Hi Len and Fellow Listers, Back again! I really am doing a Jack-in- the -box act this week! Time someone shut down the lid, eh? The Turkey being dragged home was so well told that I could see it! Really cartoonable material isn't it? Was Grandfather reared on the story of "Epaminondas"? To my shame I am hazy about some of the story now, but he was a little coloured boy who did exactly as he was told, without thinking out the implications. Iremember that he had been told that you should put a puppy on a string and lead him home. The next time that he had to convey something from his aunts he towed it on a piece of string! Can't remember what it was, unless it was the loaf of bread. Somehow, using methods appropriate to one thing, but NOT the current one, he managed to carry butter on his head --under his cap, and drown his puppy. Oh yes, it comes back, the butter was to have been cooled in the water, (not the puppy)! And the piece deresistance was when he was told , "Mind how you step on dem pies!".So he did---right-- on-- everyone, as they lay cooling on the step!!! Your grandfather sounds a "right' character, and in retrospect his inebriated antics are amusing. But I remember your "walking marathons", Len, as your mother dragged you around with her seeking him. How tired your little legs would have been and what a lot of anxiety he must have caused the family. I can sympathise as one of my grandfathers had a feisty temperament which was exacerbated by drink. Mum and Auntie were never at the receiving end of his temper, but I believe Grandma was, in the few bits that we gleaned when it escaped the tight-lipped censorship of the family! Your turkey episode brought back the memory of an amusing happening during the war. One of Auntie's colleagues was the daughter of a well loved Congregational minister. A grateful parishioner brought along a duck for him for Christmas, and was duly thanked. But what to do with it? They were both vegetarians! So it was given to Auntie Florrie, who came home with it. It was not plucked and dressed, but in all its feathers and plastered with its original farmyard muck and mud! Oh dear! They gazed at it with dismay, until one of them said," What a mucky duck!" "Mucky duck, mucky duck", they repeated time and time again, with their eyes streaming, as they "fell about", laughing. Mum, the practical one soon had them organised, washing off the mud and defeathering and drawing it.It was a very welcome addition for a family experiencing the privations of rationing in a meat hungry nation. In the retelling, those involved seem to live again, though they have "left" us many years ago. I am sure that they are enjoying the memories, as much as we are, and perhaps have a hand in guiding us!!! Regards, Muriel.