Family on a hot tin roof

All families are mad. Every mother, father, sister, brother, second cousin thrice removed knows this (though I suspect mothers are most acutely aware). My family congregated once more this past weekend in celebration of my Mum's birthday. It was a fair sized gathering, as I have numerous siblings. Given that we're adults now, all of us, you might have expected the affair to proceed with a modicum of decorum or dignity. Or failing that, plain old common sense.

Instead we ended up having a family photograph taken of us all perched atop the garage roof. That included myself, two sisters, three brothers, and one small niece terribly amused at these peculiar ongoings. I may have intimated earlier that my siblings and I are now well into our adulthoods. There's truth to this, but it's also true to say that when we're all together again (a rarer occurrence than I'd like, but given I'm the primary culprit living some 400 miles away from the rest of my erstwhile kin I'm hardly in a position to complain) we somehow manage to adopt behavioural habits more commonly associated with an average six year old.

I'd like to point out that I was not the primary instigator of this rooftop migration. That honour fell to my younger brother, Nicky, who'd been out in the garden earlier playing with his poi . The lure of the poi proved great enough to tempt my remaining brothers outside. Much poi based hilarity ensued. But even flaming poi (ooh fire) can only amuse for so long, and other mischiefs soon took hold - such as attempting to jump up to grab hold of the edge of the garage roof, then pulling yourself up. We're all lemmings are heart, my siblings and I - where one goes the others are bound to follow. One brother sat atop the roof. Then two. Then three. A sister followed. Two sisters. A niece. Believe it or not, I came last, either because I was determined to retain my dignity as long as possible, or because I was barefoot at the time which slowed my climbing efforts a little (favour the latter).

All families are mad. Everyone knows this to be true, whilst at the same secretly harbouring the suspicion that perhaps theirs are normal after all.

My family is mad. There are photographs to prove it.