Parents, Rabbits, and The Ridings Centre

You’ve got to love families haven’t you? My family are amazing, you know. There’s my mum and dad, now I don’t know if your parents are the same, but mine like to claim they’re not insane, when they clearly are. For instance, I walked into the kitchen the other day and my mum was in there with three boiled eggs - well, the eggs were on the counter, she wasn’t standing to talking to them or anything, they weren’t helping her make the tea - and she was just standing there so I walked up to her and just went “What are you doing?” and my mum, in all seriousness, said back to me “I was watching Jamie Oliver the other day, and he told me to do this…” and she picked up one of the eggs and proper smashed it on the counter. Who gives that out as advice? My dad, on the other hand, is probably the more sane of the two but at the same time he’s a bit more mad. We’ve got a new rabbit and we bring her into the house to let her have a bit of a run about in the living room so she gets used to us and my dad didn’t like her at first - she’s called Dusty - and he didn’t like her. But one day, he decided he did like her and our rabbit’s quite lively so she doesn’t like people stroking her much but for some reason, she let him. And he just sat there for about half an hour stroking her. The only thing is, though, through the new rabbit, I’ve pretty much learnt what sort of parent he must have been when I was a toddler. Because, we brought her in a few days ago and she kept trying to chew the phone cable round the side of the sofa next to the wall and I was the only one looking after her. I was trying to keep the cable out of her reach so she couldn’t chew it but she’d started clawing at the carpet too so I knew we had to move the sofa out so I could move her but no one would help me move the sofa out because obviously I couldn’t let go of the cable to do it myself otherwise she’d chew it. My dad, in all serious and helpfulness walked up to me, leant slightly over me and went to the rabbit “No, no, no, naughty, you don’t eat that, naughty” and then walked off! But my dad’s scared of flying, like seriously terrified of flying, he’s only ever flown twice - once was on the way to Disneyland Paris, once was on the way back - and it didn’t go well. There were four of us going, me, my mum, my brother and him but the seats were only in rows of three so he had to sit two rows behind us. My dad, terrified of flying, got seated on a row with a middle aged man and his young son, about 8 years old, who, halfway through the flight, started discussing what would happen if terrorists bombed the plane and how we would all either die, or escape through chutes on the edge of the plane. My dad (to put it polietly) crapped himself. But he is, my dad’s scared of flying and we had the rabbit out in the run in the garden a week or two ago and an aeroplane went overhead and she just stopped dead still and didn’t move for about 5 minutes. And I’ve figured out why my rabbit and my dad get on so well, they’re both scared of flying. I’ve figured it out, they’ve been having secret meetings about it, plotting ways to make sure we only ever go on family holidays in this country as opposed to somewhere that doesn’t just rain for a week and make us wish we’d stayed at home. My dad’s not just scared of flying though, he absolutely hates the idea of people touching his hair, absolutely hates it. It’s not even like he’s got good hair though, his hair is literally the hair equivalent of a toilet brush, it’s nothing special. And ever since my auntie said it a few years ago, it’s become more and more obvious that his hair is the exact same as Simon Cowell’s. It’s ironic really, my dad’s called Simon too. Anyway, we were on a family outing a few weeks ago to Howarth aka home of the Bronte sisters and we’d been round the village and up a massive hill and that was about it really. And we were on our way back to where we’d parked when two teenage girls came rushing across the road, one went “Oh my God, we’re so rubbish at crossing roads” while the other went “Oh, we’re so cool!” which to me, was hilarious. How can you be rubbish at crossing roads? You know, unless each time you leave the house you get run over, you can’t be in any way rubbish at crossing roads. But even better, how does being rubbish at crossing roads make you cool?! Anyway, these girls hurried off down a back street and we kept walking and eventually we had to walk past two pubs, one on each side of the road, straight opposite each other, and we just kept walking as we had been doing. And there were two sort of gangs of drunken men, one at each pub, having a slanging match literally over the road to each other and as we passed, they just stopped, suddenly stopped. And then I genuinely heard someone call after my dad, “He’s got hair like Simon Cowell’s”

But it’s people like that that make the world such a brilliant place, isn’t it? I was in The Ridings shopping centre in Wakefield with my friend Beth a while ago and it’s not the classiest places anyway, you know. It’s one of those places where everything smells like wee and there’s almost a guarantee that every other shopper either is, or knows, a Netto employee cast off. But this particular outing was one to remember. We were there with my mum and brother but they’d disappeared off by themselves. Myself and Beth got on an escalator. Now normally, there’s a rule on an escalator that if you don’t know the person or people in front, you leave a step, isn’t there? It’s very rare that you’ll get on an escalator and a random stranger will get on behind you and think “Oh yes, I want to go and get reallllly close to that person in front”. But because it was Wakefield, because it was a disastrous outing, the person getting on behind us conveniently forgot about this rule. This bloke got on straight behind us, he was one of those people that look young and old, and fat and slim all in one, you know the sort. He’s there in this awful green t-shirt and jeans with a raincoat and a massive great rucksack, which looks dodgy in itself. But then he looked overly dopey and he had a beard that clearly wasn’t intended to even be there, he just couldn’t be bothered to shave it off or keep it neat. And he got on, and stood literally right behind Beth. We got off at the top of the escalator and me and Beth went up to the Marks and Spencer’s café to meet my mum and brother and this bloke slunk off in another direction and we didn’t see him again. Later, Beth and I were waiting by the lifts again for my mum and brother and we were just watching our fellow shoppers walking by. The very same man as the man from the escalator walked up to a closed, boarded up shop front, plonked himself on the floor, reached into his rucksack, pulled out, and ate, a Gregg’s sausage roll - while sitting on the floor. Shoppers were having to walk in massive semi circles to get past him and everything. But it’s not just Wakefield city centre that’s classy, no, most of the towns near me are. I went into Castleford the other day. Never again. I left feeling positively upper class. There’s something wrong isn’t there when the classiest establishment in a whole town, is a Gregg’s. What makes me laugh, is that people that live there affectionately call it ‘Cas Vegas’. And right next door, they’ve got ‘Ponte Carlo‘. You couldn’t make something like that up could you? You’ve got to love these places purely because of the comedy value they offer. I mean, during this outing to Wakefield, I encountered a sign stuck up in the window of a pound shop saying, “Socks and Underwear: £1” - who buys their socks and underwear from the Poundshop? I remember getting changed in P.E. and I’ve never been a pervert or anything but occasionally you’d notice other people’s underwear and you’d often see 16 year old girls wearing fake Eeyore knickers and a matching bra, or underwear with pictures of bears and dolls on them or something like that and you’d just wonder where on earth those monstrosities came from. Now I know. You’ve got to have given up to go and buy your underwear from the Poundshop, haven’t you. I couldn’t help but wonder if Sausage Roll Man had just bought his entire get up from there. “Favourite shops? I quite like the Poundshop, and I bought some ace shoes from The Leather Shop the other day.” Urgh, I hate that shop. It’s that one where it sells literally only products made from leather and the sort of people that go in there are the sort of people that have covered their entire houses with zebra and tiger print furniture despite the fact that next month they’ll be 95. We’ve got one of those in Wakefield, too. To be honest, I think Beth summed up the day best when she said “Why does nobody here have any teeth?” The scary thing was, she was right - every single person that walked past had at least one tooth missing.

Rachel (Webmistress)