My sister, let’s call her Little Vulture, is my friend, I am pleased to note. I do hope she agrees. It has become apparent over the years with my dealings with others who have siblings that this is most definitely not a given. She is usually able to finish my sentences for me, which is lucky since these days I have often forgotten by the end of the sentence what I originally intended the end of the sentence to be. She appears to have forgiven me for the systematic destruction of her felt tip pens circa 1973 whilst she was safely at primary school and I had the run of her toys. I have almost forgiven her for persuading me to tell her what I was giving her for Christmas BEFORE Christmas every year until I finally woke up to her little game (last year), and for always making me have the train at Granny’s house which didn’t wind up and quite frankly wasn’t even an engine if we’re being absolutely honest about it, whilst she swanned around the track with the lovely green wind-up engine. When things are emotional, Engineer sighs in a long-suffering, resigned way, and gets his umbrella out, as when Little Vulture weeps, I weep, and vice versa. Even talking about the fact that we make each other weep makes us weep. Quod erat demonstrandum (or rather quod esset demonstrandum, let’s make it a conditional rather than a sure thing, even though we all know it’s actually the latter). Apologies to all you fluent Latin speakers out there if my tenses are a bit off. I haven’t had to go there since about 1982, and I haven’t missed it AT ALL.
Engineer has about 152 siblings. Or it might be just 12, but I lose count after the first 6 TBH. Judge and Boxer have (at the last count) 29 first cousins, 2 big sisters (we agree to abandon the qualifiers “half” and “step” a long time ago, as the latter implies fairy tale evilness and the former is just plain silly. How can you be half a sister?), a niece and a nephew, and an expanding plethora of other assorted less immediate relatives. They are a close family. How they manage to transmit information between themselves with the sort of efficiency one normally associates only with ants or bees, and definitely not with anything in the human world, without duplication or distortion, occasionally looping in sisters-in-law / step-mothers on a need-to-know basis, is a constant source of amazement to me.
Little Vulture and I are amateurs in comparison, viz:
Little Vulture: “Well, of course, you know after the papier mache balloon / exploding curry / non-swimming pigs / veering under a motor vehicle / ducklings for dog food (delete as applicable) incident (these are all real incidents, by the way, in case you were wondering)…”
Me: “What papier mache balloon / exploding curry / non-swimming pigs / veering under a motor vehicle / ducklings for dog food (delete as applicable) incident??”
Little Vulture: “You know? What we were talking about at the cinema the other day?”
Me: “You went to the cinema with Fred / Wilma.”
Little Vulture: “Oh. So I did. Well, anyway….”
The presence of our cousins, Lioness and Bear, who to all intents and purposes count as siblings, further exacerbates the problem. They cry, we cry. It’s exhausting. Communication between us all is further complicated by vast geographical distances and the fact that each link in the four-way chain has a different preferred method of communication. Lioness and I prefer instant messaging – this way there is far less chance that we will make each other cry, and it enables us to communicate during our manically busy working days. Bear and Little Vulture favour good old-fashioned telephone chat. This way Bear can make calls from his car on the way to or from yet another comedy encounter with his in-laws, and Little Vulture can enjoy the update with her feet up on the sofa and an appropriate refreshment. This means that things get communicated 3 or 4 times, or not at all, and many things get lost in translation:
Me: “Lioness texted – apparently Bear’s blah ran away with a fishcake!” (incidentally, this is not a real scenario because that would be a bit silly)
Little Vulture: “Yes, Bear just called…it was actually a fish finger…” I think you see the problem.
Of course, SMS communication comes with its own specific set of issues, mainly related either to the vagaries of predictive texting, auto-correct or the fat finger problems which occur as a result of touch screen technology. Thus “sorry will be l8, plane stuck in dog” and other such unwittingly hilarious messages only serve to add to the difficulties of clear communication.
In my twenties, I lived about a stone’s throw from Little Vulture’s front door. Such are our hapless communication skills that we would on a regular basis become annoyed with each other because the other’s phone line was engaged, rather than make the 50 yard journey along the road, safe in the knowledge that the other was in. Well, either that or there was a very garrulous burglar in the house.
Face to face. It’s the only way.
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