I was going home for the weekend.

My football team (Macclesfield Town) were playing at home, my sister was over from Oz and my best mate from high school was free for drinks on Saturday night so it seemed the perfect weekend to drive the dreaded M6 in horrendous British monsoon rain.

Oh and I was going to introduce the boy to the family…

It’s a 4 hour drive between my life now and that of my parents I left behind 12 years ago. Honestly? I can’t even aspire to being a small town girl. Of course, the new man had met the big city chick not the village hick. I blew him away** with the look – a very short skirt, knee high boots, leather jacket, Louise Brooks bob. I had successfully pulled the wool over the big city boy’s eyes. Or so I believed. But a trip home would mean my cover would be blown.

My parochial past would be revealed.

Worlds were about to collide.

Dum-dum-duuuuuuummmmmmmmmmm

Ahem. I’m at it again. I saw the new trailer for a Quantum of Solace last night and I woke up this morning wanting to be a bond girl. But I’m a town planner, totally boring, and it’s never going to happen, so let’s start again without the bond girl posturing.

At this point I better explain that alcohol is a major part of any family weekend. So bear with the bullet points. They are kind of a metaphor for how blurry things are in my mind about the weekend that I can only remember snapshots.

- It started so well until the boy (accidentally) trapped my hand in the electric car window at 80 mph on the M8 motorway. And laughed hard.

- But give us a high five (ouch) because despite the atrocious weather we still made the journey in 4 hours – my dad’s record is 3.45 hours, we were so close! And impressed my dad in the process. Drive fast; get in my dads good books.

- All families have foibles. Ours is my dad’s driving. He hasn’t even got in the car before we are all screaming at him to ‘drive slow’ ‘slow down’ ‘dad I feel sick’. This used to be ignored with a perverse passion. But I felt sorry for him this time. He was so brow beaten that even when he stalled the car while reversing (which would usually result in a torrent of abuse) only warranted a meek “I didn’t swear”… poor dad, it feels like his manhood has been chopped off.

- My younger pregnant sister*** made me feel like a washed out 30 year old wreck when she turned up in knee high boots, skinny jeans and those pregnancy tits and turned an entire pub’s attention to her.

- But the boy got massive boyfriend points for not staring at my sisters tits for too long and telling me I looked gorgeous, despite being dressed in the same clothes for the last 14 hours and having gone straight to the pub with no make up on and being faced with my goddess sister.

- Lock-ins at the local pub are even better when you can say fuck you to the smoking ban at the same time.

- A trip home just isn’t a trip home if you don’t go raking through the drawers under your bed for all the old toys and games you left behind when you grew up. However, be careful, you may rake up something you wanted to forget….especially when it involves a story about a toy leopard’s tail, your dad’s tackle and leaping screaming out of bed….

Mwah

Kx

*get the reference folks?

** Admittedly, my first words were “you have gorgeous eyes” followed up by a bout of very teenage snogging. In a night club. Ok, ok, in my defence for behaving like a teenager, he was the most exceptionally beautiful man I had seen in a very long time. Maybe nearly as beautiful as Jared Leto was back in the day. I wasn’t actually that chic.

*** Now, this is the wee sister that always makes me feel like the younger one, the sister with the glamorous Sydney lifestyle (about to buy a harbour apartment, the plastic surgeon husband, the 5 month old mixed raced cutie growing in her tum). Oh I know I’m bitter. But, that’s ok as I’ve dealt with it.