Annie Christie's Family Fictions:
Episode One
Genre: Drama
Swearwords: None.
Description: Where does a story start?
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Where does the story of a family start? This one seems to start in so many places. Maybe there is no start point for a family, we all just pick the points that matter to us. Because the start of this story isn’t the start of the story.
My wife to be, Casey, wanted us to get married on Mull. She was pretty insistent on it. She’d found this wonderful castle hotel type venue and she couldn’t understand why I was so against it. It was our big day after all. One to remember for the rest of our lives.
Well, Casey. This is the story of why. You always say that there shouldn’t be secrets in families, and while I’m pretty sure every family has skeletons in the closet if you go back far enough, I’m going to take you at your word and open my family’s closet. Take it as a wedding present. To make up for not having that wedding on Mull you always dreamed of. One woman’s dream can be another man’s nightmare, I suppose.
No secrets in families? What is a family? For me, family has always been something of a fiction. Ever since; well, we’ll come to that. Firstly I should tell you some of the ‘facts’ about my family.
My mum and dad are called Justin and Victoria. Known communally by all their friends and family as J & Vic. Or even, by some wits as JVic – you know the kind of people who think ‘Brangelina’ is funny. Those kind of people. Our surname is Olds but it could have been anything. That’s not important. Names and places aren’t that important when it comes down to it, are they? We could be anyone.
There was nothing unusual about our family at all. Or so I thought. We were just a well off aspirational middle class family. Dad from London, Mum from Edinburgh. They met through the Insurance Company in the 70’s. Mum was temping while trying to get a career as a model off the ground. She had the looks, she had the height, but she didn’t have the connections. Or, to be honest, the motivation. Dad had been head hunted. He was big into actuarial risk. Which is funny because he’s about the most risk averse person I’ve ever met. If you think accountants are boring then you should meet actuaries. But they get paid a lot of money for their boredom and my dad earned a lot and spent a lot – on mum to begin with and then on the rest of us.
Family was important to my dad. It was everything, when it comes down to it. He was a great family man, although he was hardly ever there because he spent all his time working to provide for his family. That’s the way the cookie crumbles, as they say. I respect my dad, but I’m not going to be like him. I know I disappointed him when I decided not to use my intellectual powers to the full by getting a good career. But times have changed and I’m not sorry I didn’t go into financial services or banking at all. There’s more to life than money, right Casey? You don’t want a husband who is out eighteen hours a day and leaves you at home with the children, do you? If you do, you’ve picked the wrong man.
So, for the sake of family history, J & Vic had four children. The oldest was Alasdair. I can’t talk about him just yet. The jury is out on whether he’s the lynchpin that kept the family together or the thing that broke us apart. He was born in 1978. Oliver, the next oldest was born in 1981. I was born in 1983 and Ellie, our sister and the youngest of the Old’s – if that’s not too ironic a concept – was born in 1984.
What can I say about my brothers? Growing up, I suppose I should have been closest to Ollie since he was closest to me in age. But we just never seemed to see eye to eye. We were the proverbial chalk and cheese. We shared a bedroom but that’s about it. I got on better with my sister Ellie. She was born less than two years after me, so I don’t really remember life without her. I do remember that Ellie was everyone’s favourite. And rightly so. She just won her way into everyone’s hearts.
We lived all our lives in Edinburgh. First we lived in a big house in The Grange. Mum and Dad bought it cheap and got in Marco the builder to help ‘do it up’. Which took quite a few years. I had just started school when we made the move to the New Town. Upwardly mobile, I guess you could call my parents. We all went to a good school with a good blazer – it doesn’t matter to you if it was Watson’s, or Stewarts Melville or Heriot’s – and it didn’t really matter to us.
