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natural selection has ensured that those people who are completely honest about things when they are out in the public arena have long since died out, because nobody wanted to sleep with anyone who moaned about their medical problems, mother-in-law or hefty workload, and we have now evolved into a species of finely tuned fakers.

      ‘Oh, yes, we had a marvellous holiday—the kids were happy, the place we rented was perfect and we all feel really rejuvenated’ is fake-talk for, ‘That was a fucking nightmare. The kids drove us nuts, there were rats in the kitchen and I’m completely bloody exhausted. We’re never going away again.’

      My favourite one is the ‘Hi, how are you?’, ‘Oh I’m fine—you?’, ‘Fine!’ exchange that takes place a thousand times a day between people who are not fine at all, who haven’t had sex for three months and who want to send their kids away to a boarding school. It’s hilarious. We all wander about, putting on a united, happy family front when the reality is rarely anything approaching such harmony or bliss.

      Of course, a certain amount of fakery is essential for life to be bearable: if you ask somebody how they are, you’re only ever expecting a ‘fine thanks’ if you’re honest. You don’t really want to know how they are at all, and if they tell you then you’ll think they are a bit weird and avoid them for a week. But it’s the level of this fakery that can become a problem, if we start to believe what we see and hear. Don’t and remember the following:

      

Everybody feels they are failing at being a family sometimes. Some are just better at hiding it than others.

      

Be vigilant, and never convince yourself that other families are doing a much better job than you. They are probably just as exasperated, exhausted and extremely bored as you are occasionally.

      

Open up. Sometimes, being honest and telling somebody that you are in fact not all that well, and that things on the home front are pretty rough at the moment, results in a torrent of similar confessions and tales from your relieved listener. Opening up about your problems means people are much happier to be honest with you, and you’ll soon realise that you are not surrounded by picture-perfect families at all!

      

Beat it with a smile. Putting on a happy exterior might sound superficial, but often if you stand tall, smile and try to be cheerful, some of your problems will melt away, and after a few hours you might well feel a lot better. No, it might not last after you get home, but just having a few hours away from your troubles can make what follows a lot easier to bear.

      Etiquette: Here comes a family—run!

      Families have got themselves a bad name. They have come to represent all that is loud, rude, inconsiderate, stressful and unpleasant, and I can see why. There they are in every café, car park, restaurant, cinema and shopping centre shouting at each other, arguing, looking as bored and miserable as it’s possible to be, spoiling or neglecting their kids, making a mess, a noise and a pretty ugly spectacle of themselves.

      Obese families, rude families, families on the verge of a nervous breakdown and even entire families wearing—wait for it—hoodies! Lord, what’s the world coming to? Just look at them all, messing up our tidy, leafy towns and villages with their horrible Family-ness. Bring on the family-sized ASBOs, that’s what I say. Lock ’em all up and throw away the key!

      I am exaggerating just a teeny-weeny bit here, as you may have cleverly guessed, but you get my drift. Families are not quite the respected and valued pillars of society they once, perhaps, were. Seeing a family of four struggle over to the check-in desk, sticky lollipops and electronic toys in hand, can be enough to make the most tolerant, hard-of-hearing and child-friendly person cancel her holiday plans and head home again.

      Well, it needn’t be this way, and with some simple old-fashioned examples of social etiquette and manners we might be able to give families an image overhaul, and put them back in vogue.

      

Consideration of others. This is probably the most important thing families can do when they step out of the front door. At this point you are no longer in the seclusion of your home, but sharing the space with other people: people who might not like kids putting their feet on chairs, leaving wrappers on park benches or picking their nose; who don’t want to hear your private disagreements aired in loud voices over a latte and a muffin; who keep themselves to themselves and would appreciate it if you would do the same. If more families considered their impact on others they would be doing us all a huge favour.

      

Basic manners. Once upon a time people held doors open to let others through; they said thank you when somebody did the same to them; they closed their mouth while eating, didn’t interrupt, never shouted in public and sent birthday cards that arrived on time. There are tons more, which your Granny probably taught your Mum and your Mum taught you, but now you’re too busy and we all know it’s a lot easier to fire off a text than walk to the post office and send a letter. This is a shame: if even some of these basic manners were re-introduced and taught to our kids, things would be a lot more pleasant out there. See page 248 for more on manners.

      

Bring something for kids to do. This applies to cafés, restaurants, aeroplanes and anywhere else where kids might get bored and start to be a nuisance. Nobody normal expects kids to behave perfectly and remain silent all the time, of course, but letting them rip up paper napkins, scratch tables with cutlery, kick the back of other people’s chairs or throw their unwanted carrots under the table is unacceptable. If you are going to take a child into a child-unfriendly place, always bring a book or a notepad and pencils and try to keep the little darlings happily occupied.

      

Leave. If everything fails, including the notepad and pencils mentioned above, and you start to disturb other people in the room, then leave before you do any more damage to the already dented and scratched reputation of families everywhere. Why should two people have their Sunday morning coffee ruined by a bunch of noisy, drink-spilling, bickering members of a family?

      

Do a good turn. Help old people across the road, offer to do some shopping for a neighbour who can’t get out easily, write to grandparents just to say “hi”, or bake some biscuits for the lady next door who’s had a hip operation. In our self-obsessed lives we quickly forget other people, and this teaches our kids to be selfish too. Anyone for a flapjack?

      This is a very small list and there are hundreds more examples, including not farting in lifts, and not spending twenty minutes in a public loo checking out your eyebrows in the mirror when there’s a queue outside. I’m not suggesting we all behave like little prissy, nineteenth-century society gals, but a modicum of decent behaviour wouldn’t go amiss.

      The Family Uniform

      One of the things I have found it hard to get used to, since morphing from young, child-free babe (or something…!) into my role as ‘mother and member of a family with kids’, is having to wear the Family Uniform. What exactly this uniform consists of varies enormously according to where you live, what kind of friends you have and what your daily life entails. If you work it is likely to be much as it was before, because you’ll be in work, not ‘family’, attire during the day. But when you don’t you’ll find yourself in full family swing, and this, for most busy,

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