My old spark is still there but it needs people I love to set it off
IHAD not been to visit my uncle Colm and his wife Jean in their home in the north of England for over 30 years. In my defence it was an awful palaver getting there.
We left the house at lunchtime last Friday when Tom broke up from school, and between trains, airporthotels, shuttle-buses, flights and more trains, we didn’t arrive in Durham until lunchtime the following day.
My cousin Emily, her husband, Tom and their gorgeous daughter, Ivy, five, collected us on foot from Seaburn Station at the end of their road.
‘We’d have been in Australia quicker,’ I said. ‘Australia here we come!’ Tom shouted, running into his darling cousin’s arms. I didn’t see him again for three days.
Colm was waiting for us at their house. He is my mother’s brother and one of my favourite people in the whole world. I call him ‘my hippy uncle’ but he is so much more than that.
‘Young at heart’ doesn’t come close either. With his trademark abundant head of curly jet-black hair, good looks and a ‘peace and love’ outlook, Col has always been the most charismatic member of our family.
When we were growing up, an Irish family in 1970s suburban London, my mother’s brother slept in a campervan, parking it underneath London’s railway bridges and living off Kentucky Fried Chicken and baked beans. After a stint in the Post Office, he went back to university where he met gorgeous young Durham girl, Jean.
We would visit them in their student houses which I remember as being full of beards, incense, political posters, Bob Dylan and a cat called Mingus. After they graduated, my aunt and uncle moved back ‘up North’.
They became community youth workers, activists, academics and now artists. They filled their house with friends and books. Mingus the cat took second place to their beautiful daughter, Emily.
The beard and Bob Dylan remained. Both of them explored art and poetry alongside busy careers in academia. Col and Jean remain among the most interesting people I know.
‘1984’, Colm said. He has a photographic memory for dates. ‘You were 20,’ he said when I asked how long it had been since I had visited them there.
We have seen each other in the meantime. There have been weddings and funerals. Although Col is not a part of my everyday life, he never forgets any of our birthdays. He has been our salve in times of crisis — my parents’ divorce, my brother’s death — and he was the life and soul at all three of our weddings. He has always come to us. And yet, 34 years have passed since I visited him at home.
‘You look the same,’ I said. Honestly, I was aghast at how little he had aged. He laughed. Col has always known he’s handsome. ‘Good looking guys are usually nice,’ he once said. ‘We’ve got nothing to prove.’
The weather was gloriously kind so, while the children played in the garden, we sat in the kitchen and ate ourselves senseless. We chatted about arts, politics, family gossip. We kept it simple. People ‘up North’ are more like the Irish than the Londoners. Earthy and straight-up friendly. They put batter scrapings on their fish and chips. Airs and graces are not tolerated.
After a long, exhausting journey I kicked back and totally relaxed. In their eccentric kitchen, sitting on a stained glass church pew, feeling utterly at home, I realised that coming to see the people I love is not simply a gift to them — it’s a gift to myself.
‘How does he feel to have a middleaged niece?’ I said. ‘You look spiffing!’ he said. ‘You’re just the same. The old spark is still there.’
I didn’t know I had ever sparked. As I laughed, I realised that being in Col’s company —being loved, and liked and approved of by my ‘hippy uncle’ means as much to me now as it did when I was a teenager. I came to stay with them for a fortnight’s holiday 34 years ago as an insecure youngster looking for affirmation. Just to be a part of their world meant the world to me. And I discovered, it still does. I don’t crave affirmation any more, but that doesn’t mean it’s not nice to get it.
The old spark is there, but sometimes it needs people I love to set it off. Finding people who are your soulmates is rare. Having them in your family is even rarer. KATE’s latest novel, That Girl, is in all bookshops now.