At the end, we stood out in the rain, watching the drizzly afternoon turn into a damp evening over the streetlamps. Then, with one accord we waved off those from Bristol and Weston-Super-Mare, and wherever else it is they came from.
"Well the neighbours have probably worked it all out by now anyway," said someone as the remainers traipsed in for one final cup of tea. I had a smile to myself as I thought about how English it is to be proud of your eccentric family. Up and down the land, there are probably thousands of families with their own traditions and quirks who probably think of themselves as uniquely mad.
Anyway. There it was. The Christmas Family Party. I had got there some hours before, and had been greeted by a relative proclaiming that 'his lordship has arrived'. I played along and told them that the chauffeur had dropped me off as it was raining.
My Dad (slow to cotton on) instantly (and a little too excitedly) leapt to the conclusion that I had been accompanied by a 'young lady' and before I'd even taken my coat and scarf off...
"...Well it might not have been a young lady..." said someone, pointedly from the other room. I rolled my eyes at a coat hanger. I hadn't even entered the lounge yet...
It was my Grandma's idea, this. Years ago. She had a peculiar gift for drawing people together, and her own massive family gatherings were always the place to be. As children, we'd crowd up the stairs, making sculptures out of mini-sausages and cocktail sticks on paper plates. The adults would laugh around the piano and shuffle out to the food table in my Grandma's dining room, with plastic glasses and tinsel wrapped into their hair. Uncle Arthur would tell his recycled jokes and laugh uproariously before getting to the punchline. Then my Grandma would play carols on the piano and we'd all sing along, heartily racing her to the end of 'The Twelve Days of Christmas' at about two hundred beats per minute.
The games, the jokes and the music are all gone. The children are mostly grown into parents themselves now, too busy to come, and too involved in making family Christmases of their own. And my Grandma is... Somewhere Else. Yesterday, my cousin Walty and I (both thirty eight) were the youngest there.
However, we do keep some things alive from the old days. The 'firkling' present swap. Obviously the white-hankie send off, and yes, Uncle Arthur's unfinished jokes. It was also fascinating to me to listen in on a few conversations happening around me...
"The Fiat? Sure. You could drive over a fifty pence piece and tell whether it's heads or tails."
"He's suing the BBC I think. Well, quite right too, I mean he was falsely accused after all..."
"And he came in and he said, 'Do you know, the Bath Road goes all the way to Bath, isn't that incredible?' Well we just stared..."
"Goodness knows what we'd all do if someone set one of those electromagnetic pulses off..."
"No, I kept my tax discs up to date, every year for fifty years!"
"Yes. I call him Septimus and he lives in the corner, and only ever comes out at twilight when he knows the flies will have been attracted by the sunlight. I've grown quite fond of him."
"I don't really understand email. I've still got one of those phones with push buttons..."
"Well I think you've got to fill your life with hope, not worry."
I liked that last one so much, I wrote it down straightaway. The more I think about it, it occurs to me that that might have been part of my Grandma's secret too - hope, not worry. Hopeful people have a habit of collecting hopeful people around them. I could do with being a bit more like that.
I came home to a quiet flat. I switched on the lights in the spare room, sat down gently at the piano and played the whole of 'The Twelve Days of Christmas' at two hundred beats per minute.
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