Port George was never a town I would have chosen to visit.
It sat a really rocky outcrop on the North Cornish side of the Bristol Channel and took the full force of the North Atlantic weather. The village, jutting out on ragged cliff edges, wasn't the most welcoming place to be even at the height of summer and you kind of got the feeling that the Gulf Stream and the warm tropical currents it brought with it took one look at the small granite houses clinging to either side of the harsh unforgiving fissure nature had slashed into the rock face and thought 'fuck that place'.
I'd been there on many occasions and it always rained. I don't mean that with typical British glibness about our weather, it actually did always rain, all the time, every visit, without fail, except for one - when the sun shone on me.
I was a just turned 23 year old Londoner; a not so self-confident as I would have liked, semi-detached suburbanite and full of ideas and fired for my second year of my post graduate course in Clinical Medicine at my old alma mater, Cambridge and training to being a doctor.
My much-loved (if slightly away with the fairies) solicitor mother was about to head off for her fourth honeymoon (I was conceived three months before her first) with my latest Step-Dad, and I was to stay at our house with my two new step-sisters - 21 year old solidly stout, smart arse, bookishly bespectacled, dark haired and grumpy Leah and stick thin, bitchy, eighteen going on eight, whiney arsed, nothing-ever-right-or-good-enough, blonde Fiona.
Leah was studying at a University in London (which is how her Dad met my Mum) and Fiona was waiting for her results from her fee paying school before she then worked out how she could get into and out of The University of Guildford without having to meet any poor people.
Leah thought I was an idiot and stared down her nose at me because I was studying medicine and not English like her; which she did, all day every day, wherever the fuck she was. The fact I already passed the medical sciences Tripos seemed to go straight past her.
Fiona spent her first few days not in school hunting and often finding things to bitch about, and she would descend on the chosen subject with glee, happy in the knowledge that her eternal quest for the rest of the world to meet her perfectly normal, if rather exacting, standards had not been met AGAIN and that the world really did need her.
With a boyish attempt at psychoanalysis I guessed that with her high achieving sister, (albeit self-proclaimed), her birth mother doing the same as my birth mother and engaged in the process of serial monogamy, and then her wimpish Dad not having time for anyone but himself, she struggled with society and exactly where she figured she fitted in to it.
At least I knew that for the next fortnight I would be saved from "Daaaddeeee?" howled throughout the entire house as the middle aged love birds were off on honeymoon. Daaaaddeeeee was Dave who had worked out that he could never be more than three feet away from my Mum as her love for him could diminish and she could start looking for number five. Because he hardly knew me and Mum was British enough not to feel the need to shout my successes from the roof tops, I kind of think he had the almost the same opinion of me as Leah did. Again, I already had the equivalent to a degree and was two years into the four year clinical course I needed to be a real life medical Doctor.
I had dubbed him 'The Leech' as for most of their days together you couldn't see daylight between them.
Fiona's whine that morning had been a cracker and I think it was just because she knew it was her last chance before her father pissed off to 'their' holiday home in Southern France with my Mum to shag themselves stupid for two weeks, and because we all had to bend over backwards to play up to the little witch, the best she could manage went something like, "Richard has put the HP sauce RIGHT next to the mayonnaise again."
Seeing as her and her sister were both avid reality TV watchers, this was accompanied by a Kardashian style disappointed 'what the fuck' hand raise and a stunned disbelieving 'what the fuck' head wobble and this completed, she verbalised her disappointment to whit, "he ONLY does that because he knows it annoys me, make him stop it RIGHT NOW!"
This would be done with folded arms and pursed lips - I'm pleased to say that the brattish floor stomp had finished a few weeks before when everyone, including her Dad, took the piss.
'Daaaddeeee' had never had the inclination to refuse his daughters anything that didn't interfere with him, his business and his closeness to my Mum, and would normally put a gentle hand on my shoulder and ask if I could work a bit harder to ensure harmony in the house as we all 'had to get along'.
I reached into my back pocket and pulled out my little book that I'd been keeping for the three weeks since her term had finished and with a big cheesy grin said, "I'll add it to the list Dave."
But the irony was lost on him,
"Thanks mate," he said, so I wrote down 'don't put the HP so close to the mayonnaise in the fridge' after 'make sure the toilet paper is torn off of the roll square', 'don't put the mugs so close together in the dishwasher', 'Fiona's laundry has its own basket and MUST be stored separately before being washed with everyone else's stuff' and my personal favourite 'please don't open the large cupboard in the upstairs bathroom, as Fiona keeps her tampons there and doesn't want anyone to see them as they might know when she's on her period'. The fact that Mum and I had previously kept all of our deodorants, body sprays, aftershaves, razors and stuff in that large cupboard was fuck all to do with it.
For that one, Dave actually said that perhaps I could move all of that stuff into my room while Fiona was home before starting at University. I said perhaps Fiona might like to choose one of the many other cupboards that no one else used, much fairer I thought.
Dave did consider this, but as a professional businessman felt he was much cleverer than me and could totally get me to do what he wanted. So he came up with what he thought was some kind of a great deal, throwing in the counter-offer of me moving MY stuff in MY house because, after all, Fiona had let me keep MY bedroom so surely I could meet her halfway... mate...
I snorted something about that having been my bedroom since I was four but Dave just shook his head and gave me his big smile and hand on the shoulder 'we all gotta get along' routine that stopped me telling him where he could put all of Fiona's feminine hygiene products - just.
He needed me today because I was driving him and Mum to Gatwick so they could fly south. Bearing in mind I didn't really want to listen to them cooing and slobbering over each other for the forty five minute drive, I checked what I had stored on my phone and took a set of headphones.
I walked out to the car and there was Leah giving Dave a cursory peck on the cheek before returning to her 'study' (she growled and snarled if anyone referred to it as a bedroom) to throw herself zen-like into her re-reading of some more Byronic poetry to see if she could drag anymore joy or meaning from it.
Fiona hugged 'Daaaaddeee' and begged like an eight year old that she be allowed to come for the first two weeks rather than the flight out to join them for the second two.
"But I'll have to stay with HIM!" she pouted as Dave pushed her away to close the car door.
"Richard has promised to be nice to you Darling," said Dave, "He's writing all of your rules down;" he said, "aren't you Richard. Show her your little book..."
I beamed and fished out my tiny hard back black and red book and gleefully handed it back from my driving seat and continued plugging my phone in the car charger and setting up the audio book I would be listening to, looking in the rear-view mirror at the face of hatred from Fiona.
Dave might have taken it for kindness on my part but as for Fiona, she just read the book with all of the fifty or so stupid, whiney complaints numbered and written on a separate page in my best black, red, green and gold felt-tip illuminated calligraphy. It was a thing of beauty and I followed a YouTube idiots guide on the art, learned a couple of fonts and put enough effort into it to make a Cistercian Monk proud, and while it went straight over the head of superficial idiot Dave, it didn't with her and she saw my ridicule of her ridiculousness and she snarled at me with narrowed eyes.
Result.
"Daaaddeee!!" she screeched, "Make him stop writing down what I say!!" This latest dig at her brought back the brat stamp.
"But Fiona Darling!" said Dave, "How is he to know?"
"Yes, how will I remember not to put the Ribena back into the cupboard with the label facing inwards if I don't write it down Fiona? I'm not as clever as you and Leah don't forget." I said mirroring her Dad's part pacifying and part admonishing tone.
"DAAADDEEEEEEE!"
