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My son put a board game in front of my face last Sunday. Santa had thoughtfully given ‘My Dysfunctional Family’ to him last Christmas and here it was, still in its cellophane wrap five months later. “Can we play this?” he asked. Of course we’d play it. It sounded like the ideal game for our family. 

With the box in my hands, I studied the cover ‘My Dysfunctional Family – putting the FUN in Dysfunctional’. “Perfect” I muttered. It was all coming back to me. It had been a panic buy on Santa’s behalf on Christmas Eve. Now all I had to do was to round up all six members of my own dysfunctional family to play.

The eldest daughter was straightening her hair, another daughter was missing and the youngest was under her bed making rubber band bracelets. My husband was reading the Racing Post in front of the telly. Some ten minutes of yelling later and we all sat at the kitchen table like the Waltons.

To play ‘My Dysfunctional Family’, someone reads out a question and the others write down the name of the family member who fits the description. If your answer matches that of the person asking the question, you get a point. The first person to get to twenty is the winner. Easy.

My eldest daughter asked the first question. “Which member of the family is the most impatient?” Simple. I wrote my son’s name down as fast as I could and tapped my pen on the tabletop and bit my nails as I waited for everyone else to write their answer.

Everyone held up his or her answers. I was the only person to write my son’s name down. They had all written my name. They were all wrong as I have the patience of a saint. I thought they all knew everyone knows that. “Next question, next question, next question” I called out. 

“Which member of the family is most likely to lie to a police officer?” Another easy one, I write down my youngest daughter’s name. She is great at embellishing the truth and could talk her way our out of anything. We held up our answers.  

I got the majority vote again. This was ridiculous. “But you did pretend that you didn’t know your back light was broken last month when you were stopped,” one of my daughters pointed out gently, patting my back like I was in the later stages of senile dementia.

Next question:  “Which member of the family would take something from a family member’s room without asking?” Not me. My son was awarded that one.  Then, “Who is most likely to buy stuff that they don’t need?” That could be any of my daughters. I wrote one down at random and held my card up.

“I AM NOT A SHOPOHOLIC!” I screamed when to my astonishment, they had all written my name down. “But what about the ice cream machine you never use?” my son piped up. This game was getting too much. ‘My Dysfunctional Family’ was nothing more than an exercise in character assassination; public flogging at it’s finest.

Then the next question really touched a nerve. “Who is the worst driver?” So what if drive at the same speed as a mobility scooter?  At least I have no points on my licence.  That makes me a better driver than my husband, yet I got the majority vote. This was clearly a conspiracy.

Clearly the game was rigged.  Next question: “Which member of the family takes playing games with the family far too seriously?”  I won that vote too. I needed tea. Tea would calm my nerves, help me swing the game and be the first to twenty points. I might still be in with a chance.

But there was no milk in the fridge. I could write a whole list of my own questions about the fridge-freezer situation. “Which family member puts empty milk cartons back in the fridge?” “Which family member takes bites out of a block of cheese and put it back in the fridge?” “Which family member digs the chocolate fish out of the Ben and Jerry’s Phish Food and puts it back in the freezer?”

We paused My Dysfunctional Family for ten minutes whilst I drove to the local shop for milk. That’s when it happened. I reversed impatiently out of the driveway, scraping the side of the car along the garden wall. Outside the shop I surveyed the damage. There were a few large, deep scratches. “Which family member should have gone to Specsavers?” Me. “Which family member should have made do with black coffee?” Me.

At the shop, milk and teabags went into my shopping basket along with a Chunky Kit Kat, which I ate it in the driver’s seat. A Chunky Kit Kat always makes everything feel better. Ten minutes later, I drove home very, very carefully, slower than a mobility scooter.

No one saw me slip into my teenager’s room and borrow her bulging pencil case. They too busy raiding the fridge to notice me nip back outside to the driveway, where I crouched down and coloured in the scratch on the side of the car. Luckily my daughter had a felt tip pen in a similar shade of people carrier blue.

“Which family member will deny all knowledge of a scratch on their car?” Me.  “Which family member thinks that next year, Santa should think about gift vouchers instead of silly American board games that end up causing nothing but family fights, damage to the family car and paranoia?” ME. 

A new kettle? Don't be so ridiculous.

“Coffee?” I asked Dad last week as he sat on the sofa, dog on his lap. He nodded.  I had just picked him up from hospital after surgery to remove a bladder tumor. He had been in a hospital bed for almost a week and was not himself at all.

