My grandmother had a saying "Peace, perfect peace, and loved ones far away".

Yesterday I really knew what she meant.

Every time I started to do anything there was a nephew at the door repeating the only words they seen to have in their vocabulary "Hungry. Food. Hungry. Food". They don't live with me - they live next door - the oldest on his own right next to us, the younger two with their parents half a mile up the road (but the next house none-the-less).

So I found myself cooking egg and chips serially, and not getting on with anything I wanted to do. (Well 'wanted' may be an exaggeration since what I was supposed to be doing was cleaning - which is what I'm not doing at the moment.)

I really do love my nephews very, very much, but it is so much easier really to like and welcome people you see less often.

Take my first cousins as an example: one lives a dozen miles away in Cleethorpes, two live fifty plus miles away in Sheffield and York respectively, and the other eight live in Canada. No problems with liking them unreservedly all the time, and I am always delighted to see any of them.

Mind you, my grandmother (and grandmother to all the Canadian cousins too) had another saying "Fish and company stink in three days", but I think if they came all that distance we could remain in happy catch-up mode for at least a week.