Sundays

Now, it's true that Sundays can be a bit of a downer. You've had a lovely weekend with your friends, phoned all the absent ones, done all your shopping (and inevitably spent way more than your bank manager condones) and tidied the cutlery drawer. Which leaves NOTHING to do on Sunday. A great gaping vacuum of time. Unless you've been out on the piss the night before and are recovering en masse over fried eggs and bacon at the local café, the day yawns before you with a soul-destroying emptiness. You can feel the wind of boredom rasping over the plains of frustration. The slough of despond beckons with a gleeful claw.

Unless, of course, you are blessed with a family like mine. Far flung and far out. My father lives in Thailand with his Thai wife, 22 years his junior, and my sister lives in Belize (where?) with her newly acquired American thrice-divorced husband. Ordinarily, whilst on different continents, we all get on like a mildly smoking house. Perhaps a small crumpet/toaster incident on the moon would be the equivalent.

My father has Alzheimer's which I find both hilarious and heart-rending. He
sometimes phones (remind me to launch into a diatribe about Thai phones at some point) and asks me why I'm calling. 'What can I do for you?' he asks, clearly not remembering who he's speaking to, or 'where are you calling from?' when he has called my landline. It's always a pleasure to speak to him as he has such charming manners. I'm often tempted to say that I'm cousin Sally, or the taxman just to see what he'd say.

Last Sunday, having stayed in on Saturday night to catch up on my junk-food and had a relatively early, if flatulent night, I was nevertheless unprepared for the jolt that severed me from my rather naughty dream at 8.30am. Due to my family being so distant, I often react to a ringing phone with spasms of terror. Who has died? Who's being held hostage? Who's caught in a flood/earthquake etc and where's my Superman suit so I can fly angrily round the earth fast enough to turn back time? This time my father had clearly felt strongly enough about something to brave the vagaries of his wife's mobile phone and call me. However, Thai Telecom (or whatever
they're called) were having a small nervous breakdown . Although I could hear my father perfectly, he could hear nothing but the aching void. After several minutes of fruitless shouting we both hung up. An hour later we had a repeat performance.

It seems to me that we live in an age where things like phones should be pretty much sussed. If we can use satellite phones to speak to people in the middle of the Sahara, why can't we make calls between two medium sized towns (albeit many miles apart)? The third attempt was affected by my stepmother. Normally she would call, chat for a while and hand me over to my father as an afterthought, but today she clearly had better things to do than baby-sit a call from her husband to his recalcitrant daughter and handed me straight over as soon as she had established that both parties could hear each other.

My poor father was clearly keen to get a message across. Unfortunately he had misplaced the synapse connecting his mouth to the relevant information. We had a strange looping conversation regarding my sister's wedding the previous day. Neither of us had been able to attend which appalled all parties. Each felt that their reason was valid but the other's wasn't. It was clear to me that my father wanted to give me a good ticking off for not going to Belize (at a cost of £1,300 all told) to give my sister away at a ten minute ceremony barefoot on the beach. Luckily he wasn't able to remember this was why he was calling and instead kept asking which route I had taken to the wedding and whether I might be dropping in on him on the way home.

My long-suffering stepmother had clearly had enough of this circuitous rambling and after a few minutes she shouted impatiently from across the room, 'ask her why she didn't go to her own bloody sister's wedding and hang up on her!'. Did I mention that my father has impeccable manners? Constitutionally incapable of being so rude, he merely said. 'Ummm. Here's Lat' and handed me over. Whereupon my stepmother proceeded to do exactly what she has urged my father to do. I was left with a dead line and a gaping mouth. And a Sunday which suddenly wasn't long enough to fit in all the stomping, swearing and teeth-gnashing I needed to fit in.