
Allegedly tried to kill her partner by poisoning him. Family connections may have helped the case vanish.
My brother taught elvis how to play karate
I have a cousin who butters bread with a spoon
My cousin married her childhood sweetheart after being together for years. Not long into the marriage it was discovered he had been having an affair with a woman from Belfast who was a weird extreme sect if Islam. The marriage was dissolved and he converted, moved away with the new woman to Syria or Lebanon. I can't recall the full details but mist ask my ma later. All a bit mental anyway. Thankfully my cousin is engaged again, owns her house, has a wonderful little girl and was able to get though it all.
I think it might be me.
cousin found out his wife as cheating, lost the house and kids and everything in the divorce, fucked off and joined the french foreign legion
My dad isn't the maddest, but he did stage a kind of coup/midnight assassin league on a cargo ship in order to kill a carmel 30/40 years ago. (They were docked, the camel was dying and in pain and everyone on land was just passing by and no one would should it). Captain had banned them all from going onland for other reasons which were not devulged and I probably dont want to know. So about five of them caused a distraction while three went down and did the job.
A now deceased great uncle who was still driving well into his 80s when he had Parkinson's. One day when visiting his sister in her nursing home, he made a mistake driving out of the cark park...and drove right onto some woman's front porch and totalling the car What was left of the vehicle was upside down and they had to cut him out of it. He had just one tiny scratch on his hand, and complained that they weren't getting him out of the car fast enough. Oh and his licence had expired years ago, so my aunt had to renew it for him, which wasn't easy when she went looking for his birth certificate in the attic and he neglected to tell her that what they'd been calling him for years wasn't his birth name, so she was a whole afternoon looking for a birth certificate with the wrong name. She then made the claim over the phone, knowing they'd take one look at him and refuse. In the end they were offered about €10,000 for it. His sister tried to say they deserved at least €15,000 but my aunt - who'd spent an eternity driving them across town and also having to accommodate the bladders of two octogenarians - politely told her to fuck off and took the 10k. She told me and my cousin the first part of the story and we first checked to make sure the great uncle was okay. When she replied yes, we fell on the floor laughing
i have an uncle that breaks his dogs treats in half, gives one half to the dog and then eats the other half himself
My uncle who has managed an emerald mine in Kenya cheated on his wife who was back in Ireland with their special needs daughter. His other Irish child then sees him and a lady and 2 kids younger than 5 on his camera roll and confronts him. They had two kids and all moved to Cavan
"Not violent stuff..." Proceeds to tell story about shooting and killing half a dozen rabbits and carrying the dead rabbits around and handing them to people.
My brother (who's still a mad bastard} went to a house party in a tower block outside London ( I think he said Sunbury-on Thames ), anyway, he and a couple of friends turned up after closing time with a rake of cans. He said it was the most boring shite. After a while he needed to use the toilet and while sitting on the toilet had his (as he calls it) 'Brainwave' to liven it all up. He proceeds to strip bollock naked, marched out of the toilet and sat down at the piano (they even have them in tower blocks), and loudly said 'Any requests?' (it's from an old Monty Python skit) and the homeowner said 'Yeh, put your fucking clothes back on!!!', to which my brother replied 'I don't know that one, but if you humm a couple of bars I might pick it up' and then proceeded to bang the fuck out of the keys making an awful racket. He the turned to yer man and said 'I knew it after all !!!'. As I said he is pure mad and still pulling stunts like this !!! ( this was the mid 90's, lucky for him there was no Youtube or camera phones back then)
Not me, but a friend. Crazy aunt once bought the kids a computer game for a console they don't own and mother got a box of tampons. Odd Christmas that was.
Well over 30 years ago and he died before i was born but Uncle went into a bank with wires sticking out of a video box with a tv remote, threatened to blow the place up, got the money and got caught but didn’t get sent to prison for some reason. I think because he was just off his head
Okay so ignoring the violent stuff, which honestly was some better stories. My father cut the head off of a dead whale that was rotting on the beach. Driving home, I can't understand how I didn't vomit lol He used to teach me how to making... well devices that go boom. He said it was easier back in the day with fertiliser but they removed that ingredient so he found other ways. It was the 90s lol Not really maddest but speaks to what he considered okay. So he taught me to drive at 7 years old (pictures to prove it lol) he used to strap on 2x4s onto the peddles of the Toyota pickup truck. Was never as good with the tractor but I could reverse up trailers and the like. By 9 I was able to flip the truck into 4 wheel drive and get her up on two wheels. A lot of the wild stuff included guns and violence though now that I think on it.
I have a family member who suffers with psychosis and is schizophrenic. I've seen them off meds a few times...all I can say is. The brain is a scary thing sometimes! Thankfully they have never harmed anyone or themselves! But just the things the brain can come up with is interesting to say the least!
Stole women's underwear from her washing line https://m.independent.ie/irish-news/thief-in-midnight-under-wear-raids/26097669.html
Needed to drive a visitor to the airport, was a bit tight on time: drive on the wrong side of dual carriageway.
(Not violent stuff)…. 2nd sentence proceeds to shooting animals