Family Gathering.

There I sat, in the mint green armchair in the corner of my Grandmother’s house, carefully observing the various goings on in the various sections of the familiar living room. It was the day of that inevitable event, the event which seemed to escape the seemingly robust clutches of memory - until you were due to be attending it in half an hour. It was the event which cloaked itself in shameful dust on the calendar, the annual event that would never cease to prove itself to be both fruitless and unnecessary to most, if not all attending; the family gathering.

Amidst the exquisite finger foods, (sausage rolls, prawn cocktail, homemade breads, cakes, flapjacks, shortbreads etc, etc) a seamlessly awkward and sporadic undertone of forced conversation swept through the room. A bubbly middle aged woman, well read in artificial gossip magazines and well-travelled in the tinned goods aisles of local supermarkets, scurried about offering cups of tea to guests, with uncomfortable frequency. It feels as if a cup of tea is offered to guests more so at these synthetic Sunday afternoons than at any event or scenario in the brief history of time.

“Tea? More Tea?”

No thank you, you’ve literally just handed me this mug.

I sat, silently observing from the corner of the room. Fragments of conversations could be heard from all about the room. Some trickled unintentionally through the net of confidentiality, barely audible. Some were bawled out with gusto and with only the intention of being heard.

“The one I was on the other day must’ve had only 50 of us on! It was quite unreal”

“How have your tomatoes fared this year?”

Etc, etc.

Occasionally, some of the slightly more socially developed creatures of this assumed herd of the same stock would approach me for some polite, tennis-like conversation. On this occasion, the oncoming relative was an exuberant and eccentric cousin, a good fifteen years senior of myself.

The man had a towering, colossal frame, dwarfing every other person present at a striking 6”6. Yet he handled himself with an air of Christian pleasantry, and always spoke with a tone of genuine curiosity in the transient, commonplace details of a by-yearly compatriot.  His opulent, absorbing eyes scrutinized everything placidly; with, if nothing else, a look of child-like intrigue beaming through his thick-rimmed circular spectacles, deep into the unfamiliar intricacies of others amusements.

“So, Philip, are you still doing your A-Levels?”

Ah yes, an excellent serve from the experienced cousin.

“Yes, unfortunately… Ha. Ha. I’m in my final year now”

I deflected the orthodox enquiry with what I felt was a successful balance of offhandness and formality, as I would continue to do so with various other obligatory characters until the seemingly elusive catharsis in proceedings arrived.

“Tea? More Tea?”

No, thank you. Is there any tea left? Anywhere? There is? I am surprised.

“Yes, nothing is particularly clear. We are an Imperial-Metric Britain-“

A mobile phone thrummed through a muffled pocket somewhere in the offing. A man, an extraordinarily ordinary man, with no distinguishing features, except a noticeably gaunt and wilting expression permanently plastered across his face. This man; a relative of mine… I couldn’t tell you his name, pulled the vibrating device from his fully zipped jacket, and answered.

“Yes, Hullo? Yes… Of course-“

It turned out the man was a policeman, a moderately high profile detective in fact. His faceless wife apologised to the eavesdroppers on behalf of her husband, as he began to speak in hushed voice to the unknown caller.

“Goodness… No. That’s terrible-“

The wife continued with her rhetoric; revealing that her partner was on call over the weekend, but is only required to ‘leave the house’ in the event of a fatality.

“I’ll be there as soon as I can. Thanks.”

The man’s face turned a stony grey. Everybody was watching with seething intent. Everybody wanted to know – had this man been handed, by some divine intervention perhaps, a guilt free ticket to walk away in justifiable haste, from a family gathering?

“Tea? More Tea?”

No! Bugger off!

That woman had re-emerged, and with such faultlessly infuriating timing… This only seemed to exacerbate her irritating demeanour. Meanwhile, the man tucked his leather-cased phone back into his casual brown jacket, glanced to his wife and half whispered; ‘We have to go’, before jovially announcing to the procession that it appeared “some bloke’s gone and murdered his Mrs” and he must attend immediately.

“- although another one I was on, I was stuck next to the biggest bloke I’ve ever seen!”

An irrelevant splinter of conversation filtered through from across the room.

“To make things worse he was in the middle seat. Great swathes of fat tumbling over the armrest… He must’ve been carrying twice his own baggage allowance in his own gut!”

I paid no attention – I was engrossed in the immensely secret, yet underwhelming manner of the policeman.

“A murder! How exciting!” A lady (possibly straight from the set of Midsomer Murders) gasped from the rafters, turning to her fellow gossip-mongers with more than a hint of artificiality. After a few fleeting goodbyes; muttered apologies and an insincere assortment of ‘nice to see you’-s, the man, his wife and two children fled the compulsions of the afternoon.

Whilst still, I remained in the mint green armchair.