I live with my little sister by choice, because she is my always friend. For a long time, I genuinely believed that the sole reason for my little sister’s existence was to be a companion to myself. It came as somewhat of a shock to hear that my parents had actually wanted another child. Until I realised that if your first baby is as awesome as me, naturally you would continue to procreate.
It is, for the most part, fantastic living with your always friend. My little sister is the funniest person I have ever met, buys super expensive Waitrose food, and has the most enormous DVD collection I have ever seen.
This week, however, has been slightly different. It started, as most weeks do, on Monday. ‘Lucy,’ My little sister began carefully. ‘Do you have a sleeping bag?’ I looked at her oddly. ‘No,’ I replied, climbing into my freshly made bed. ‘Sleep well.’ 30 minutes later, as I was drifting off to sleep, playing one of my favourite in-my-head games, where I am perfectly and aptly delivering all the zinging one-liners I failed to think of in time in real life, my little sister thundered her way into my bedroom.
‘I’m sleeping here,’ She announced, clambering into bed next to me just as I was telling my Year 1 art teacher why my Mother’s Day gift was ‘too good for her bourgeois conceptions of art’. She then proceeded to hop in and out of bed for the next 20 mins, each journey accompanied by a turning on of the overhead light, collecting her phone, endless glasses of water, and another pillow. It was, to the best of my imaginings, exactly like sharing a bed with Margaret Thatcher.*
My little sister wakes up early, and so was long gone by the time I blearily made my way to the shower. Washing vigorously to try to remove some of the gritty trauma of the night before (my little sister sleeps so stilly that I had to check several times in the night that she was still alive), I hopped out of the shower and into the welcoming embrace of no towel. Because my little sister has seemingly developed late-onset colour-blindness, and can no longer tell the difference between blue (my towel) and green (her, certainly unwashed and rather ratty-looking towel).
As I tried to tell my Mother later that day, sometimes, it’s better to realise that, Guy-Ritchie like, your first creation is just the best thing you’re ever going to make.
*Margaret Thatcher famously only slept 4 hours a night. This is usually held up as an admirable trait, but I now think we should all spend a few moments thinking about poor Denis.*
unfashionablylost 