We went to good schools and we had a good life in a comfortable home. The New Town house was massive, but again it needed ‘doing up’ so Marco more or less moved with us. I don’t mean he lived with us; though he might as well have, the amount of time he spent in our house. No one seemed to mind. It was just that Marco was there more than dad because dad was out all the time earning the money to keep us in the good schools and the nice house with all the extras like holidays and riding, fencing, archery, skiing, and dancing lessons for Ellie. None of it comes cheap but dad managed to pay for it all. I have to respect him for that. We never went short. We were probably spoilt, if I’m honest. We didn’t think so, of course, our life seemed pretty normal to us and we just coasted comfortably through it most of the time.
So, as kids we went to parties and we had parties and we did all the extra things you can do at school and we passed all our tests – and no one was really a problem – except Ollie. Ollie would never play by the rules. Looking back, Ellie got away with murder, too, but she did it in the way that made everyone love her. She understood charisma before she was out of nappies. But Ollie was… well… it’s not that he was sleekit, but he did seem to be sneaky. And when he got to puberty he got surly too. He didn’t like to join in. He didn’t want to be part of the family. He didn’t want to be my brother, that was for sure. And it was pretty hard following him through school because he left quite a contrail in his wake.
That was childhood, but if I was to start my family history again; to place it in the context that’s probably most important for you to understand, Casey; the place I’d have to pick is my brother Alasdair’s 18th birthday. What would have been his 18th birthday, I mean, because Alasdair died when he was eighteen months old. A cot death. No explanation available. Put down to sleep one morning and never woke up. That’s got to be a hard fact to swallow. I think that’s the sort of fact that gets people creating fictions with their lives.
So this story begins on 1st August 1996. The family taking a deep breath. The birthday of the brother we’d never known but never been able to forget because my mum kept his pictures on the wall the same as the rest of us. It’s just that as we grew up and got more pictures, Alasdair didn’t. His pictures never developed beyond the happy toddler stage.
This is a hard story to tell, Casey. Even though I never knew my brother Alasdair, he never left us. In our old house I believe that his mark was on the kitchen door too. When we moved to the new house we carried on the tradition, and mum marked Alasdair’s height alongside our own, even though he never stood there. So it felt that we were always compared to Alasdair. And even though we grew and he didn’t and we got more pictures and he didn’t, and we were real and he wasn’t any more, we could never live up to the fiction of Alasdair. I guess it’s true to say my mum never really got over Alasdair.
I think Ollie felt it worse than I did. Somehow Mum just couldn’t connect with Ollie. People said she had him too soon after Alasdair died. I’m sure there’s never a right thing to do after a child dies. The best you can hope is that it brings the parents closer together, but it’s just as likely to pull them apart. They have all this grief and guilt. It was dad who found Alasdair and I think he blames himself that he couldn’t bring him back to life. And I think it was dad who wanted another child. I think he thought it would lift mum out of depression or something.
But that’s all my speculation. Anyway, it didn’t work. Maybe it was just too soon. But mum just didn’t look after Ollie when he was little. Not properly. Maybe she was afraid of losing another son. Maybe she thought it was something she had done wrong. Somehow she just couldn’t bond with him the way you are supposed to. So Ollie grew up in something of a vacuum. And as he grew older, dad seemed to blame him too because he hadn’t brought him and mum back together. Ollie was the sticking plaster for an arterial bleed. How could he be up to the job? It was asking too much of him. He was just a child, we all were. We didn’t know what we meant to our parents, and we didn’t know what we were supposed to do. All we knew was that no one could ever be as good as Alasdair.
Swearwords: None.
Description: Where does a story start?
_____________________________________________________________________
Where does the story of a family start? This one seems to start in so many places. Maybe there is no start point for a family, we all just pick the points that matter to us. Because the start of this story isn’t the start of the story.
My wife to be, Casey, wanted us to get married on Mull. She was pretty insistent on it. She’d found this wonderful castle hotel type venue and she couldn’t understand why I was so against it. It was our big day after all. One to remember for the rest of our lives.
