Family are the friends you can't choose...

[all_dutch_to_me]

I went to see my nan today which, let's be honest, is never exactly that much fun, mostly because she (and I know you'll claim that your nan does this too, indeed that it is a universal trait of nans to do so - but, please let me assure you that mine really is worse than the average!) spends hours going over the same stories she told you last time, and the time before, and before that and...well, you get my drift. My nan has three "staples" - how fantastic she was when she was young (really nan?! you looked like a glamour model when you were my age?! funny that, cos it seems to me there's quite a lot of family resemblence and I wouldn't necessarily say that about myself..), stories about her childhood on this remote island (peppered with comments such as "surely you remember mr so and so?! his dad owned the bookshop in remote-place-on-remote island" - "no nan, i've only been there once, and that was on a school trip") and then the evilness of just about all men, but in particular my grand-father, her ex-husband, and her doctor, who is out to poison her - today she told me how this doctor had somehow made her flat-footed (she had of course had "perfect feet" when she'd been my age) by giving her the wrong medication for some chest infection?!?!?

Anyhow, deep breath, count to ten, and now you don't have to see her until next time you're in the country....