Wheelistically @ Claire.NU

I have been raised with the notion that I des­cend from a very “close” family.

Given that my mother and her sis­ters would social­ise, travel and shop together as a col­lect­ive whole through­out my child­hood, I took this to mean that all my aunts, uncles and dis­tant cous­ins were best of friends.

In hind­sight, I think the phrase was merely a spa­tial ref­er­ence to the way my mater­nal grandmother’s side of the fam­ily like to pro­cre­ate in mul­tiples of 5, des­pite the insuf­fi­cient cater­ing for such occur­rences when con­cern­ing Coun­cil housing.

You may recall my men­tion­ing of ump­teen gen­er­a­tions of both close and exten­ded rel­at­ives all resid­ing within the leafy walls of Epping Forest, almost League of Gen­tle­men–like in cel­eb­ra­tion of our local-ness.

Our insist­ence on liv­ing in each other’s pock­ets reached new heights when my entire house­hold (with excep­tion of myself, of course) sought employ­ment at the same place, with the same organ­isa­tion. This had its perks; ever thrifty in our ways, we saved money on park­ing fees and fuel costs by car-pooling each day and the con­tents of lunch boxes were traded and shared.

Unfor­tu­nately, it didn’t work out so well when, in a fit of Sea­sonal cheer, my entire house­hold was made redund­ant at Christmas.