Salad Days

Last week, I made a cake. Nothing special, just a vanilla sponge, sandwiched together with jam. At the sound of the K-beater being clicked into place on the Kenwood mixer, the Axis appeared like starved, slavering dogs, dancing excitedly from foot to foot in the kitchen doorway before even the first egg had been cracked. 'What you doing, Mum? Are you making us a cake? Can we have the bowl? Can I have the spatula and my brother have the beater? MMMMM yummy yum CAKE for US!' etc. After I'd scraped the creamy mix into the tin and bunged it in the oven, I handed over the bowl and two teaspoons to the lingering Axis. The Pie grabbed the bowl and set it down on the floor, kneeling down and leaning in, carefully and meticulously scraping every tiny spot of mixture from his side of the bowl, until he had enough to constitute a whole, delicious, vanilla-y mouthful. I watched, spellbound, as, at the very last second, just as Pie was about to put his hard-earned spoonful into his mouth, the vile Kong swooped down and - BOOM! - like a hideous, cake-bothering bird of prey, scooped the precarious ball of cake mixture from his brother's spoon onto his own, and slung it straight into his greedy, thieving mouth, cackling wickedly to his brother's howls of protest.

I knew he would, of course. I knew this would happen. Why? Because it mirrors, almost exactly, my own experiences with my brother, nearly thirty years ago. There is so much mirroring with those two and my own brother and me; the Axis have the exact same gap between their dates of birth, to the day, that my brother and I do, and I have no problem at all imagining them, spirit-children willing themselves into the world, in their primordial bubble, planning their order of arrival: 'You go first, yeah? And I follow two years later.' 'Make it two years, four months and four days, yeah? Three minutes to midnight, both of us, yeah?' 'Yeah! Same as her and her brother, yeah?! Heh heh heh.'

My own little brother got married last weekend, and I'm delighted/relieved that I was there to see it. In a family that's not generally characterised by sound choices of partner, he has managed to redress the balance by choosing someone fantastic. Pheeee-ew. It was weird, really; gave me pause to reminisce, and I realised how similar Broski and I are to the Axis.

The last physical fight Broski and I had was when I was 21 and he was 19; although I think it might have been a couple of years after that that he threw a £2 coin at my head, for various tedious reasons (it was his fault, obviously) and I screamed various curses at him and then, more than likely, smashed something. Throughout my childhood, he was there to exchange blows and pleasantries with; when I returned at Christmas after my first term at university, I attempted to thump him over some petty misdemeanour, only to discover the little sod had spent the time I was away furiously bulking up and working out, and his responding whack sent me flying across the room. Broski and I are fairly well known for our ability to start arguments in empty rooms; the night Daddio announced he was leaving me, Broski immediately materialised in solidarity and we got hideously drunk. At some point we were both on different floors of a relatively swanky/twatty place with several bars under one roof, starting different arguments with different people, at the same time.

I still remember him clearly as a baby, and I was always pretty delighted with him. He was a cute, chubby little thing, really; fat, dimpled arms and legs sticking out of his babygro like an overstuffed dolly; enormous dark eyes like chocolate, and a big laughing mouth, generally covered with chocolate, too. (When the Pie was born I was struck by the similarity. As a result, I often mix their names up, but never my brother and the Kong. Kong is completely different.)

Things I remember: matching horrible tracksuits, mine red, his blue, in about 1986.  Him singing the theme tune to 'Bergerac', repeatedly, in the back of the car on a family holiday around the same time (for the whole two weeks). Snoopy calendars printed out on old computer paper, the stuff with the green lines on the back, in our dad's office on a dot matrix printer. Our usually stern mum letting him sleep in her arms on the sofa as a two-year-old, after he needed stitches in his face on two consecutive weeks. Spending my entire childhood as a nervous wreck because he would creep into cupboards and wait, sometimes for hours, to leap out and terrify me. Me getting the blame the first time he got drunk (it had had nothing to do with me, typically). Laughing at him for dousing the front of his thick, curly black hair with Sun-In and having to spend the rest of the summer ginger at the front. His ability to recite the whole of the The Man with the Golden Gun and Crocodile Dundee II off by heart, having spent one summer watching them both about three times a day. Me getting in a rage with our mum for letting him steal my band t-shirts (that Therapy? Shortsharpshock T is MINE and I STILL want it back). Lots and lots of incidents that I daren't bring up without him getting in a huff, even now.

It's good, really, that I had this opportunity to think about and reflect on my brother. Like my own children, we are very much the same, but different. We have similar tastes in music, food, style (or lack of), but have different views on a lot of topics. We have not a clue what each other's jobs entail, nor have we for well over 10 years. He likes football and computers, I've tried to like football and computers but am much happier with books and cheese. My family are a pretty stroppy bunch (I include myself in that, although I expect some of you will disagree(ha!)) and there have been times where I've wanted to emancipate myself from the lot of them and change my surname to Bananahammock. Broski and I once managed to nearly achieve full-on nuclear fallout purely over text messages, without a single audible conversation being held - quite a feat, all things being equal. However, although I could give many examples to illustrate the point, I can't be bothered, really, so I'll just say this, which is what I say to the Axis after they've attempted to maim each other in some ghastly enterprise or other: Get on with your brother. You've not got another.

And, sentimental as horseshoe candy though it may be, I must say that twenty-odd years since he last stole my cake mix, I wouldn't want another, anyway.