Maddie’s World
In her weekly column, Maddie Grigg shares tales from her life in rural Dorset . . .
MARCH 25 is Lady Day. This was an important day when I was growing up, not just because my father was a tenant farmer and it was the date the rent was due, but it also happens to be my brother’s birthday.
My brother has always been the Golden Child, a bastion of maleness in a matriarchal family. My mother had three daughters before she had my brother, and then I came along six years later.
There is a family story my mother tells. She says that before my brother was born, she dreamed she was visited by an angel. The angel told her she would have a boy and she had to call him Andrew George. When he grew up, he was going to be a priest.
So when a baby boy was born, Mum dutifully complied with the angel’s wishes. But the Golden Child never became a priest. He went into teaching straight after university and is still doing it now.
Growing up, my brother and I did not get along. He disliked me because I was six years younger and, therefore, extremely annoying.
I messed up his train set and had crushes on his friends. I couldn’t stand him because of his relentless teasing.
I have never forgiven him for tricking me into eating a snail, complete with shell, which he’d found minding its own business on the side of the road.
My mother also gave him a cooked breakfast when I had to make do with Weetabix. She tells me this was because he was at “big school” and I wasn’t, but I’m still not convinced.
Mr brother was spoiled because he was the only boy. Mind you, I was indulged because I was the youngest of five.
I remember yelling at my brother when he had me in a headlock in the house while Mother and Father were out doing the milking. We were meant to be watching “Animal Magic”.
I told my brother that if a policeman said I was allowed to kill him, I would. (Note the nod to the law; I wasn’t completely stupid.)
Now, my brother’s birthday has made me think about sibling rivalry. Does the position you hold within your family affect you as you are growing up, or even have a bearing on the person you are now? I think it did for me.
I still eat too quickly because in the back of my mind is a memory of me dropping something from the table and getting back up to find one of my siblings – probably my brother – had stolen two of my roast potatoes.
Being the youngest of a bright bunch, I was expected to do well at school and go on to university. So I didn’t. Thus began the birth of a quiet rebel.
I still try, one way or another, always to get what I want. I don’t throw a tantrum any more or pour milk into the radio because no-one is listening, but I am a firm believer in my primary school teacher’s old adage, “There is no such word as can’t.” Anything is possible.
And that includes a good relationship with my brother. I am ashamed to say that when I was ten years old and he was critically injured in a scooter accident, I really wanted him to die. Fortunately, he didn’t, and now we’re the best of friends.
He and his wife have just bought a cottage in a village not far from Lush Places, which I found for them on the internet. He seems to be relishing the return to his West Country roots.
What’s more, when he went to church the other day he was stopped by the vicar on the way in.
“We’ve got a little play we’re enacting during the service,” she said, “and we need someone to be God.”
So the prophecy the angel foretold could still bear fruit after all . . .