subscribe
/ Sign Out

Six half-term activities to f**k your parents right off by abandoning halfway through

OFF school? Leveraging guilt to get your parents off their phones? These family activities will amuse you for ten minutes and occupy them for hours:

Build a toy

A well-meaning aunt got you a replica siege engine at Christmas, with 86 parts to be meticulously assembled, and you imply to Dad that your childhood is slipping away unnoticed and you should really build it together. You’re off on Minecraft before he’s even pressed out the parts.

Bake a cake

‘I love your cakes, Mum,’ you say, guilelessly, ‘can we make one together?’ What mother could refuse? You’re there for the assembling of the ingredients and the cracking of the eggs, but mixing’s dull so you flee to TikTok. Mum knows how to make cakes, she’ll be fine. You’ll come back when it’s finished.

Do a jigsaw

Skip the preamble and empty the jigsaw on the table. Begin putting edges and corners together in the approved manner and wait for your parents to join in, imagining hours of quiet calm together. Piss off after 20 minutes but insist the jigsaw stay on the table all week, because you’ve not done it yet.

Get crafty

Your parents wouldn’t stifle your creative soul, would they? So when you want to get the clay out, and the paints out, and the glitter and crafts out, they can’t argue. You make half of something from clay, cry because it’s not what you imagined, refuse all offers of help, slather it in sparkly bits and blame its failure on them. Clean up? After that?

Do a brilliant job on homework

Your history teacher’s invited everyone to create their own chronicle of the Middle Ages, and you decide that for once you’re going to try really hard. Mum, who did history at A-level, sits down to join in and sketch out a timeline. All her dates really take the fun out of it. You’ll eventually hand in what she did with six final lines added on the bus to school.

Play Monopoly

Mum’s always on about ‘never doing anything together as a family’ so, responsive to her needs, you turn up with Monopoly and set the board up, ready to play. After 20 minutes you look likely to lose and storm off furious. Dad looks likely to win so won’t let it go. The battleground of the board remains in place until next Sunday evening.

Sign up now to get
The Daily Mash
free Headlines email – every weekday
privacy

The absolute f**king nutjobs no high street would be complete without

POPPING into town? You’re bound to run into these nutters without whom it just wouldn’t be the same.

The badly-dressed old lady. Yellow skirt, pink jumper, ancient pac-a-mac – she’s certainly no slave to mainstream fashion. Strangely endearing, despite the faint smell of piss if you get too close. Unless you get stuck behind her in the queue at Tesco where she pisses about forever counting out pennies, in which case you’ll want to strangle her with her stupid tartan scarf.

The town drunk. In late middle-age and easily mistaken for a tramp, although it’s more likely he’s too pissed to remember where he lives rather than actually homeless. Often spotted in Wetherspoons at 9am already on his second pint. Later to be found snoring in the bus station, a mysterious damp patch on his crotch. Local tourist guides should mention this quirky fellow.

The rapping teenager. Earbuds in and striding purposefully down the high street, beatboxing to himself and spitting out misogynistic lyrics in a faux American accent like he’s f**king 50 Cent. Is it even fashionable anymore to have your trousers hanging off your arse? Scares the crap out of tutting pensioners, despite being as threatening as an angry moth.

The crusty. They never quite died out, and if you’re lucky you’ll spot an addled white bloke with dreadlocks begging for change or putting on some half-arsed performance such as juggling. Get chatting and he’ll happily share his anti-establishment views, at which point even the least conservative person will feel like saying: ‘Maybe you wouldn’t feel so excluded from society if you took those f**king nose rings out and got a job.’

The twat in shorts. Come rain, shine, summer or in the freezing f**king winter, there he’ll be, beetroot-coloured legs defiantly on display. You’d be forgiven for thinking he’d just been to the gym if it wasn’t for the fact he’s obese, in his 60s and wearing hiking boots, like he’s bizarrely worried about his feet getting cold. The only people allowed to wear shorts all year round are postmen, and even then it’s bloody weird.

The angry old man. Obviously totally off his box, given that he’s shouting at anything that moves – pedestrians, dogs, cyclists – but also inanimate objects like postboxes and lampposts. A sad indictment of community mental health care, but local schoolkids love him, following him around doing impersonations like he’s some bizarre Pied Piper. And you enjoy a quick chuckle yourself as you sit outside Costa Coffee – until he gets you in his sights next.

The religious nutter. Armed with a microphone and armfuls of Bible tracts, they’ll attempt to collar anyone passing to heroically guide them off their path to Hell, only everyone’s more interested in the path to Boots. Finding one with a JESUS SAVES banner and asking if Harry Kane put in the rebound offers momentary mirth, you evil minion of Satan.

Next story ›