Family of strangers

Sometimes I wonder what it's like to have a "normal" family. Or at least how I picture a normal family, if such a thing exists. The sort of family that's endlessly paraded in the media and TV adverts.

You know, the kind of family where they all get on with each other (more or less), where there's lots of physical affection, where they have frequent gatherings to celebrate things like Christmas and birthdays, where they defend each other to the hilt.

My family isn't remotely like that. The polar opposite in fact. It would be hard to find a family more dysfunctional, more like a bunch of strangers forced to mingle with each other than a family.

My father and I were estranged for a good twenty years. It seems I was too unconventional for his tastes, so he broke off communication. My sister and I have been estranged for even longer. I suspect she dislikes my political views but there must be more to it than that.

My brother in law and niece are equally non-communicative. We were in close touch for a few months while my mum's probate was sorted out, but then everything went quiet again.

My mum always kept in touch, but we were never that close because like my father she never understood my aberrant personality. Even my vegetarianism defeated her. To her dying day, she was sure I was really a meat-eater.

So I imagine that strange phenomenon, a normal family. A tightly-knit group of buddies rooting for each other and enjoying everyone's odd tastes and opinions.

My mental template of a normal family is the time I visited a Jewish family in Bournemouth. The interaction between them was extraordinary. They were all speaking at once, arguing passionately, sparking each other off. They plainly got on like a house on fire.

A far cry from my own peculiar family.

Unshared memories

One reason I can't fully explain myself to other people is that so much of my identity is made up of memories - lush, detailed, intense memories that others can never have access to. I can only summarise those memories in a few brief sentences that fail to pass on their complexity.

It's a whole inner landscape or inner country that I'm familiar with, that I've wandered through hundreds of times, that's as vivid to me as the outside reality I'm seeing right now. Yet nobody else has set foot in it.

If I think of my boarding school, for example, a whole swathe of memories spreads across my mind, a whole panorama of teenage bullies, uninspired teachers, muddy sports fields and loud rock music. There's no way I can convey the full flavour of those memories to anyone else. However well chosen the words, they can only suggest a tiny fragment of what my inner eye is seeing.

It's like trying to conjure up Venice to someone who's never been there. I can describe it, I can show you a few pictures, but I can't give you the full three-dimensional reality of being there and discovering it for yourself.

It doesn't matter if the memories are true or false, accurate or distorted. The point is that they inhabit my mind but they don't inhabit yours. They fill out and embellish my past to give it a completeness that nobody else can know.

I can remember a particular girlfriend, say, and exactly how she spoke and moved and ate and laughed and undressed. However detailed my account of her, you will never see her as clearly as I can see her in my memories. You will never be able to imagine the living, breathing, animated person that I can instantly visualise.

If only I could transfer those memories, how much more you would know about me and my inner experience. If only you could download them from my brain and play them back through your own senses, in all their astonishing intricacy.

But no, they're mine and mine alone, circulating my mind like guests at a party, furnishing me with endless private scenarios I can't communicate. A whole chunk of my identity as inaccessible as the Milky Way.

Mysteries of friendship

Even at my grand old age, friendship is still a big mystery. How is that we can click with some people instantly, while with others there's no spark whatever?

How remarkable it is when I've met someone and straightaway there's something flowing between us, some vigorous connection as if there are no personal barriers and we might have known each other for years.

Even if you don't meet for months, as soon as you do it's like you saw each other yesterday and conversation comes easily and naturally as if it never stopped. You simply pick up where you left off as if you merely paused for a cup of coffee.

With other people that psychic "ping" just never happens, however much I'd like it to. We can talk about the most intimate subjects without any actual intimacy. We can be utterly frank but there's still an invisible boundary between us, as if I'm talking to a doctor or a therapist.

I may know someone for 20 years, I may have shared all sorts of experiences with them, but still I don't feel close to them, there's a hovering sense of reserve and distance despite everything.

I can meet someone and think they would be a wonderful friend, they have some sort of quality that immediately attracts me. I do everything I can to ignite a friendship, to get something going between us, but somehow it never works. We meet up occasionally, we chat, we share things, but it never makes that final leap to long-term devotion.

How lucky you are if you have a handful of really close friends, a select few you get on with effortlessly, a seamless communication with no restraints. It's a rare thing in a world of distrust and caution.

Banning the burka

I have a sneaking sympathy for the Tory MP who wants to ban the burka or niqab in public because they prevent "normal dialogue with other human beings."

Philip Hollobone says "seventy five per cent of the usual communication between two human beings is done with personal experience. You don't get any of that if your face is covered."

He is bringing a private member's bill into parliament to ban garments that hide women's faces. This follows a similar ban by the French parliament this week.

He says he has no objection to religious clothing in general, such as Sikh turbans, but burkas and niqabs are not religious requirements, merely traditional practice. Not only do they hinder normal communication, but the person's identity is concealed.

He will refuse to talk to Muslim women in his constituency surgery unless they lift their face veil so he can see them properly.

I must say I have some sympathy with his views, despite the fashionable opinion that covering your face or body is a matter of personal freedom and nobody has the right to request otherwise, whatever the reason.

I admit I find it disconcerting when confronted by someone whose face or body is covered. I suspect it's not entirely a personal choice but is heavily influenced by other people (particularly men) insisting that exposing the female body is provocative, licentious and indecent. I also think that seeing someone's facial expressions helps me to understand how they are feeling or thinking, which mere talking cannot do.

Naturally Muslim groups have condemned Mr Hollobone for "fanning the flames of intolerance " and increasing discrimination. But what about the flames of intolerance that insist female flesh is so shameful and disgusting it should never be seen by anyone?

A survey by the Pew Global Attitudes Project found that a ban on face-covering veils was supported by a majority in France (82%), Germany (71%), Britain (62%) and Spain (59%), but only a minority in the US (28%).

You can read an opposing point of view by Nesrine Malik here or by Martha Nussbaum here and here

Pic: Philip Hollobone

One sex or two?

Now and again for a bit of fun I suggest to people that life would be a hell of a lot simpler with one sex instead of two. All those endless tensions and aggravations and misunderstandings would disappear and it would be so much easier to get on with each other.

But it's surprising how many people don't like the idea at all and are very keen to keep the two sexes just as they are. Despite all the negatives, they enjoy the frisson and the enigma of this unfamiliar Other who plays by different rules and is always hard to understand.

They also enjoy acting out their particular gender role and seeing it appreciated by the other lot, be it flouncing around in dresses and high heels or fixing a dodgy carburettor. They just love to be told "God, you're beautiful" or "I could never have fixed that myself."

Seriously though, are all those rather superficial thrills and benefits really enough compensation for the never-ending battle of the sexes as we keep squabbling over the perennial bugbears - sharing the household chores, sharing the childcare, workaholic males, shopaholic females, football mania, dieting mania, sex obsession, beer bellies.

For most people, the astonishing answer is yes, we're prepared to put up with all that for the excitement of jumping into bed with the opposite sex, watching our bloke build a garden shed or watching our wife breastfeeding. The idea of us all being the same sex fills people with horror and incredulity. Wouldn't it take all the fun out of life? Wouldn't we all be drearily similar?

Well, of course we wouldn't, we'd still have very different personalities, tastes and habits. There just wouldn't be this massive gender gap blocking communication the whole time. There'd be a lot more common ground and shared assumptions. Or so it seems to me.

And no prizes for guessing which sex I'd like to preserve. I adore those flawless double-X chromosomes. Who needs those second-rate XYs? There'd just be the small problem of perfecting virgin birth....