The families that are tangled up like socks in a tumble dryer work best We walked to the walled edge, and looked down on the patch of grass in front of the water, from where the sound of clanging had carried. There, the Gus Honeybun children's train-ride was feebly battling against the wind. Three or four bright metal trains. I didn't see any children. "He was massive, Gus," he said. That's all that's left of him now, a face on the front of a train. The night before, we'd eaten with nearly all the family. He has a brother and a sister, a sister-in-law and a brother-in-law, there are five children, and that night, too, the girlfriend of one of the children. All around one table. I'm an only child with one cousin, somewhere. We're not close. This family is close. It argues and laughs, and gets knotted up like the towels and socks in the tumble dryer: it can look like a mess, but it all comes out fine. Warm and fine. That night, it felt like there were about a dozen conversations on the go at once. I listened to a policeman worry over the state of the nation, while I talked with a teenager about Facebook bullying. The children, I kept thinking, aren't children any more. When did that happen? One of the children - one of the young men - quoted, from memory (alarmingly), some of the various bits of abuse aimed at me on the internet. But I realised, hearing those comments - whose malicious intent I carry about inside; names do hurt you, the great parental lie - hearing them spoken out loud, in this place with these people, the hurt dissolved. I love these people - I don't know if they know this, and what would it matter whether they do or not? The revelation about a large family is the capacity it provides for individuality. There is space both for those who want to be front of stage, commanding attention, and those who prefer to sit back at the edges, and watch. The taxi came and took us to his mother's home; his mother's world, now, since she can no longer walk further than from the living-room to the kitchen, and then only with aid. Can't, or won't? Does that matter, either? The family spend their lives wondering when the alarm will go off, when the bell will ring. We all feel guilty, in different ways, I suspect. I think of my grandmother, and how rarely I see her. I have no facility for conversation, for sociability. It is the only child's burden: a self-awareness as heightened as it is useless and inappropriate. What's worse: the smile so fake with forced cheeriness that it aches the cheeks? Or to sit politely, open to accusations of boredom? I'm not bored, though. There's always space to watch, and listen: Remember the dog with the very long legs? It did not have long legs. Yes it did, you had to give it to that farmer. Well, it ate my curtains. The morning passed, slowly but too quickly, and another taxi delivered us to the station to catch the train home. Strange word, "home": where had we just been? On the journey, I received an email from my mother, to remind me that it's the 17th anniversary of my father's death. I didn't need reminding. More guilt: it's months since I went home (another "home"). I wish Dad had met him - met Keith. The bell this morning signalled more than the redundancy of a children's toy train. A long journey lends itself naturally to meditation, and the bells remind me of John Donne's: All mankind is of one author and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language, and every chapter must be so translated. God employs several translators... So he does. We're all in the same story, after all: the young, the elderly, the dead. And so they have met, Keith and Dad, of course they have. That's what I learnt from his family, this visit. They meet through love.