Bring out your grievances! Bring out your grievances! Let the charges ring out!

It’s that time of year; the normally scattered family is gathered round the festive table, the Sherry bottle’s empty, Grandad’s fallen asleep, Mum has insisted on White Christmas being played five times as a reward for burning the Turkey, and everyone is reminiscing…

“Remember when you hit Jamie over the head with the coal shovel and Mum yelled out the window – Use the plastic shovel“?

That’s assault and battery!

“Remember when Jack sold your favourite train on e-bay without asking you”?

Theft!

It’s never too late to settle a long standing sibling grievance – so at this time of year, when the Police have nothing important to do, why not phone them up and demand they take a statement from you for something your brother did 40 years ago. They’ll be thrilled to hear from you – they like historic allegations.

Anita Ackroyd did. She told them her brother Patrick gave her a ‘Liverpool Kiss’ back in 1975 and succeeded in knocking out her two front teeth. Since she was 17 at the time, she didn’t grow teeth and has had false teeth ever since.

– and nursed a grievance.

They were arguing over whether to play ‘War is over’ on the record player, as you do. Obviously the War is never Over as far as she is concerned.

You better watch out,

You better not cry,

You better not pout,

I’m telling you why,

Santa Claus is coming to town…

The matter went all the way to Leeds Crown Court, with Anita claiming that it was her Mother who told her to lie to the hospital, at the time, that it was an accident. Sadly, (you guessed, didn’t you?) Mother is no longer alive to agree or disagree with this statement, so it was for the jury to decide…

She says she went to the police ‘because after all these years I thought people should know what he is like’.

“He’s a bully and in my eyes he got away with it.”

Not any longer. Patrick, who has a previously blameless character, has just been given a two month prison sentence, mercifully suspended for 12 months.

“The only time I ever had contact with him was at weddings, christenings and funerals, but now I haven’t spoken to him for four years.

“The police advised us not to have any contact with him and we have decided to let him be and let him get on with it.

“It has been dealt with now and it is time we moved on.”

Some might think the time to move on was 40 years ago…

My thankfully departed ex-husband fell out with his younger brother over Christmas; in the course of the ensuing discussion, younger brother’s nose got broken – they didn’t speak for five years until a truce was brokered. The truce involved younger brother turning up to help elder brother tamper down some hard core – but no one could get the tamping machine to work. Eventually, older brother managed to fire it into life just as younger brother thawed and instead of standing in the shadows sulking, leant over to help.

Just in time to put his crooked septum in place and catch the handle roaring round and ‘breag me fudding node again’… that phrase still reduces the rest of the family to helpless laughter.

So what sibling transgressions could you be harbouring a grievance over 40 years later?*

A bonus prize for the most ridiculous Christmas argument…

*(Anyone previously in a relationship with Simon Danczuk is barred from this competition. Anyone. All of them.)