Lonely Planet Guide To: Gavin & Donna

This evening, my parents will embark upon their longest ever voyage across air, sea and continents towards Hong Kong. This is despite many people in our home town trying to warn them against the trip in case they fall off the edge of the Earth. Mercifully, the townsfolks ardent dissuasion was short-lived as they had to execute an ‘outsider’ so I thought I should give any unsuspecting Hong Kong people the lowdown before they arrive.

My parents are simple folks. My dad, a reformed former software piracy magnate, was dismissed from his position as an oil appliance engineer for running around his work bollock-naked, brandishing a spanner and screaming ‘I’m not the messiah I’m a very naughty boy’. Indeed, their very ability to finance the visit came from the compensation awarded to him by his work for their part in creating what they called ‘a shadow of his former self’.

My dad is famed for his belief that Queen’s drummer Roger Taylor was ‘pretty fucking bonnie’ when made up like a young schoolgirl in the video for ‘I Want To Break Free’. He also has an interesting Concorde like tendency to alter physically depending on what speed he is going at, as evidenced by his errant off-angled stance on those rare occasions he is required to operate at more than a gallop.

My mother, a reformed cocaine addict, somehow managed to escape the clutches of the federalés in all her years of trafficking and drug-running and has worked her way up the career ladder in that great refuge for recovering addicts; primary school teaching. However, after the great fire of 2009 in her place of work, she has mysteriously been placed on gardening leave and is banned from going within two hundred meters of the school. She has advised us that this is because she is ‘too fucking gorgeous for that bastard headmaster Mr. Fergus’.

Mum is famed for almost getting us all killed one time when we were cliff-walking in Arbroath. Rather than climb up the cliff side with its harmless gradient easily manageable even to me as a five year old, she cried until we agreed to run against the incoming tide around to the close-shave safety of the pier. We were about two minutes from being a five man accident statistic.

Please do not fear though, you are all pretty likely to be quite safe. I believe I am the only human being who has suffered the psychological and physical wrath of either of them. Once when I was five, I was battered senseless by my mother after the brakes failed on my BMX and I was almost run over by a shocked and stunned moped driver; who was riding the moped at the time of course. Momentarily convinced of my invincibility after tangling with such an awful machine, you could imagine my surprise when blows began reigning down on my innocent little head. I don’t remember much of the day after my head became one with a protruding door handle.

Then there was the time when, after finishing my dinner and heading through to the lounge, my mother senselessly and brutally drove a plate into my unsuspecting cranium. Despite the fact blood was pouring down into my young eyes, I was told we couldn’t go to the hospital and that I shouldn’t tell anyone or we would all die! I couldn’t believe my infant ears but Santa came twice that year so it was all good!

So yeah, if you see us coming towards you in the street don’t run or let them smell your fear. Instead, say hello and befriend them. Maybe give them a sweet or two but not chocolate… as chocolate is poisonous for their sort. Perhaps also, if you need any Playstation 2 games copied you could put your orders in?…