I have a lingering, pissed off feeling following on from the weekend. I had a bit of family drama while visiting my parents, and I want to unload it while I remember everything…

Lisa decided to take Rachel to a family wedding on Saturday and spend a little time with her. Not wanting to consign myself and the boys to a weekend of loitering around the house, we packed our stuff (OK, Lisa packed our stuff) and headed up north to my parents’ house. The idea being that we’d take a big day out - weather permitting - along the coast, and I’d already arranged this with my father that we’d all head out together.

We arrived in the early afternoon, had a cup of tea in their house and I was getting the boys ready when I realised that my old Dad had his grumpy face on.

“What’s up?” I asked.

“Oh, I don’t have the energy for this today,” came his response.

“Ah, come on,” I coaxed, “it’s a lovely day, you’ll be fine once you get out.”

So, he grudgingly gave in, but stood at the front door with the look of a sulky child on his face. Which irked me a little.

I rounded up Jake and Dan, got them belted into their car seats. While I was doing this, my two nieces stood watching at the car door. Chloe, the eldest, stood beside the door looking dejected.

“What’s the matter, Chloe?”

“Oh, nothing” came the reply.

Noticing that her eye was fixed on the empty seat in the middle, I asked “Do you want to come along too?” And a smile spread across her face.

But just as her face brightened, my sister called from the front door “Don’t you start that - she can’t go anywhere!”

“Why not?”

“Because Caitlin would be left on her own, and she’d cry for Chloe.” came the response.

Well, I looked into Chloe’s big, expectant eyes and felt awful for her. I’ve invited Chloe to stay with us a couple of times, but my sister always declines, despite having let Chloe’s sister Nicola stay in the past. She claims that Nicola would fret if Chloe wasn’t there. A glaring double-standard in my book, I’ve pointed out a number of times that she’s denying one girl the opportunities that she easily grants to the other. Playing the favourites game, basically.

What got to me was that young Nicola was at a birthday party that day and Chloe was stuck at home with her 2 year old sister, bored. And since Nicola wasn’t around to provide the excuse, my sister switched the focus onto the younger sister, ignoring Chloe again. Why couldn’t she come out for a couple of hours for a walk? No reason at all.

All this swam around my head as I was getting the boys ready. Then I snapped. I wasn’t going to stick around this place, where family begrudge spending time together. We’d come down for a day out, and couldn’t get anybody out the door to join us.

Right there, I decided we weren’t going to stay the night. I marched back into the house and picked up our bags. On my way out, my father was already halfway between blanking me and asking why we were leaving. “But I already said I was going out with you…”

“Yeah, but you made it pretty obvious it was under duress. Fair enough, if you’re too tired, just stay here in the house.”

“I don’t know what you’re so annoyed about…” he began to protest.

“I’ll tell you what I’m annoyed about - I came down here to take the boys out for the day, and I can’t get a single one of you to leave the house. You agreed on Wednesday you’d come out with us and now you’re begging off. And what’s more, there’s a little girl out there who desperately wants to go out and have some fun, but her mother is blocking her at every turn.

“She’s happy to remind me that Chloe’s my God-daughter on birthdays and at Christmas, but if I want to take her out for the day, no, that’s not going to happen. I would be thrilled if my children’s aunts and uncles wanted to spend time with them, but that’s not going to happen, is it?”

My sister obviously overheard this from the doorstep, and surprisingly tried to backpedal on her previous stance. I say surprisingly, because I expected her to argue that I was wrong or tell me to mind my own business. Obviously something got through her abnormally thick cranium.

However, having already packed my bags into the boot of the car, I said goodbye and drove off to spend a fantastic day walking the North Antrim shores with my boys, both of whom are sure-footed little animals. We’re going to have so much fun on walks when those two get older!

But I’ll tell you that story later…

The epilogue to this story was that I had a gift in the car for my father’s birthday. Lisa insisted that, despite the earlier war of words, I should take a quick drive over to their house and deliver the present.

When I got there, the house was full (my sister and her husband live across the road, but spend 99.9% of their time in my parents’ house). I found my father in the living room and handed over the gift. He grunted at me. “OK,” I said, “I’m off home then.”

And as I turned to walk out the door, he said “There’s no need to be like that.” What? “No need to be like what?” I enquired and waited in the hall for him to come out and talk to me. But he stayed in the living room. Fair enough.

My sister walked into the hall and bizarrely invited me to stay for a beer. No way. I declined, went back to the car and drove the boys home.

No doubt this will be the beginning of a cold war, which is made all the easier by the physical distance between our houses. With our families, it seems we have to twist people’s arms to spend time together. For instance, my parents complain about the amount of time my sisters spend in their house. They all sit around bitching and griping about people, but ask them to do something fun like go out for the day and you’d think you’d invited them to a satanic ritual.

Anyway, moan over. I can live with the silent treatment, especially considering that we had such a nice day afterward!