TELL ABOUT YOUR FAMILY – A LONG STORY

I’m an English teacher, and I really don’t like that classroom topic ‘Talk about your family’. All the students say, ‘My family consists of five members: me, my mother, my father, my brother and my dog,’ and so on – as if all families are exactly the same.

It’s such a shame, because all families have their own stories, their dramas, their private jokes, nicknames and phrases. They’re the place where our personalities were made.

The other day, I found myself turning into one of my grandparents. I was trying to get my daughter (1 year and 8 months old) to eat her dinner. I said, ‘That’ll make your hair curl.’ Now, I don’t think that green vegetables give you curly hair, or even that curly hair is a great thing to have. It’s just a phrase I heard from my granddad a hundred times when I was small.

Talk about your family? ‘Well, they’re just there,’ we say. Our families are so ordinary to us that we even think they’re boring. Not a bit of it! If you dig enough in your own family, you’re sure to come across all the stuff you could want for a great novel. Surprising characters, dramatic, funny stories passed down for generations or a face from the past you recognise – maybe in your own – someone or something unique to your family. As genealogists like to say, ‘Shake your family tree, and watch the nuts fall out.’

To go back to that English class, let’s get rid of the phrase ‘my family consists of’ and look at some more interesting ways to talk about families. English is rich in idioms to talk about family life. ‘The black sheep of the family’ is someone who didn’t fit in or caused a family scandal. If you’re loyal to your family, you can say ‘blood is thicker than water’. If you share a talent with another family member, you can say ‘it runs in the family’.

If you want to get more technical, you can discuss the benefits of the nuclear family: a small family, just parents and children living in the same house. If grandparents or other relatives live there as well, then you have your extended family living with you.

Listen to that story: A Londoner is telling someone how to get a new passport. ‘Get four pictures taken, pick up a form in the post office, hand it in with your old passport and . . . Bob’s your uncle.’ It means ‘the problem is solved’. But I’d love to know who the original Bob was and why he was such a useful uncle to have.