Thursday 25 October 2012

Sibling Rivalry?

Now I may offend some people with my views on life etc, but quite frankly I don’t care. There are many things that get under my skin and this blog would be pages and pages long if I listed them all, let alone spoke about them individually. However, a few things really do make me scratch my head or cause me some kind of anger issue.

As I drive round I see what people do to their cars. There was one car I pulled up by at some traffic lights that was covered in stickers. Not car transfers, like flames or go faster stripes, but actual sticker book stickers! Football stickers, Thomas the Tank Engine stickers, super hero stickers! I mean why? Why would you do that to your car? They weren’t even in the window, they were all over the body of the car! That would take a lot of white spirit to get off if you ever wanted to sell the damn thing. In fact I’m not sure a scrap merchant would want it in that state! Although they did have an Alan Shearer sticker that I need to complete my Euro ‘96 Panini sticker album – I should have peeled it off!

However, the one thing that really does do my head in is those people – and I’m afraid it’s women that do this – that put eye lashes on their car! It’s normally Ford Ka drivers that do it! Now the Ford Ka is a crap car anyway and always offends my eyes as it is. It looks like some geezer at Ford had a tight deadline to submit plans and went out the night before the presentation, had an all night bender on the booze, got into work the next morning still pissed up and panicked that the presentation was only 30 minutes away!

Granted it is a girl’s car, along with a Nissan Micra, but is there any need to put false eye lashes on the headlights? Do they think this is cool or cute? Do they have some massive mascara in the boot for the days when the car is looking a little run down? Do they get served quicker at McDonalds drive through if they flutter the car eye lashes at the server?? What is the point?

I also cannot do with those ‘funny’ car stickers that are usually on some clapped out Nissan Cherry that states ‘My other car is a Ferrari’. No it isn’t… if you had a Ferrari you would either be driving round in it or could afford a better second car. I know they are going for irony here, but it isn’t funny. It wasn’t funny 20 years ago, let alone now!

I bet my brother sees all kinds of monstrous work done to cars no doubt, professional and amateur efforts! He is a car technician (posh word for mechanic I believe) after all and will have seen all kinds of mayhem roll onto the forecourt. Although knowing my brother he won’t even bat an eyelid.

My brother has his career; he works damn hard at it, and a lovely 2.1 family thing going on. He is the Angel Child of the family and always has been ("why can’t you be more like your brother" comes the call), but he does have a dark side that comes out every so often and generally it’s in my direction.

Once Angel Child lost his temper with me because after drinking a load of cider together (classy I know!) I said his hair looked like a brillo pad and he should get it cut sooner rather than later. This struck some kind of nerve and Angel Child offered me out – he wanted to actually punch my lights out for suggesting his head could get through the family dishes quicker than the cloth that was used!

We had a bit of sibling rivalry when younger, no different to other brothers and sisters, it still exists now to a certain extent as I am generally the offspring that gets into trouble, into scrapes and am crap at relationships and money. Whereas Angel Child is the calm, career driven, family man who plays sports and is in a stable marriage. Everything a parent would want in a son.

He is generally the most placid one of the two of us, keeping his calm in a whole manner of circumstances, until something rubs him up the wrong way. I mean he wouldn’t get annoyed by eye lashes on cars or ‘funny’ bumper stickers like I would. He doesn’t generally get wound up by the small things in life. It is a slow build up of things or someone who presses the right buttons.

But when he does go, he goes!

I remember I used to, as the older brother naturally, beat him up. I used to pin him down and do the typewriter on his chest that sent him into a rage. He was smaller than me and so I had that power over him.

However, what he would do would be one of two things.

If there was a stick or something handy that he could whack me with then he would use it! We had one of those mini snooker tables in our bedroom and if he could get free of our tangle he would pick up a snooker cue and whack me with it! Usually aiming for the back of the head, but anywhere would do. I can tell you right now that it hurts! I am still surprised he didn’t arm himself with a snooker ball in the sock for such occasions!

If he couldn’t find a weapon he would naturally grass me up to the parents and later he would do something to me that would cause great emotional pain, if not physical pain.

He may destroy a Lego model that I had spent weeks on, smashing it to bits so that I had to start again. Or he would bide his time and kick me in the head, he’s done that you know. He’s waited until I have pounced, me thinking he hadn’t noticed me, then he would lash out – my own fault I guess there. He split my brow open once! Or he would smash a door in my face which once caused my tooth to snap in half. Or he would hide stuff of mine or use stuff of mine that he knew would get to me, to get a reaction.

