“I’m not wubbish! You’re a big fat poo!” squealed my six-year-old niece.
“Tilly!” her mother, and my sister-in-law, Steph admonished as she came over to me and kissed me on my cheek, before extracting her eldest from under my arm. “We don’t call people poos.”
“Mummy!” Tilly shouted. “Want Unca Hazza!”
“I thought you said I was a poo?” I asked her, flipping the other two upside-down in my arms to their delighted squeals.
“I takes it back,” she said, squirming away from Steph to get back to me. I walked over to Mum and gave her a kiss on the cheek with the kids still in tow before walking them over to the sofa and depositing them both down on the cushions. Predictably they both sprang up and leapt at my torso, crying, “Again! Again!” at the top of their lungs.
“Kids! Get off your uncle,” Steph snapped. “John, honestly. Can you please control your children?”
“Looks like they’re doing a grand job to me,” my brother John put in, giving his youngest a thumbs up when I winced after an accidental bollock kick. Tilly then sat up on her knees next to me on the sofa and put both her hands on either side of my face, directing it towards her and away from her brothers.
“Wha’cha bring me?” she demanded, her cute little face screwed up in determination, and one of her bunches half coming out from the struggle.
“Youdo notask for presents!” Steph said. “And, if you do, you say ‘please’ and ‘thank you’.”
All three of them started shouting “please” and “thank you” at the top of their lungs, as they jumped up and down on me and the battered sofa. I let them work themselves up for a couple of minutes, but when it became clear that I was either going to be sterile for life with the number of hits my groin was taking, or my sister-in-law’s head was going to explode, I reached into my bag and pulled out three Lego sets:Harry Potterfor Tilly,Star Warsfor five-year-old Mikey andMarvelfor three-year-old Jake. They all squealed as they snatched them out of my hands, and then all three sprinted from the room with their prizes.
“Harry, my entire house is covered with bloody Lego because of you,” Steph grumbled.
“Yeah, mate,” John said. “I found some in my arse crack after I had a bath the other day. I don’t want to be digging around in my butt cheeks for Lego.”
“John!” Mum snapped. “Don’t say arse.”
“Yeah, and don’t talk about your kinky sex lives in front of Mum and Dad. Gross, guys.”
Mum speared me with a look, and I shut my mouth. Dad chuckled and clapped me on the shoulder.
“You,” Mum said to me in her sternest tone, “can peel the carrots.”
“Ugh,” I grunted as I moved to the kitchen table and picked up the ancient, very shit peeler. “Mum, you know I couldpaysomeone to peel carrots for you. In fact, I could have had this whole lunch catered.”
Mum sniffed. “I’m not having some stranger in my kitchen.”
“We could do it in my kitchen, or John’s.”
“They wouldn’t make your mum’s gravy right,” Dad said, and I shook my head in exasperation.
“You could give them the bloody recipe, Mum. It can’t be rocket science.”
There was a long silence then, broken only by Mum’s sniff.
“Dial it down, Richy McRich,” John said, his casually affectionate tone from before now gone. I looked up from my carrot peeling to see him frowning down at me from his position at the stove with his hand on Mum’s shoulder.
“If you don’t like my cooking, just say so,” Mum said in an injured tone, and I felt a spike of irritation and guilt.
“Of course, I love your cooking, Mum,” I said, trying (and failing) to not sound annoyed. “I just want you to be able to relax.”
“Well, I won’t relax if I’m in a strange kitchen, and people I don’t know are botching my gravy.”
I fought really hard and managed to contain my eye roll. It was a huge source of frustration to me that my family wouldn’t let me spend my money on them.
“You could be sitting with your feet up and a gin and tonic in your hand, Mum, whilst other people do all the hard work. AndIwouldn’t have to be peeling Tesco sodding carrots.”
The peeler and carrots were snatched out of my hands by an irate John. “I’ll peel thesodding carrotsif you’re so above all that,” he said. “I guess we should all just be happy you’ve found time in your busy, important empire-building life to come here at all.”
“Your motherlikescooking, Harry,” said Dad. “And I’ve been eating her roast dinners for fifty years now. I think my body would probably reject anything alternative on a Sunday lunchtime.”
