“I’m stuck like a fly in aspic in my own phase”

WE CAN reinvent ourselves for others as we move through our lives, but somehow or other with our siblings, we’re often stuck; in phases we’d rather forget.

For instance, my four siblings and I have never really allowed my 42-year-old sister to forget the phase in which she used to turn off taps 16 times, check the door locks 20 times, say her prayers five times and had to be reassured that we weren’t all going to die 10 times, before she could take herself off to bed at night, aged seven. The fact that she’s shown every sign of completely healthy emotional function for her entire life since the tap-turning business doesn’t seem to mitigate our view — or stop us from reminding her now and again — that she’s a bit of a nut-job, underneath it all.

The principle of not letting your siblings outgrow childhood phases works in reverse too; I’m stuck like a fly in aspic in my very own phase, of my sister’s choosing.

The last time she came to stay, she said: “Are you still making people drink wine out of jam jars by the way?” And later, while clattering about in my cutlery drawer, she said: “Good to see you’ve still got that ‘camping/ pass the fork, I need it down this end of the table’ vibe going on in your kitchen.”

The phase in which I’m stuck is called Eccentric Domestic Living, despite the passing of decades and my delicate reinvention as someone who’s learnt how to run a home along reasonably normal lines.

Over the years, we layer ourselves up with partners, children, life-styles, careers, notions and fancies; a mantle sewn from millions of different experiences. Bit by bit, life fleshes us out thickly, like a peach. Gradually we become who we know ourselves to be, until, that is, we meet up with our siblings and before you know it, the flesh is peeled away in the blink of an eye. Slice. Gone. And there’s the pip in the middle! Just the same as it always was!

Family visits… it’s amazing how we survive the whirlwind of them with our faculties intact. Take my recent visit to my brother whom I hadn’t seen for a year.

In a Cornish seafood shack on the first evening, we catch up over a bottle of wine while we order. My brother has the kind of build you couldn’t knock sideways with a telegraph pole and an appetite to match.

I’ve forgotten about his appetite but when a plate of mussels (to share) arrives at the table I suddenly notice my brother’s eyes flicking expertly over the mound and I remember all about it.

BAM! Time rewinds instantly: I’m 14, he’s 10, we’re round mum’s kitchen table and he’s hoovering up the food so quick, it’s like someone’s playing him on a fast-forward setting. ‘He’s counting the bloody mussels,’ I think, and feel an atavistic irritation about the fact that I’m going to have to eat on fast-forward now, like a barbarian, or else leave the table starving.

“I’m starving,” he says a few minutes later, peering over the mound of empty mussel shells on his plate. I’m still stuck in 1980 and can’t fight an impulse to point out the differential between the numbers of empty mussel shells on his plate (approx 20) and mine (four). The look he gives me throws some light on the nature of the phase in which I am stuck in his mind. I imagine it’s called Unresolved Sibling Equality Issues (or something along those lines).

My brother’s ordered fish and chips as a main course. I’ve ordered crab. Strategically this is a grave, grave error: a whole crab is impossible to eat on fast-forward. While I fiddle around for half an hour, winkling meat out of crab-legs, my brother road-runs through his fish and chips, followed by the plate of chips (to share) the bread (to share) and the meat in my crab shell that I’ve taken my eye off because I’ve been too busy winkling.

He sits back and says, wasn’t that delicious? He looks replete, which is how I’d like to feel. There is a tiny pause, which my 14-year-old self is dying to fill with a sentence constructed well enough to kill him, but wine has softened the edges of my irritation and I fill it with something innocuous instead. Meanwhile, I am preoccupied with two thoughts, one of which concerns heading home as soon as I can to eat toast. The other thought is: A pip is a pip is a PIP.