THE phone s ringing but I choose to ignore it. I know who it is and I know what they are going to say.

For the past two days the Big Sis and the Folks have taken it in turn to barrage me with calls, trying to get me to do something I really don't want to do.

They want me to take part in a dreaded family portrait. They actually expect me to give up my Saturday, drive all the way to a photographic

studio in Sunny Rochdale and stand there, like some kind of mannequin, while the nice man takes our picture.

I politely declined when the Big Sis first asked me at the start of the week and she seemed to understand. I was most civil about it, spinning some yarn about how I had many a chore to do and it just wasn't convenient. In reality I would rather step into the ring with Mike Tyson than pose for the picture or go to the

dentist.

The next day, however, the Folks were on the phone

asking me the same thing. They acted as if the Big Sis had not previously put the question to me so it wouldn't seem as though they were hassling me and even feigned surprise when I told them, but of course they knew.

A day or so passed, while the troops regrouped, and then the carpet calling started.

Firstly at work, when they knew I would be busy and prone to say yes just to get them off the line, but I stood firm. Then calls at home started to eat into my quality time. Like masters of ancient tortures, they were trying to confuse and disorientate me, slowly trying to break my resolve.

It wasn't long before they employed 'bad cop good cop' methods, with the Big Sis

trying her best to convince me that as a valued member of the family, a portrait would be empty without me. Moments later the Folks would ring, blasting me for being

miserable and threatening to go ahead without me because I didn't matter.

The fact that I want them to go ahead without me doesn't seem to concern them.

The photographs are planned for tomorrow and the Big Sis and the Folks are

making one last push to change my mind. But there's no way. I'm still scarred from a similar experience, some 15 years ago, when the Big Sis thought it would be nice for her and me to have our

picture taken professionally as a wedding anniversary gift for the Folks. It was truly a day I would wish to forget, but as there is a permanent reminder (complete with stonewashed jeans) hanging on the wall, it's not that easy.

There's something sinister about a house filled with

pictures of the family. As a teenager, with the run of the house when the Folks were away, I was particularly unnerved. I could feel their eyes burning me from their photographs, checking up on me. It's very conceited too. A friend of a friend had a professionally-taken wedding photograph blown up to poster-size proportions and hung above his fireplace.

I went round only once and it was awful. It was too

obvious to ignore, yet just too comically hideous to be polite.

If families must insist on having their photographs

taken, they should at least have the courtesy to put the end results in an album to save the rest of us.