I got bought a Sega Megadrive for my birthday when I was younger – all my mates had games machines and I was desperate for one as I’d never had one. The day I got it was also the day of my party and so had a few friends round. It was all shiny and new and I wanted to play on it first, but had to entertain friends.
Under no circumstances was my kid brother allowed to play on my Megadrive!! It was mine and I didn’t want him soiling it, I didn’t want to then play on a second hand Megadrive! He asked and he asked, but I wouldn’t let him, no way, he wouldn’t ever allow me to play with something of his so it was the same rule for him.

However, as I played out with friends he went on it!! I caught him out and was incensed by this – he knew the rules!! Sure enough a fight erupted out and no doubt he hit me with a weapon, possibly even the Megadrive itself!

He also liked to wind me up in other ways, by taking the mick whenever he could.

Once I was sat in my bedroom and had an itch on my eyebrow. There was some scissors to hand so I used them to tend to the itch. Sure enough, like the numpty I am, I ‘scratched’ away half of my eyebrow! So in a panic, because it looked stupid, I shaved the rest of it off. So now I had one normal eyebrow and one pale area of skin where an eyebrow once resided.

My brother at first did not take the mick, in fact he was quite helpful. He offered solutions; unbeknownst to me he was wanting to make the situation worse. He took out a brown felt tip pen and coloured in where my eyebrow once was. Now leaving me with one normal eyebrow and one thick, dark felt tip eyebrow! To say it didn’t look natural is an understatement. However, he still kept ‘helping’ without taking the mick
.

So he said it had to be evened up and in the blind panic I shaved the other one off.

What is it about eyebrows? They are there all the time, usually, and you do not pay any attention to them. If you pass someone in the street you generally do not look or even notice their eyebrows first, yet if you have no eyebrows it completely changes your face and everyone suddenly notices…

I played rugby at the time too and so when I went training I didn’t want the lads to see I had no eye brows and so my brother suggested I rubbed a bit of mud into where they should have been – that didn’t work either! Cue much hilarity aimed at me from the rugby lads.

Now, eventually, my brother was tickled – he had succeeded in his long term plan to make a fool out of his older brother. He had held it in for so long and now erupted with laughter and told everyone who was interested and more that weren’t. Yet call him brillo pad head once and he gets wound up!?!?! Go figure!

I am equally as bad of course, that’s what having a brother is about. That rivalry doesn’t end because you’re older.

A few years back when I split with the mother of my children I moved back into my Mum and Dad’s and started going to the nearest pub, becoming a regular. To cut a long story short the pub was run by a gay couple and me and my brother had a lock in with them one night – no funny business here folks, so don’t think it – and they were telling us all about their private lives. Me and my brother were very uncomfortable at this and made our excuses to leave – and I never like to leave a pint!

A few weeks later one of the landlords wrote on my Facebook wall about not being up to the pub much recently – 3 days later he was killed by his partner! That’s a story in itself right there.

I was then called by the police and asked about them as a couple…

"Finally Mr Evans, I have to ask, did you or your brother have a sexual relationship with either the victim or the accused?"

"Absolutely not Officer, although I cannot speak on behalf of my brother…"
came my reply!

My brother wasn’t happy that I had suggested anything other than him being a happily married heterosexual man!

That’s how it will always be between me and the Angel Child. One-up-man-ship between each other.

Trying to out do each other – I mean we don’t even play football on the games console together now as we end up kicking lumps out of each other as neither of us like to lose. The rivalry is less intense now mind you, because he hardly ever speaks to me. He very rarely gets in touch and generally it is me who has to organise to see him or get him out to the pub.

Plus he goes to the gym and is much bigger than me now and so I couldn’t even attempt to do the typewriter on him, I wouldn’t be able to pin him down for a start!

I don’t want you to get the impression that we’re arch enemies though as when we do get together we have a laugh and drink till the early hours of the morning. We usually drink right through in fact, much to the disgust of his wife, and get ourselves into scrapes together, not just against each other. We are kind of the best of enemies at times, just like any family. We’re ‘frenemies’ in fact.

However if he does ever read this then it would be nice for him to actually let me know that the baby him and his wife are expecting next February is a boy and not have me find out from someone else!! Someone who isn’t actually a blood member of the family!

He’s quick to tell me I am a knob, but not quick to let me know anything of importance!

Family eh, you can’t pick ‘em, you can’t kill ‘em, you can’t even call them brillo pad head without aggro!
 

No comments:

Post a Comment