He had bled more then he should have done, refused pain killers and anti-inflammatories (for his own peculiar reasons), he had missed his beloved dog terribly and was now home, on the sofa, looking a little worse for wear.

I went into Dad’s kitchen and looked at his kettle. It’s a white plastic kettle, about fifteen years old and the bone of much contention between my father and I.  He he lives in an area where the water is hard and as a result, limescale in kettles and pipes is a huge problem. 

I took the lid off and looked inside. Big flakes of limescale floated on the surface of the water and lumps of it stuck to the sides of the kettle. It was disgusting and surely, not right that anyone should be drinking from it at all. If limescale can irriversibly damage a dishwasher, my mind boggles at what it’s doing to Dad’s insides.

Most people dissolve kettle limescale with tablets that can be bought easily in a supermarket. I bought Calgon tablets for Dad several years ago but he refused to use them and threw them away. “I like my kettle like it is” was his comment as he sipped on a mug of coffee with white lumpy clouds floating around in it.

So last year, for Christmas, I went and did something totally ridiculous. I bought him a new kettle with matching toaster. The other bone of contention between us is that when he comes to Ireland, he loves nothing more than a bit of hot buttery toast. Yet, in his own kitchen, he hasn’t a toaster.

“I’m not using either of them. You may as well keep them yourself,” he told me at the time. I laughed and said that I did not need another kettle or toaster and that he should keep them and enjoy a slice of toast in his own home alongside a cup of clean coffee.

So last week, as he sat dozing in the front room, I decided to have a poke around the kitchen and hunt for the shiny new kettle. It didn’t take me long to find it. Tucked away in the cupboard under the stairs, still in the box, alongside it, the toaster. I took out both. First I unwrapped the kettle, half filled it with water and switched it on.

Dad woke from his doze. “I know what you are doing in there!” he barked. “You have got that new kettle out haven’t you? Well I’ll have coffee made with my kettle thank you very much”.

This was the reaction that I had anticipated. He is from a generation who were taught to ‘mend and make do’. He survived the war where his mother fed a family of six on what she grew in the garden and little more than one egg a week.

That I should come along and throw aside a dirty, scaly kettle that can still boil water is a crime in his mind. As for the toaster, that’s nothing more than new fangled technology like microwave ovens and metal detectors. 

“You can take the kettle home with you”. With Ryanair’s new passenger friendly policy of two bags per person I could carry it home but what was the point?  I explained that I had a perfectly good kettle at home already. “SO DO I!” he snapped grumpily.

I did the right thing and switched on his old kettle too. I watched the two kettles as they came to the boil side by side. I poured water from his kettle into a mug for him and from the new kettle, poured water into a mug for me.

Then I unwrapped the toaster and plugged it in. I had expected him to shout again but he remained silent. I put in two slices of bread and pushed down the lever. A few minutes later the kitchen was filled with the aroma of toast.

I found his favourite plate (at least thirty years old, chipped with the 1970’s flower design washed away) and put the toast onto it. Then I spread butter onto the toast, put it onto a tray beside the cloudy coffee and headed into the front room.

“Toast!” I announced. He took the dog from his lap and put the tray there instead. He picked up a slice and bit into it with a crisp crunch. I drank my limescale free tea and watched as he ate every bit. I may have lost the kettle battle but at least he might be coming round to the idea of a toaster.

As I was getting ready to leave a few days later, Dad came into the kitchen and started looking in the cupboards. “Where have you put the box and wrapping for that kettle?” he asked. I found it in the cupboard under the stairs and handed to him. He packed up the kettle and hid it away again until next time I visit.

Then he looked at the toaster that I had used to toast his bread, crumpets, teacakes and bagels. “Dad, why don’t you keep the toaster out? It’s only a toaster?”  “Because I’ve managed without a toaster for seventy years and I don’t need one now” he said.

“But it’s so easy to use! You love toast!” I tried to convince him to keep it out and not box it away.  Then the dog started barking, he got distracted and I left for home.  I put his fast recovery from surgery down to hot buttery toast. But is the toaster on the counter now? I doubt it.

It would be easier to teach his old dog new tricks.

