大象传媒

From Dr Jim Harris, Art Historian:

For a long time now, I have hoarded toothpaste. By this, I don鈥檛 mean that in these straitened times I have bought up huge stocks hoping to make a killing on the dental hygiene black market.

Rather, I have kept my own tube of toothpaste hidden away in the bathroom cupboard, so I don鈥檛 have to share with the rest of the family. This is not a question of some weird gum-health fixation. It鈥檚 just that they all squeeze from the middle and leave the lid off so there is always a crust of dried-up unpleasantness to negotiate at teeth time, and I do not like it. It is a simple thing really.

What I鈥檓 trying to say is that my family annoys me.

Now, at the present time and in the present circumstances, I imagine that at some point in every day I speak for the entire nation in expressing that pettiest of complaints.聽 All our families annoy us because we are not the Brady Bunch. I would at least argue, though, that toothpaste hoarding is one of the more innocent manifestations of family annoyance.聽 After all, in the Bible (and the celebrated stage musical), Joseph annoyed his brothers so much that they took the admittedly extreme step of handing him over to some passing slave traders.

It鈥檚 fair to say that that option is no longer open to those of us who find our families annoying, since it would inevitably mean a gathering of more than two people and meeting people from outside our immediate household; so we have to look for strategies that don鈥檛 involve actually selling our siblings, spouses, parents or children. What鈥檚 compelling about the story of Joseph, though, is that after leaving each other alone for a while, the brothers found that not only could they co-exist, but that they actually needed each other.

And we do too, and I reckon it鈥檚 not just in our house.聽 I can bake and fix things that have been waiting to be fixed; Susie can feed us, sumptuously, and keep our spirits up with games; and the boys?聽 Well, the boys can play FIFA.聽 And whenever any of us gets too annoying or too annoyed, we can retreat to the corner and leave each other alone until we need each other again.

Which would be dinnertime.