Well, Casey. This is the story of why. You always say that there shouldn’t be secrets in families, and while I’m pretty sure every family has skeletons in the closet if you go back far enough, I’m going to take you at your word and open my family’s closet. Take it as a wedding present. To make up for not having that wedding on Mull you always dreamed of. One woman’s dream can be another man’s nightmare, I suppose.
No secrets in families? What is a family? For me, family has always been something of a fiction. Ever since; well, we’ll come to that. Firstly I should tell you some of the ‘facts’ about my family.
My mum and dad are called Justin and Victoria. Known communally by all their friends and family as J & Vic. Or even, by some wits as JVic – you know the kind of people who think ‘Brangelina’ is funny. Those kind of people. Our surname is Olds but it could have been anything. That’s not important. Names and places aren’t that important when it comes down to it, are they? We could be anyone.
There was nothing unusual about our family at all. Or so I thought. We were just a well off aspirational middle class family. Dad from London, Mum from Edinburgh. They met through the Insurance Company in the 70’s. Mum was temping while trying to get a career as a model off the ground. She had the looks, she had the height, but she didn’t have the connections. Or, to be honest, the motivation. Dad had been head hunted. He was big into actuarial risk. Which is funny because he’s about the most risk averse person I’ve ever met. If you think accountants are boring then you should meet actuaries. But they get paid a lot of money for their boredom and my dad earned a lot and spent a lot – on mum to begin with and then on the rest of us.
Family was important to my dad. It was everything, when it comes down to it. He was a great family man, although he was hardly ever there because he spent all his time working to provide for his family. That’s the way the cookie crumbles, as they say. I respect my dad, but I’m not going to be like him. I know I disappointed him when I decided not to use my intellectual powers to the full by getting a good career. But times have changed and I’m not sorry I didn’t go into financial services or banking at all. There’s more to life than money, right Casey? You don’t want a husband who is out eighteen hours a day and leaves you at home with the children, do you? If you do, you’ve picked the wrong man.
So, for the sake of family history, J & Vic had four children. The oldest was Alasdair. I can’t talk about him just yet. The jury is out on whether he’s the lynchpin that kept the family together or the thing that broke us apart. He was born in 1978. Oliver, the next oldest was born in 1981. I was born in 1983 and Ellie, our sister and the youngest of the Old’s – if that’s not too ironic a concept – was born in 1984.
What can I say about my brothers? Growing up, I suppose I should have been closest to Ollie since he was closest to me in age. But we just never seemed to see eye to eye. We were the proverbial chalk and cheese. We shared a bedroom but that’s about it. I got on better with my sister Ellie. She was born less than two years after me, so I don’t really remember life without her. I do remember that Ellie was everyone’s favourite. And rightly so. She just won her way into everyone’s hearts.
We lived all our lives in Edinburgh. First we lived in a big house in The Grange. Mum and Dad bought it cheap and got in Marco the builder to help ‘do it up’. Which took quite a few years. I had just started school when we made the move to the New Town. Upwardly mobile, I guess you could call my parents. We all went to a good school with a good blazer – it doesn’t matter to you if it was Watson’s, or Stewarts Melville or Heriot’s – and it didn’t really matter to us.
We went to good schools and we had a good life in a comfortable home. The New Town house was massive, but again it needed ‘doing up’ so Marco more or less moved with us. I don’t mean he lived with us; though he might as well have, the amount of time he spent in our house. No one seemed to mind. It was just that Marco was there more than dad because dad was out all the time earning the money to keep us in the good schools and the nice house with all the extras like holidays and riding, fencing, archery, skiing, and dancing lessons for Ellie. None of it comes cheap but dad managed to pay for it all. I have to respect him for that. We never went short. We were probably spoilt, if I’m honest. We didn’t think so, of course, our life seemed pretty normal to us and we just coasted comfortably through it most of the time.
