Features and blogging

If there’s one good reason for having a socially distanced doorstep meeting today (Good Friday 2020) it’ll be to say happy birthday to my best, older and only sister Tamsin. She should have been in Paris this weekend, but instead she’ll be here in London, pottering on the balcony, tickling the cat and going for Heath walks with her very lovely bloke.
Only 14 months apart, we grew up with such vastly different outlooks that we often wondered if one of us was adopted. Like a classic big sister, she used those differences to our advantage and taught me everything she knew: how to jump off the top bunk without breaking your neck; how to smoke and dance; later on how to keep calm on a canopy walk, and how to ride a wobbly camel.
We lived in the same house for a while. It was like Tales of the City, with her in the basement and me in an upstairs room. At night we’d check to see if the other was up. If her light was on (it always was) we’d prop up her tiny kitchen table and polish off all the wine, giggling helplessly into the small hours.
When I was scared of the aisle, she organized a crash course in hypnotherapy. When Jonah was slightly premature, she ran out to get him a set of ‘Tiny” baby outfits (‘so he looks like he fits his clothes a bit better’).
When Mum died, she was the one who set up the JustGiving page that gave us all something to watch as the hospice money came rolling in. And the next day she sorted me out with a cobbled-together birthday picnic on the Heath, now marked out as one of my best birthdays ever.
These days we’re a lot more alike. We both sound like our mother. We both have the trademark Darke eyelids. She likes road trips and retro tunes and packets of snacks and ridiculous jokes and life in London, and so do I. But she still has her own signature hallmarks:

She’ll take a long rambling walk across Heath or cliff. Then another. While I’m untying boots and putting on the kettle, she’ll go for another.
She hasn’t got a microwave: respect.
She’ll do anything for her neighbours.
She makes chilli in a way that I just can’t.
She has the work ethos of a country leader (a brilliant one).
She shares our dad’s love of proper travel.
She thinks a spa afternoon is having your back slapped with a toilet brush on a marble slab (and she’s right, it does feel good).
She thinks of ways to help that are sideways and clever.
She’ll stop the clock to wipe the cat’s bum, clear vomit, tickle tiny paws in the small hours.
She’s the kind of aunt every teen should have.
Happy birthday @iamdizzyblonde. That cat is lucky to have you, as are we. xxx