When the family shows up

“The family, that cage with living bars,” wrote the French novelist François Mauriac. There must be families like that, just as there are families which are pleasant holiday chalets with open doors to let the air in with the visitors, and the residents in or out as they want. Equally, I suppose many families mix their open rooms and their cages, often right next door to each other.

For my own part, I’m always pleased when my family comes to see us. This weekend, it was the turn of my youngest son Nicky and daughter-out-law Sheena to add considerably to the pleasure of the household. We did lots of things which might not otherwise have done, some highly successful (a walk in Ashridge Forest, for instance), some less so (a Motown concert which we left early, after raising my understanding, if only of the question why I had never attended one before).

Inevitably, we ate too much. Somehow, whenever we do anything for the sheer pleasure it seems to lead to a series of meals, many of them far too big.

In any case, it didn’t much matter what we actually did or how well it went, since what made it most fun was the fact that we were doing it together. I even took pleasure from going bowling, a game I usually delight in because I play it well, though on this occasion – when I notched up some historically abysmal scores – I could only enjoy the simple fact of participation. .

It was ironic playing such a quintessentially American game with my family. Not a week before, my American boss had been in town, and I enjoyed introducing her to that fundamentally English game, snooker. American games with an Englishman, English games with an American: the simple symmetry’s a joy in itself.

Nicky leading the way in the Wardown Park run
but the threat's on his shoulder...

A more successful sporting event took place on Sunday when Nicky decided to take part in a park run in one of Luton’s pleasanter places, Wardown Park. Some 300 people took part; he led for a short time and eventually came in second, behind a worthy winner (“perhaps I should have tried harder to catch him,” he however claimed). With several friends among the runners, it was good to be there, and the dogs enjoyed it too – they’re keen fans of Wardown Park, where there are ducks, squirrels, kids to play with and, if they’re quick and we’re not watching, occasionally the opportunity to gobble up some ghastly piece of food discarded by a careless eater (or possibly an eater more discerning than they are).

Watching those runners got me checking my phone for the records of the days when I used to go running regularly. It shocked me to discover that at the peak of my performance, I was achieving speeds that would have hardly have got me out of the bottom half of the field in the park run. My son achieved over twice that. No wonder I gave up running, switching instead to badminton: at least it’s a game that allows me to take out my frustration at my ineptitude by occasionally viciously punishing the shuttle and smashing it beyond my opponents’ reach (worth it, even though they do the same back to me even more frequently). .

As it happens, not only do I not have the energy these days to do any running (except over the narrow distances of a badminton court), I find it effort enough just to keep walking. I remain under the dominion of my fitbit, obsessively piling up the steps each day. That can be painful, but it does have one advantage.

Like a great many people – even another French writer, Proust – I’m neurotic about remembering to undertake routine tasks. He talks about having to turn off the gas very consciously, so that later on he can remember having done so. With me, it’s locking doors. “I’m locking the front door, now,” I have to think to myself, or “I’m locking the car,” so that when I get a sudden rush of anxiety I can remember clearly having done so.

Of course, that means having to remember to think consciously about those tasks, and I don’t always. Often I have to go back to check. With the car, that isn’t so easy: I can’t test the door handle because, with the clever new technology we now have, if I do that the car unlocks anyway. So instead I just look at the wing mirrors: has the car tucked them away? If it has, then it’s locked.

Still, just being obliged to go back to check is a pain. Except that – now it isn’t. Because it’s steps. I’ve actually found myself deliberately walking all the way around the car to lengthen the process. Because it’s all steps towards the target, all grist to the mill.

No good for my fitbit obsession. But maybe good for my body.

When it comes to my soul, it was the family visit itself that did me good – there was no cage there, no bars. Well, except the kind where one might celebrate over a drink. As is only appropriate when family shows up.