So, as kids we went to parties and we had parties and we did all the extra things you can do at school and we passed all our tests – and no one was really a problem – except Ollie. Ollie would never play by the rules. Looking back, Ellie got away with murder, too, but she did it in the way that made everyone love her. She understood charisma before she was out of nappies. But Ollie was… well… it’s not that he was sleekit, but he did seem to be sneaky. And when he got to puberty he got surly too. He didn’t like to join in. He didn’t want to be part of the family. He didn’t want to be my brother, that was for sure. And it was pretty hard following him through school because he left quite a contrail in his wake.
That was childhood, but if I was to start my family history again; to place it in the context that’s probably most important for you to understand, Casey; the place I’d have to pick is my brother Alasdair’s 18th birthday. What would have been his 18th birthday, I mean, because Alasdair died when he was eighteen months old. A cot death. No explanation available. Put down to sleep one morning and never woke up. That’s got to be a hard fact to swallow. I think that’s the sort of fact that gets people creating fictions with their lives.
So this story begins on 1st August 1996. The family taking a deep breath. The birthday of the brother we’d never known but never been able to forget because my mum kept his pictures on the wall the same as the rest of us. It’s just that as we grew up and got more pictures, Alasdair didn’t. His pictures never developed beyond the happy toddler stage.
This is a hard story to tell, Casey. Even though I never knew my brother Alasdair, he never left us. In our old house I believe that his mark was on the kitchen door too. When we moved to the new house we carried on the tradition, and mum marked Alasdair’s height alongside our own, even though he never stood there. So it felt that we were always compared to Alasdair. And even though we grew and he didn’t and we got more pictures and he didn’t, and we were real and he wasn’t any more, we could never live up to the fiction of Alasdair. I guess it’s true to say my mum never really got over Alasdair.
I think Ollie felt it worse than I did. Somehow Mum just couldn’t connect with Ollie. People said she had him too soon after Alasdair died. I’m sure there’s never a right thing to do after a child dies. The best you can hope is that it brings the parents closer together, but it’s just as likely to pull them apart. They have all this grief and guilt. It was dad who found Alasdair and I think he blames himself that he couldn’t bring him back to life. And I think it was dad who wanted another child. I think he thought it would lift mum out of depression or something.
But that’s all my speculation. Anyway, it didn’t work. Maybe it was just too soon. But mum just didn’t look after Ollie when he was little. Not properly. Maybe she was afraid of losing another son. Maybe she thought it was something she had done wrong. Somehow she just couldn’t bond with him the way you are supposed to. So Ollie grew up in something of a vacuum. And as he grew older, dad seemed to blame him too because he hadn’t brought him and mum back together. Ollie was the sticking plaster for an arterial bleed. How could he be up to the job? It was asking too much of him. He was just a child, we all were. We didn’t know what we meant to our parents, and we didn’t know what we were supposed to do. All we knew was that no one could ever be as good as Alasdair.
About the Author
Annie Christie is a pretty ordinary person, except that she was born Annie Christie and then married a man called Christie and so is still called Christie despite having taken on her husband’s name. She sometimes wonders if she should have called herself Christie-Christie: but who would believe that?
Born near Drum of Wartle in Aberdeenshire, Annie moved as swiftly as possible to a place with a less bizarre name – Edinburgh – but the bizarreness chased her and she now lives with her husband Rab in rural Galloway, with a Kirkcudbrightshire postcode. (That's Cur coo bree shire to the uninitiated.) She is an active member of the Infinite Jigsaw Project and is now happy to be welcomed into McStorytellers with her first published serial, Family Fictions.
Born near Drum of Wartle in Aberdeenshire, Annie moved as swiftly as possible to a place with a less bizarre name – Edinburgh – but the bizarreness chased her and she now lives with her husband Rab in rural Galloway, with a Kirkcudbrightshire postcode. (That's Cur coo bree shire to the uninitiated.) She is an active member of the Infinite Jigsaw Project and is now happy to be welcomed into McStorytellers with her first published serial, Family Fictions.