My Brother is the Bollocks!

I need to share something with you fruitloopmum fans. This week I have been wickedly baiting my little brother via Facebook. Given that we live in different hemispheres, Facebook serves as a useful touch-point for us both. Trouble is that our baiting of each other is bloody well shared among shed-loads of friends and acquaintances who just have to jump on the bandwagon. We ended up with a bun-fight in cyber space! So now I feel compelled to write this post to set the record straight.

I adore my little brother. He could be an annoying little f**er  when we were growing up, but he was the cutest, most adorable child. Now, he is the most adorable man with a wicked sense of humour (but a dubious taste in soft furnishings) More of that later.

 

He's the cute bald one

 

So, here’s a little bit of a profile on him to set the scene. We progressed from cute to mischievous. When he reached about eight, he discovered that he liked to set light to things…..dog basket, garden shed, house….anything combustible really. He just always seemed to have one of those enquiring minds (yeah, and a handy box of matches)

He’s pretty much always been bald. Even as a small child he never really had much hair. What he did have, was gone again by his early twenties. Well, it never really grew back after he set light to his head when he was ten.

He’s a great cook. He’s so good in the kitchen that for a few years I was convinced that he was gay. Well, it was that, and his flare for soft furnishings. In my adulthood if ever I needed comforting I always knew that I could turn up at his house and he would slap a good meal and a glass of wine in front of me before we sat up all night laughing, getting pissed and putting the world to rights.

When he became a father and proudly presented his three-hour-old angel for me to hold, I saw the tenderness and immense love that makes him the most special brother in the whole world. And by then, I’d pretty much worked out that he wasn’t gay. So there it is, a brief description of my little bro. Now, let’s get back to those soft furnishings…..

My brother now lives in a very small, local community in rural Umbria, Italy. It’s the type of place where time seems to have stood still for centuries along with the queue in the local bakers. We’re talking centuries old traditions here and attitudes to match. In the seven years that he’s lived there he’s seamlessly integrated into the local community. He has thrown the cava of his home open to the locals to make wine. He shares the fruit from his fig trees with the villagers and he always volunteers at the village festa. After living in this community for so long, he was just about to pass himself off as an honoury Umbrian….And then the soft furnishing shit hit the fan last week.

I went onto Facebook and there it was. My brother’s news that he had finally sourced and purchased the bed of his dreams. It had taken him eighteen months and cost a fortune. He proudly posted a piccy of his new bed for us all to admire.

THE F***ING THING IS CIRCULAR! I’m talking ROUND, CHEESE-SHAPED, 360 DEGREE sleeping arrangements here!

We’re living in the noughties bro! Who the hell buys a circular bed in 2010??? The flack started flying with comments about having it flown in from Vegas. Where the hell was he going to get circular bed linen and was it going to be black satin? Had he turned gay? Did Hugh Hefner know his bed was missing? Had he also sourced a leopard print smoking jacket and was he going to start wearing a toupee and  smoking cigars in bed?

The Facebook flack continued for all of last week with my brother then changing his profile pic to a dodgy one of Hugh Hefner wearing a smoking jacket. Then he posted his final word on the subject…..COGLIONE!

Good on you bro. You never did worry what anyone else thought. I reckon your Italian mates will continue with the flack for some time yet, and you’ve definitely blown your chances of anyone taking you for just another rural Umbrian. I bet the whole frickin town is discussing your strange sleeping arrangements. Just be careful with those cigars and that tendency towards pyromania. Oh and thanks for teaching us all the Italian for” bollocks”!