Applause

Oh dear, V1 is having a '82 night. Oh the nostalgia! They just played Flock of Seagulls. I find myself sitting here thinking "their hair isn't that bad!". Oh dear! Indeed! Last night I sat with two very dear girlfriends and we watched Barbarella then The Party. Funnily enough, as I type this "Hungry like the wolf" is playing on the telly. Duran Duran - mad scientist or bunch of pretty boys playing music? Barbarella - aw, I just can't summarise or comment. It just is.
It was a nice night. Unfortunately, as what usually happens when I have been separated from the child for 24 hours - my tiredness overwhelmed and I crashed out early. I wanted to, and needed to sit up late and drink too much and talk silly, girly shit, but I fell asleep. C'est la vie.
The next day I went to a party, that I had helped arrange, for my Grandmother. She turned 85 in March and I was upset no-one had made a fuss. She's got six kids for fuck's sake - could one of them organise something? Anyway, her brother and I got together and put together something of a party. He invited a bunch of people from the "other side" of the family - meaning her other brother's kids. Her other brother died in the early '70's. I remember him vaugly, remember his grandkids as spoilt shits I didn't like. Anyway, I re-met a couple of them today. Yeah, they're boguns, but nice enough.
A couple of my first cousins were there too. One I had a bonding evening with a few of years ago, not too long after I split with my girl's father. Her and her sister and I had dinner at my house, drank several bottles of wine between us, then decided to hurl the empty bottles at X's house. This was relatively easy as he was living in the house across the road. Bottles hit the house, landed in the yard and on the roof. Unfortunately he wasn't home and all we did was freak out his house mates.
Regardless, the display of solidarity warmed my heart and I have had a particular fondness for my cousins ever since.
In my family we have a tradition: at birthdays we clap out the birthday person's age. I have never met anyone else who does this. It's weird, but it's something that seems to be OURS. My cousin and I laughed about how we love this tradition. She's still young enough to not fully comprehend the humiliation of having your age clapped out and it takes so long the kids get bored.
I have really bad wog envy: I've got so many friends who have rich, cultural family backgrounds. Italians who tell stories of proscuitto making, Greeks who have red egg breaking contests at Easter, Indians who have a family recipe for garam masala and then there's us - we clap at birthdays. It's not much, but it's OURS.
We clapped 85 times for my Grandmother, we clapped 62 times for my mother and we clapped 40 times for me. And I was happy.
We are emotionally bankrupt, boguns and strangers to each other, but we clap.