Family stuff

In approaching this blogging thing I have deliberately not posted anything at the weekend (says he whilst sticking up this post ten minutes into Monday morning). There are several reasons for this, principally because I like the break from committing anything to text. Another is because I am fairly sure weekend posts would turn into little more than ‘this weekend I went out in *insert location* with *insert people* and got lashed and *insert random event* happened’ or ‘this weekend was boring because I didn’t get up to much.’ Accordingly weekend life is generally unblogged. This weekend just passed however I am going to write about.

My Aunt is over from Canada who I haven’t seen for five years (can’t believe it’s been that long). This weekend was thus dedicated to a series of protracted family events which well, I don’t like.

Don’t get me wrong, I like my family but they drive me nuts. We seem to have this massive inability to be able to communicate effectively (or perhaps it is just me?) and grasp where each other are coming from despite having each others interests at heart. I can generally manage family stuff in small doses and actually like spending a lunch or evening with them but more than this and I generally get fed up and/or cross with the whole situation.

This weekend was a prime example. I had the dubious pleasure of spending three hours in John Lewis with them on Saturday. Three hours! Now John Lewis has lots of nice things and I could quite happily furnish my entire life with their stuff but three hours is really far too long. But no, we had to spend ages looking at and talking (and talking and talking and talking) about sofas, lighting, televisions, DVD players, digital cameras, kitchenware, pictures, fine china, glassware, bed linen, mobile phones (John Lewis doesn’t even sell mobile phones), dining room furniture, alarm clocks, televisions again, beds, the list goes on…

Some of this time was spent with my parents fishing to find out what I wanted for my birthday (which I wasn’t prepared for, and hadn‘t ordered my thoughts on) which was, in complete fairness, really nice of them and totally unexpected. So I told them I liked the suede bean bag that I have had my eye on for about a year. But, rather than say ok that’s it then, I get the bit about how suede gets mucky easily and perhaps the corduroy one would be a wiser choice and then my Mum offered to make me a suede bean bag for ‘half the price it was on sale for.’ I am then in the position whereby I can’t have the bean bag I had been pining over for over a year ‘because it is impractical,’ (probably true but that doesn’t change my feelings about it) can’t decline my Mums really kind offer to make me one because that would be rude but end up not getting the item they offered to me in the first instance and now can‘t even get it myself because that also would be rude. So of course none of that works out satisfactorily and they ask what else I might like and I basically refuse to tell them because I am worried they’ll wreck that with kindness too and then they (understandably) get pissed off with me for being a jerk.

(I am a little worried that the above paragraph makes me look like a materialistic jerk, so for clarity I am complaining about it to highlight communication issues not whine about not getting a birthday present).

Then it’s Sunday dinner (just got back home from) and my other Aunt’s (don’t like this Aunt quite so much) ability to consume all the wine, dominate all conversation and pontificate ad infinatum about subjects of scant interest to anyone. But at least this gives me and the remainder of the family a common cause to rally against and spend some time playing the amusing but unspoken game of ‘how can I engineer this situation to get somebody else other than me to talk to this drunken bore.’

It really is baffling how I can care about these people quite so much whilst at the same time they manage to drive me absolutely mental. I wonder if they feel the same way?