DEXTER MORGAN

“Aren’t you glad that she has a boyfriend?” a friend asked me last week. She was talking about my sweet sixteen year old. Glad? I didn’t even know. Being the last to know anything is standard for me, it came as no surprise really. The only thing that baffled me was when on earth she got to actually see this boyfriend. She stays in her room, on her laptop all day and for most of the night too.

“She has a framed photo of him on her bedside table. He’s gorgeous!” the friend added. She was buzzing at the idea of my first born having found a partner and as far as she was concerned, we were all just one bridesmaid away from a wedding. It was too much.

I was already depressed after eating three Easter eggs in a row and now I had this to face up to the fact that my daughter had a boyfriend. I had no choice but to investigate. Curiosity got the better of me and I was going to have to go where no mother likes to go: into her teenager’s bedroom. I would have to enter the teen cave to try and get a look at the mystery boyfriend.

The next day I made a cup of tea. I would bring it into her and, as I gave it to her, sneak a quick look at the photo. Maybe I would recognize him. Maybe he was a neighbour’s son.  I put the kettle on and looked at my feet. I would need shoes. The floor is strewn with all manner of debris. I could tread on broken glass, an old hammer and a sticky puddle of goo or laundry that may have been there for years.

With slippers on, I knocked at the door. Silence. I knocked again. Silence. I looked at my watch. It was almost midday. I gently opened the door, “Hello?” I heard a moan. In the dim light I thought that I could see movement coming from the bed. A limp foot peeked out from beneath a duvet. “Tea?” I said, my beady eyes searching the room for the framed photo.

She made a grunting noise. I knew that sound.  To the untrained ear it sounds like she is in pain, as though she has stood on a drawing pin. But I know that the noise well, it means “GET OUT”. I tiptoed through the mess on the floor towards the curtains and gently opened them. Light flooded into the room causing her to let out an even louder grunt.  That one was familiar too. It means “I HATE YOU”.

“I’ve made you tea!” I said, trying my best to sound chirpy and not the least bit suspicious. With my beady eyes I scanned the room. Empty tea cups everywhere, make up brushes, shoes, socks and scissors lay scattered beneath me. It would be so tempting to sweep the whole lot up and fill a sack but I knew that I’d have to leave it for another day.

Then I saw the frame. “Tea?” I said again. That would throw her off the scent as she lay there, a pillow on her head, groaning, thumping the mattress with her first and totally unaware that I was about to see HIM for the first time. I put the tea down, picked up the frame and ran out of the room.

In the safety of my kitchen, I stood by the window and in the midday sun, turned the frame around and looked at the photo. He was good looking alright. He was wearing a surgeon’s green scrubs. He was wearing plastic surgeon’s gloves, covered in blood and looking at a row of knives. This wasn’t a lad from school. This was Dexter Morgan.

Dexter is the lead character in a cult American TV drama of the same name. The show ran for eight years and is the reason that my teenager spends so much time in her dark room on her laptop. She has watched the whole seven seasons on Netflix over the last few months.  He is a serial killer but we all love Dexter because he only kills bad people.  My teen is in love with a serial killer.

An hour later she came thumping out of her room. When she saw the photo, she picked it up silently and took it back to her bedroom. Ten minutes later she returned. “I want to paint blood splats on my bedroom wall,” she said, rubbing her eyes. She struggles with daylight like many teenagers. “I want to get some red paint and let it run down the wall. Like blood dripping down to the floor. Can we go to Woodies?” I said that I would think about it.

Later she walked through the house looking shocked. “I’ve been looking up Dexter on Wikipedia” I suppose that counts as an educational exercise. “Guess what?” I shrugged my shoulders. “He’s 44!” She was genuinely shocked and repulsed, almost choking as she spoke.

The framed Dexter print no longer sits on her bedside table. It has nothing to do with the fact that he wraps his victims up in cling film, stabs them through the chest, cuts them up into pieces, bags up their body parts in bin liners, piles them into his boat and drops them into the sea off the Miami coast. She didn’t mind any of that at all. In the eyes of my teenager, Dexter’s only crime is that he is the same age as her mother.

Just when I thought the crush had gone, two days later the postman delivered a parcel. She had ordered a t-shirt online. “You are going to LOVE this,” she said as she unwrapped the parcel and put it on.  “Ta Dah!” she span around. It was white and covered in blood splats with the words, “Keep Calm and let Dexter handle it”. Essential summer wear for teenage serial killer fans.  

The serial killer crush is back on.