My uncle Herbert

As promised, I’ll blog the story about my uncle.
He’s the sweetest spacyest guy ever.
He, my mom and my ant had a troubled youth.
Their mom, my grandmother, died when they were kids, and their dad left them cause he couldnt handle it. All of them grew up as rebels, and all took wrong paths. Only my mom turned out safe and normal, because she met my father. My ant turned into a sort of witch, and still fills her days with runes, spells and more.
My uncle is also drawn to that side, but in a cool way.

He attends LARP days (Life Action Role Play). He and his group of friends dress up like characters from lord of the Rings, like Orcs and Elves, and play parts of stories, with actual fights and stuff.
I’ll show vids.

It’s really geeky, but in a cool way.
I’d love to dress up too, and go along with him sometime!

The LARP players invest a lot of money in this.
My uncle has original swords, outfits and objects from the Lord of the Rings.

Unfortunately, a few months ago, it turned out he wasn’t doing very well.
He always came to our birthdays, but never wanted someone to come to his place.
He always said it was kind of a mess, and he didnt feel like cleaning everything up because he didn’t have the time. We should have known something was up, because we suddenly received a phonecall.
He had tried to commit suicide.
Luckily, he failed to do so, and he ended up in a clinic.
We went to his house, and witnessed one enormous pile of garbage. Everywhere.
Everything was covered in garbage, greece, flies.
Curtains closed, cats sneeking around, it was disgusting.
We could imagine someone being deeply depressed, by living in something like this. We discovered he never learned how to clean.

So, we threw everything out, cleaned everything up. Bought him a lot of new stuff, new clean clothes, plates, glasses, curtains, sheets.. And made him a nice clean home for when he would come back.
We saved some of his things that were really valuable, like bows and arrows from LOTR, fur viking hats, swords and shields.
He was devastated when he heard a lot of his things were gone. But my mom got mad at him, and told him that everything would have been gone if he had succeeded.

Nowadays he’s doing very good. He cleans up his own place, and still attends his beloved LARP days, the fantasy fairs, and his weekly bowshooting lessons.

I love his crazyness.

He invited us for the first time in 25 years to his birthday.
We arrived with bags full of presents in his new place.
He already collected new stuff, and filled the room with them.

We felt like walking into the mid-ages.
Candles, torches, chandeleers, handmade stone potts, swords, horns, arrows, flutes, fur and wood everywhere. And the room was filled with his friends from LARP. They looked all so awesome.
I wanted to make pictures, but was a little scared of them.
I decided to draw them and scan it. And made one secretly.

He taught me how to hold a bow, and eventually invited me to join him on one of his matches.
He’s so funny and sweet. I don’t know what I would have done if anything had happened to him.
The frame i’m holding in one of the pictures is a collection of my sisters and me.

He was kind of uncomfortable, since he hadn’t thrown a party in forever.
He kept asking everyone if they were enjoying theirselves, and kept telling us to grap anything we wanted from the food and drinks that were on the table.
But I could tell he was really enjoying himself, and so were all of us.

I wanted to take pictures of everyone there, but I was a little imtimitaded by their weirdness.
Maybe next time.
I did get some off his facebook though.

My uncle and his friends.
My aunt and nieces are also in these pictures, though I haven’t seen them since I was 6. My mom always fought with her sister, and about 15 years ago they broke contact.

But these are my relatives… great!  lol