i-want-more

It's very difficult to keep the line between the past and the present

Soundtrack: Poses by Rufus Wainwright

Life goes from good to confusing in 24 hours flat, like it frequently does.

This weekend started well with a flying visit to Brighton (apols to you Brightoneers for not getting in touch), some lunch with Francakes at her flat in the Lanes and some excellent shopping. Nowhere else in the UK (apart from Totnes, perhaps) have I ever seen a health food shop so mobbed. There's something about that town. I do love it there, but it always seems to be bursting to the seams with men in their early 30s barking into mobiles and wearing ironic 1980s T-shirts. If I wanted that, I'd go to Shoreditch.

By contrast, Sunday unfolded itself like a veritable venus flytrap. A family feud has started over, I shit you not, a pine dining table and chairs. Well, that was the start of it - it snowballed into a furious argument via, I shit you not (x2), text message.

The upshort of the long story is this: two of my most hot-headed siblings (Numbers 2 and 4) are not speaking. My Mother and Nephew Number 1 are also right slap bang at the centre of it all. Some terrible things that can never be taken back have been said. I'm trying to stay out of it (as are Sisters Number 1 and 3), but it's difficult when you are receiving insane texts from one party every three hours, which veer between being venomous and pitiful. I've begun to refer to the incident as 'Tablegate', in a vain and flippant attempt to pretend that it's funny.

At the age of about eight, I realised that the country life wasn't for me. On hearing a West Country drawl coming out of a tape recorder for a primary school project, I made a conscious decision to get rid of the accent and give myself a chance of getting free of the place. All I had to do was sit out school and figure out how to get away. I'm aware that this is going to make me sound like a horrendous snob - so be it. Well, I did it. I have no more interest regarding living in Devon now than I did then.

Recent events remind me why I made that decision at such a tender age. This is the most recent in a catalogue of disputes that I've been dragged into at long-distance over the past fifteen years or so. I love my family, but as I get older, I find this sort of thing unnecessary, and not a little distressing. The sad thing is that everybody gets hurt, even the people on the periphery.

posted by deafdisco @ 7:36 pm