Siblings

 

Hello all. Hope you are well. We are fine here. Everything is a lot calmer here now after the Christmas rush. I actually attended work for four days in a row this week which was very good of me and although I am a bit tired now, I think everyone was very grateful for my attendance.

Is everyone ill do you think? Among my small number of staff at the moment we have one off sick with Covid, one with a day off because she went for a tooth extraction and it got stuck (ugh), someone else who is actually in work but doing a compelling impression of an eighteenth-century consumptive and a young person who is taking holiday rather than sick leave because she has split up with her boyfriend and keeps crying. (I tried to comfort her by telling her "He's got big ears anyway" but I am apparently the only person at work who remembers that Bovril advert so that went down like a lead balloon).

Apart from work, opportunities to leave the house have been limited by the apocalyptic weather in Plymouth. We went round to someone's house today for a roast dinner which was very nice. I find it a bit nerve-wracking to do something like that with people I don't know, especially when they say "And what made you want to move to Plymouth?" But everyone seemed very nice and we managed to answer that question without looking like international men of mystery. 

So, in the absence of paragraphs of poetry about running through green fields and walking on beaches, I thought I might write a bit about the news - well specifically I thought I might write about Prince Harry.

For what it's worth, I am unashamedly Team Kate. Not because I am necessarily against anyone else in this scenario but I remember reading once about how friends of Harry and Wills used to make fun of her because of her solid middle-class background and the fact that her mum used to be an air hostess. I just imagined a load of privileged Hooray Henrys thinking it was ok to feel superior to hard-working people who might want to join their club. (Heaven knows why). Incidentally, Kate owes much of her success to me. When the kids were little, we used to buy lots of things for our kids' birthday parties from her mum's Party Pieces catalogue which probably contributed to her millionaire status - big time. It was a bit more expensive than usual but the joy of giving children party food in a little cardboard car with an extra drawer for cheesy wotsits and a cup with a straw that fitted into a little hole in the boot was completely worth it. (Reading that sentence back again, there is a chance that I may have been too emotionally invested). 

Harry is on the telly more than the World Cup was at the moment. (I'm most annoyed by the fact that one of his multiple interviews meant they took off a new Midsomer Murders). Every time I switch the telly on there is a little red-headed man with a petulant expression complaining about - well everything really. I have to be honest, I could do without the drooling over the mostly positive effect hallucinatory drugs had and that unsavoury business behind the pub as well as the fact that it is easy to make a lot of accusations about people you know are not going to answer back but there is no doubt that he genuinely feels hard done to. I'm just not that convinced that anything that is happening now is doing something about the racism that Meghan undoubtedly had to deal with. 

So look, I love a bit of celebrity. I'm basically very shallow. Show me a photo of Diane Keaton eating a packet of cheese and onion crisps or Peter Kay buying vests in M&S and I am there for it. This, not so much. 

The phrase "least said, soonest mended" isn't always correct but I do think that healing only comes when people are ready to close the book. As the comic Al Read often said "There was enough said at our Edie's's wedding". I would really like people to talk about something else now. Not to be a party pooper but what about my friend whose sister was one of only two nurses working on a 30-bed hospital ward on Christmas Day. Or the family who can't afford to switch on their disabled daughter's medical machine because electricity is too expensive. Or does the mind-blowing wealth of the Kardashians act as definitive proof that we are all going to hell in a handcart?

So, if anyone is asking my advice (no one is asking my advice) I would close it all down and leave us all alone. then you can all sit down and sort it over posh biscuits and sandwiches with the crusts cut off. 

It's a bit different but I am sister to a brother who claimed all the attention - mainly through the trouble he caused. He was charming, loveable and a worry to his mother. Consequently, I was often a bit of an afterthought. No one loved him more than I did but I used to have a lot of sympathy for the Prodigal Son's brother who felt he was sidelined by a person considered more important than he was.  I think maybe what helped me to find myself was finding my own security and place in God. I couldn't do anything about my brother. I could just accept what God said about me - that I was important and worth a lot. When you find your worth properly, it does reduce the need to prove anything to anyone. Also, Harry, William, whoever. Life is short and full of surprises. Not all of them are good ones as you both well know. I'm not sure that we are promised enough time to put off sorting things out. Pursuing peace. It's a noble calling. We should all give it a go. Have a great week.