Happy families

I don't really like Mother's Day. And it's not just because there are so many truly disgusting gifts around appealing to your sense of laziness and desperation. It's purely an extension of not liking Father's Day. Since my dad died, I've always found it very tricky. You steel yourself for Christmas, anniversaries and birthdays, and people remember and call and ask how you are, but that sneaky day in June always sidles up alongside me when I'm starting to relax into the warm bath of the summer months and punches me hard in the stomach. And this is me, technically a grown-up. I can't imagine what it's like to grow up without a mum or dad when you're a child, and what it is you do when everyone else at school is making a card out of pressed flowers and glitter, or constructing a pen holder out of the inside of a toilet roll and some wallpaper, because all dads have pens, don't they, and they need somewhere to put them. If it was up to me, I'd abolish them both – not just because of this, but because if you need a designated day of the year to be nice to your parents, you should really have a word with yourself. I realise I'm preaching nothing more original than spending time, all the time, with the people you love, no matter who they are and how many you have. And the industries of books, music and self-help groan with people who have said just that a lot more eloquently than I have. I only mean to say, here's to families. And here's mine.