Julie

My sister.

What to say about her, given that she has given me strict instructions on what not to write and that she has a pretty scary anger on her?

Well, I guess I've known her longer than anyone else, apart from my mum, who is not mentioned to date as she has not yet sponsored me. Honestly, you'd think that would be the banker.

I think Julie "Townsend" (nope, sorry, still doesn't sound right) would agree with me when I say we are as different as chalk and cheese. She is a happily married mum of 2.4 kids (literally - she's pregnant by the way, not the mother of a bizarre 40%-sized child), lives on a farm in the Cotswolds in a 700 year old listed farmhouse, likes a bit of CSI on the telly, and loves animals, especially those larger than a small tractor. I on the other hand live in the biggest concrete jungle in the country, believe in paying the GDP of a small African country in rent, and have perfected the art of looking extremely uncomfortable when I go to visit her, due to the weird brown squidgy stuff all over the place (I believe it's called "muck") and the strange aroma in the air (quaintly referred to by the locals as "fresh air").

Julie's talent of late seems to be dropping sprogs, of which more in a later post. It is all a far cry from our childhood when we lived in a house which cleverly straddled the two directions our lives would take, being a very urban dwelling in a very rural setting. It's safe to say we weren't exactly Brandon and Brenda from Beverly Hills 90210 - no cosy hugs for us. Instead, we had Julie chucking the remote control at my head, causing it to smash of the wall; me tripping her up in her roller boots at the rugby club and causing her to sprain her wrist, just days before her 11 plus (sorry); ruining her last moments prior to uni with Sorcha our beloved border collie (sorry again); me grassing on her whenever I got the chance (ummm, sorry). In short, I was a little bastard of a wee brother, although in my defence I didn't realise at the time.

Thankfully, with our advancing maturity (mum, stop sniggering), we have learned to get along and celebrate, or at least tolerate our differences. I'll never properly fit in in her world, and she'll never feel comfortable in mine, at least not for any length of time. But I probably feel closer to her these days than ever before, even if we don't speak that often.

I couldn't ask for a better sister, so thank you for being there and thank you for sponsoring me. And thank you for getting found out for being a smoker before me - like everything else in our lives, the fact you got the shit for it first made it much easier for me to follow with barely a comment.

Wee Bruv x