Family get-togethers are usually a source of merriment, but when your in-laws are a bunch of retarded, filthy, backwoods beer monkeys who consider that singing out-of-tune to songs blasted out of 6-foot speakers is the height of cultural taste, you might just do what one man did this afternoon, when he took a book along for company.
Moys Kenwood, 57, was somehow persuaded to accompany his wife and children on a visit to her brother's house 'out in the sticks', where 'anything goes' and always does.
Kenwood knew what was awaiting him at the countryside location. A group of toussle-haired, sinister-looking neanderthals with few teeth, and only a roundabout idea of what a school or soap is.
If drinking beer were an academic subject, these people would be university professors, but it's not, and they aren't.
It was going to be a long afternoon, and, not being able to speak the lingo, the Englishman planned for the lack of opportunity for any kind of social discourse, by putting 'The Master and Margarita' by the esteemed Russian writer Mikhail Bulgakov in his bag.
On arriving at the gathering, the 'piano stopped' and every face turned towards the Kenwood group. To evade this spotlight, Mr. Kenwood adjourned to a quiet area under a tree, and started to read.
Singing commenced, people laughed and shouted, unedible food was eaten, and beer was drunk.
A splendid time was had by all, including the reader, who covered a leisurely 56 pages.
