to find village gossips hilarious

[silversun]

So I've been off work for six weeks with labyrinthitis, back to work now and getting out in the village a bit more.
Talking to a few people in passing it seems that some people thought I'd had an accident and others had been told that I'm an alcoholic whose lost her license!!
As someone who drinks once in a blue moon aibu to find it hilarious that some people have nothing better to do than spread gossip?!

I'm also a postie who used to drive a very unreliable landrover, so used to get a lift home with a different guy from work every time it was in the garage.
The gossips just love me!

As a postie you're in the perfect job for spreading the gossip, I bet you could make up some pretty saucy stuff

My ex mil told my husband to be I was having an affair with someone else because she'd seen me talking to a man I'd known for years at the bus stop.

My Dad left my Mum and took me with him in a midnight flit. Packed our bags and slipped away with me in the wee hours.

Or, he and I went to visit my Aunt on an early flight...

At an old job someone started a rumour about me that I claimed to have slept with this guy who worked there. (I hadn't) No one believed me and it ended up with me being threatened by his girlfriend, having to write a statement, and then the guy finding out it was bs. He apologised to me and then we ended up getting together wierdly!

Worst bit of gossip I've seen is when someone we know had been involved in a car accident. We knew they were in hospital.
Then on Facebook I started spotting RIP messages and was shocked to discover he had passed away...
Told my OH who was devastated and called the family to pass on condolences, only to find he was still alive!

Another one was when I worked for a company, I often used to walk across to the canteen with (male) colleague who sat next to my desk. I would say, I'm going over the canteen does anyone want anything, and he would occasionally say I'll come have a look as well - all innocent! I found out years later that people thought we were in a secret relationship - just because we walked to the canteen together occasionally!

I moved to a very small village because it was closer to the airport in time (not in distance). My employer used to send chauffeurs at 5am every few weeks to ship me to the airport - proper chauffeurs, black limo, suits etc.

I came back for my first week off in ages to find that the rumour was I was a spook and that's why no-one could find out anything about me.

They couldn't find out anything about me because I worked under my maiden name. Fuckwits!

Shadow - same happens in my job! God forbid you walk to the canteen with someone

All sorts of rumours go around our village, best one I heard about myself was when I first got together with DP. Apparently I was a gold digger who didn't work and was only after him for his money - I had my own house & worked full time.

I was once told by a "concerned" neighbour that she had seen DD and her friend (then about 13) smoking very funny-smelling cigarettes in the bus shelter before school. I've no doubt she told everyone she met that morning about it.

DD had taken some of her joss sticks to the bus stop in the morning to try to rid the bus shelter of the smell of piss.

So no doubt she's been written off as a junkie by now. Oh and she's got a dog, I've been told (she hasn't).

I never knew for certain, but I think quite a few people in the office I worked in years ago thought I was having an affair with a male colleague in the same office, simply because we got on well together, and one of them once spotted us standing at the same bus stop after work once

I was married at the time (he was single) and there was nothing going on, but if he and I were ever out socialising in a group after work, a couple of older ladies would always get the conversation around to how 'there was no harm in flirting, as long as you don't DO anything'...and then look at me. I never flirted with him, I just chatted normally to him, for goodness sake.

One morning I was in the unfortunate position of having to call an ambulance for a child who was taken very ill at a playgroup (all was OK in the end thanks to paramedics and the hospital). By that afternoon I had heard at least 5 different stories of who it was who needed the ambulance. Not just vauge accounts but actually naming specific people and medical conditions like heart attacks, asthma attacks. All the stories were wrong. I still can't work out what numties actually decided to start each version of the story whilst obviously not actually having a clue about what really happened.
Another time, I was told a certain person in our village had died. I was quite sad about it. I nearly dropped dead of shock myself about 2 months later when I saw them walking down the road waving at me!

It's one thing when funny rumours do no harm, but when it comes to schools ringing parents' relatives to ask about cancer treatment and worrying people unnecessarily, it's bad.

My friend had an old busybody woman come to her door and say that she had been told that her house was for sale. When my friend denied this, the old biddy said, "Well I have it on very good authority that it is for sale.

When she was told for a second time that it categorically was not for sale and that, in fact, they had just put in a new kitchen, she said, "Oh yes, I'd heard that you were having to sell the house because you couldn't afford the mortgage after paying for the kitchen."

And this was all from a pillar of the local church

In our atv2 point we were (as in me, my parents and soblings) moving to Africa..
My mum is now embroiled in a love scandal that she had nothing to do but started by this nutty women in the village with but has resulted in 2 dinner invitations. My sister who is a bar maid in the village pub also fills me in with all gossip.

Not so much village but the scene my oh and I were part of when we met (which is creepily incestuous and hugely gossipy) - we were recently told by another couple that did we know 'we' (our names) had split up and were vivaciously fighting in court for custody of our child. They didn't know us before this conversation so had no idea they were talking to us, which makes their using it as gossip as if they did know the couple (us) even weirder. Needless to say we had a bit of fun with them before informing them of who we are. I've never seen people backtrack so fast before!

I'm a lady of leisure, I don't have a proper job and I just sponge off my much older husband. That's according to gossip. I actually work full time but I work nights hence I'm in all day. DH is a bit older than me but he's not rich by a long stretch, quite the opposite. I wish the gossip was true, my gossip life is way better than the reality.

Glad to see its not just me in my little corner of Devon then!

My great aunts used to sit, after supper, round the kitchen table with a dish of cold boiled potatoes between them (An after-dinner delicacy.)

The air was full of:

'She what?? Oh No. Her poor mother. Those poor children'. (And ditto for men.)

They loved nothing better than somebody married being caught in some compromising way - and on the Sabbath was a real bonus!

You couldn't move without one of the villagers knowing it.

Someone once told me, gleefully, to watch out on dh, as she'd seen his car at such and such a place, on such and such a date, and no reason for him to be THERE!
The look on her face when I said I'd had his car that day was wonderful to behold.

My dad was once speeding at the age of about 20 down the high street of his village. He said that it did not matter how fast he had been going- his parents had already been told about it by the time he got home.

I once overheard in our local cafe a very animated conversation between two women gossiping about the terrible scandal of so and so who left his wife for a younger woman and the new woman was this and that and the other and basically a really terrible person. Took about 20 minutes before I realised they were apparently talking about me. It was a bit of a surprise, not least because I met DH two whole years after his first wife had actually left him for another man and shacked up with him.

I hated village life. We had a vicious old swine as a neighbour. I was a stay at home mum. I bought a new computer which was delivered by a van with a logo saying 'Business Post'. A week later I got a knock on the door, it was a fraud investigator from the Tax Office. 'Someone' had reported me for working off the books. I asked him in and invited him to look through my computer while I put the kettle on telling him to feel free to browse through the huge stacks of Open Uni books sitting next to. We live in a city now and I barely know or see any neighbours, I love it.

I was very ill with a virus and bedridden for about six weeks earlier this year. Everyone was saying I was pregnant. Someone even mentioned it to my girlfriend. Talk about awkward. Lucky we both have a sense of humour.

Apparently my youngest dc is the result of an affair, but dh and I patched it up again before that dc was born.

Our dc are the spitting images of dh, their dad! Oh, and I think I'd have noticed if I was having an affair.

My friend and me had a party once at her mum's house when we were about 18. My friend's mum (who had given us permission) was then told by a group of women at the factory she worked at, that we were prostitutes because we had invited boys

There was also a rumour that I was a spy for a senior manager at a company I had just started working at. No one would talk to me for ages and I only found out months later after everyone was kissed at the Christmas do.