Have anybody's parents or relatives really lost the plot ? With the onset of middle-age, I have noticed some increasingly strange behaviour from both my relatives and the relatives of my friends - such as building an Italian tower in the garden (Neil Deacon's father), constructing a stream and light dislay on the back lawn (Dave Chicago's parents) or simply going mad due to a build up of flies in the cellar (one of Lee Coppull's relatives).

Please mail us if a member of your family has begun such descent into insanity. Also is such eccentricity unavoidable? I myself have developed a strange urge to iron my socks over the last few months. It is but a small step to erecting Greek-style pillars to the front of my rented terraced house accommodation.

DR, of Hampsted Garden Suburb writes:

My dad has built a porthole to another dimension. It is a wooden feature, with a mirror in the middle, placed against the far wall of the garden. The idea is that when viewed from the house, it's supposed to look like a secret garden, To top this seriously cheesy effect, he has placed a sign in the garden which can only be seen from the patio doors through the reflection. The sign is written in reverse, so that it looks the correct way round, and says 'No Fishing'. He has also now put a giant toadstool in the garden that has a poem about '..resting your bum' (ho, ho) written on the top, several old chimmney tops and a small statue of Laurel & Hardy.

SC, of Leeds writes:

My folks are beginning to show signs of ever increasing oddness, esspecially my mother. She went through a phase of eating nothing but plain rice (and drinking rice milk), believing that all food stuffs are full of environmentally unfriendly drugs and poisons. She was forced to backtrack after suffering quite severely from malnutrician, and has since started eating a slightly more varied diet. She also wears a piece of stone round her neck to soak up "bad electricity" and cures our pets using a form of non-contact massage. Is she strange?

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