AS you read this I could be rowing around Lake Coniston in a little wooden boat with my beloved siblings — one younger brother and one elder sister — enjoying a bottle of champagne on ice and exchanging endearing anecdotes about our childhood.
Alternatively, I could be at the bottom of a brawling heap beating the living daylights out of either one of them after a heavy drinking session.
I imagine it will all depend on the weather. For this is the first time in many years that our entire family will spend a full week together under one roof, a 10-bedroom cottage on the banks of Coniston. And if it rains there will be no escape.
The occasion is my mum’s 80th birthday and the holiday is a present from my brother, who has a fancy, well-paid job in California. Not that I’m envious or anything. I’m happy that he’s so successful and lives in an amazing place where the sun constantly shines.
Correction — I’m not envious at this specific moment of time when I’m stone-cold sober. But who knows what could come out of my mouth after a few glasses of white wine. Indeed, as a family we all possess the same combustive trait — verbal brutality when in drink.
So I’m anticipating carnage if we’re forced to stay in due to inclement weather.
As if that wasn’t enough, I have a 56-year-old sister who, when tipsy, breaks into a crotch-grabbing (her own, I hasten to add) Michael Jackson routine which involves high-kicks in her stockinged feet.
During one furious Thriller routine she lost her balance and had to be rushed to A&E for eight stitches in a head wound.
Then there’s the kids. The daughter who is an accomplished hip-hop dancer and likely to teach her grandmother how to twerk.
We know the birthday girl’s got it in her because we almost gave her a heart attack when we knocked on the window as she was doing her hip-thrusting exercises to a Barry White CD.
I just hope nobody produces a pair of granny-sized Kylie bottie shorts.
Finally, to add to the rogues gallery of overpowering characters, there’s my son.
He has a new job as a chef working for a Michelin star restaurant and can send us to sleep with his 200 ways to slice a carrot.
We daren’t ask about the sauce which takes two days to prepare because he takes two days to talk you through it. I love my family, but I’m praying for sunshine.
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