Apparently an old Chinese curse "May you live in interesting times"; well I now in very interesting times thank you very much.

My cousin (Nancy) and her boyfriend (David) split towards the end of November, and a few weeks back I found out that David is now going out with another cousin of mine (Sarah). A very bizarre quirk of fate, as neither of my cousins even knew each other until this happened; Nancy is a cousin on my Mum's side and Sarah is a cousin on my Dad's side.

My Mum's family and Dad's family have never really gotten along owing to a huge amount of shit that happened when I was still in diapers, and the whole thing makes the War of Independence look like a lovers spat. It would take dozens of blog entries to go into it all (and I really can't afford the therapy that would go with it); suffice to say, that with two or three exceptions amongst the eldest of them, none of my nine maternal cousins (and their seven kids) know any of my eleven paternal cousins (and their fourteen kids). Even those few of my cousins who did know each other haven't seen each other in over thirty years, so probably wouldn't recognise each other anyway.

When my Mum and Dad are in the same room the explosions are like Guy Fawkes, July 4th and Chinese New Year all rolled into one; I can't even remember the last time they managed to have a civilised conversation that didn't involve lawyers acting as go-betweens.

Anyway, now I'm the shit for one reason and one reason alone.

Since Nancy and David were together for nearly three years, I actually got quite friendly with him (not like that! Please drag your mind out of the gutter), and most of my maternal cousins are also on friendly terms with him and so we all stayed in touch with him (since the split was very amicable with no animosity felt on either side). Now I'm being accused by most of the family as having set up the new couple to try and bring my cousins from both sides of the family closer together in a misguided attempt to try and heal a few old wounds.

Believe me, even I'm not that stupid! That is a major can of worms that even Oprah Winfrey, Jerry Springer, Ricky Lake, and the entire armed forces of the UN all combined wouldn't be able to handle!

Nobody in the family is buying that this was just one of those little curve balls that God likes to throw to stop us all from getting bored; most of my aunts and uncles (on both sides of the family) feel I should have said something to someone to stop this situation from arising.

Today (well technically yesterday as it's now nearly 1AM here), to really compound the issue, and royally piss everyone off, both Nancy and Sarah announced that they are pregnant (Nancy about four and half months along, and Sarah about six weeks); no prizes for correctly guessing who the father of both children is, and definitely no prizes for correctly guessing whose fault this latest development is.