What is family?
Family is a photograph album from summer 1976:
Daisy chains, climbing frames and ladybirds on the pebble ridge.
Family is a trip to the beach. To Westward Ho!
Of the blessed tote bag; of egg sandwiches, sun tan oil and Hocking’s Dairy Ice Cream.
Family is the freedom of an isolated home, of garden games and imagination:
Of derelict barns becoming chocolate factories; prams turning into tractors; the iconic beech tree.
Family is Sunday roast chicken: Dad peeling the veggies; Mum making the gravy; of perfect roast potatoes; my sister gorging on meringues: perfect white icebergs cooked in the bottom oven.
Family is bucolic bliss: of walks down the lane, staring at cows over wooden gates;
Of the sweet smell of haymaking while sitting at the foot of buzzing hedgerows.
Family is a farmhouse kitchen: huddling around the Aga;
Of fried breakfasts, playing cards and talking endless shit!
Family is a TV dinner: of Top of the Pops and Tomorrow’s world;
Of Findus Crispy pancakes and boil in the bag cod in parsley sauce.
Family is Mum in charge. The cooking, the driving, the beach; forever the beach.
The energy, the music, the fun, the freedom and the love.
Family is Dad in the garden; in the potting shed. The 1 o’clock news, the afternoon nap; Grandstand; The football pools, the final score. The gurning, the swearing at garden invading bullocks, the love.
Family is the delivery men: Mr Vanstone the greengrocer; Mr Bromfield the butcher; Robin the fish; George the Baker and the Tuesday ritual of the telephone order to Mr Toogood of the village shop!
Family is the family silver on a special Sunday; of filling the ice bucket; of Cinzano and soda;
of Granddad visiting in his Renault; of Dad being a vampire and drinking the blood from the beef.
Family is running away with Dad and Sis while Mum temporarily implodes.
Family is Hartland becoming my special place, my link to Dad, my nature, my refuge.
Family is not attending the village school, of not going to church.
Family is driving miles to visit friends and talking in other farmhouse kitchens instead.
Family is going to boarding school aged 12.
Family is coming home.
Family is outsourced adolescent parenting.
Family is daily worship in the beautiful abbey.
Family is my housemaster saying, “It’s happened.”
Family is coming home and weeping buckets. Family is hugs. Family is gone. Family is there.
Family is Dad dying when I was 16. Family is broken, bound and then broken again.
Family is shit at an all boys’ boarding school.
Family is another family called the Mackenzies; their parties and pissed there with them again.
Other families can be family too.
Family is getting to know five elder half-siblings once I’ve left home. Family is complicated. One person is many people. My Dad is their Dad, yet their Dad was different too.
Family is a comfort blanket. Family is unconditional love.
Family is tolerance and empathy.
Falling in love is joining another family. Another family is a foreign country.
Similar on the surface, yet so different underneath.
Family is a great big family wedding. Family is long lost cousin Mildred being more important than the friend you’ve been pissed with every Friday night for nearly fifteen years.
Family is performance. Family is showing off. My family is better than yours.
Family is a family wedding photograph to stick on your future great grandchild’s wall.
Family is a pre-nuptial agreement.
Family is I fell in love with your daughter not your money.
Family is territorial. Family is unspoken war between wife and mother-in-law.
Family is tension. Family is choice.
Family is setting up home, nesting and having kids.
Family is going for the first family walk together in the pushchair: Mum, Dad, baby and dog.
Family is joy, family is exhaustion, family is intense.
Family is plastic toys and birthday cake.
Family is in the garden. Family is watching mother-in-law play happily with her grandchildren.
Family is stories and painting and a never-ending obstacle course.
Family is a visit to Granny: of cards in the kitchen; of broken routine;
Of joyous overlap with cousins.
Family is a walk in the woods, of sticks in streams.
Or a bike ride to a bridge, a quick snack and then home.
Family is a holiday cottage somewhere different.
Family is exploration. Family is joy. Family is love.
Family is another National Trust tea room; the great outdoors. Kicking leaves and building dens;
Feeding fish, climbing towers; playing hide and seek; come on Dad, another game of chase!
Family is building enormous sandcastles and jumping waves.
Later family is surfing, kayaking, paddle boarding or a BBQ on the beach.
Family is a music festival in summer at WOMAD or Wilderness: playing xylophones, weaving a basket or learning a new dance; a rowing boat; a wild swim; a cheeky sip of cider.
Family is Landy trips in summer: meandering along byways, stopping at country pubs;
Of standing up in the back, with the roof off, singing songs and feeling free.
Family is isolated during lockdown. Family is now adolescent.
Family is house party, tiktok, instagram and Fortnite.
Family is thankful for the garden (of England): The Cabin, The hot tub, Swinging pods of daydreaming and nothingness, Croquet, Table Tennis (and daily dog walks in the fields).
Family is isolation Friday night pub nights in. Of Pizza, pool and playlists.
Of Guinness, Lager, Cider and necking pints with Rugby boy son. And Darts.
Family is blood.
Blood is thicker than water.
Family is they fuck you up your Mum and Dad, the poem by Phillip Larkin.
Family is not just our genes or our childhood environment, it’s our emotional and cultural inheritance. It is way more powerful than school.
Family is, according to David Cameron, hard working families.
But what is family?
Family can be the Krays, the Mitchell brothers, Dallas or Dynasty.
Family can be royal, can be rich or can be poor.
Family can be pushy.
Family can be wild.
Family can be close.
Family can be broken.
Family can neglect.
Family can over-protect.
Family can be school and can be work, but those things are transient.
Family is not transient. It is always there.
Family was simpler. Family was integrated with community or church.
Family was everything.
Family has become a political, economic and marketing entity.
As we have moved around the country and the world, family has become fractured and fragmented.
We have been tricked into a world of self-actualisation, a world of career, of money, of friendships and of fun. All of this has weakened or broken wider family.
Family was never meant to be so insular; never meant to be so competitive;
never meant to be so alone. Family was part of a small tribe.
A tribal elder or a distant cousin could be more important than your Mum, Dad or sibling.
The cult of the modern family as a single political, economic or social entity is damaging to humanity.
Family is always there.
Family loves you for who you are, not for who they hope you to be. This is family.
CREducATE 