I have a small heart.  Not in the actual physical sense, of course, but in the capacity to accommodate people I love and care about.  Every now and again, somebody comes along, like a newly born in the family who always manage to squeeze in.  Fully formed and developed adults have a harder time, much harder to fit in this crowded chamber, I am afraid. However, occasionally, the odd person turns up and through sheer force of personality elbows his/her way into my small and over-crowded heart.

My sister-in-law Caroline, affectionately known to the wider family as Caro and Mrs. Dampatch to my nuclear family, is one clear and rare example of someone who came into my field of vision and not bothering with the elbowing tactic, took a running jump into my heart and for the last 40 years, has claimed a piece of this real estate on permanent basis.

Don’t get me wrong, Caro is not a wilting, shy wall flower who is liked for her gentle nature and passive demeanor. She will be very angry with me if I tried to project such an image of her and my life will be made miserable next time we meet.

True, Caro is a kind, gentle, loving, affectionate and generous person.  But, she can also be a gigantic pain in the backside.  Without wishing to be paranoid about it, I think she saves her worst attitude for me, just for the sport of it.  She also hates it if I don’t lock horns and fight her with every ounce of energy I can muster because she feels cheated and goads me to come out fighting, if I had the ‘cajones’ for it.  She will bang on with her standpoint until either she wins and gloats about it for a while or loses and nurses a grudge for long enough to tell me to ‘piss off’ and we revert to being friends again.

Caro is 77 days older than me, give or take a few hours, and we tend to use this narrow window of opportunity to trade insults.  She calls me immature and I call her an old woman.  The ding-dong comes to an end when I am finally told to ‘piss off’.

Caro is married to just about the nicest, warmest, most generous of gentle giants you can imagine or wish to meet. He is Pedro (Pedji to our girls) and he is so easy to love and like, I just cannot imagine anyone feeling any way about him other than warmth and affection.  The two of them have been a constant and positive feature in our lives.

Whenever Claire and I moved from one place to another, they were always there to help us without being asked.  When we stopped renting fully furnished accommodation and bought our first flat, all we had were a mattress on the floor and a turned-up cubical wooden box as a dining table.  Although they were not rolling in money themselves, they came around and gave us a dining table, plates, cutlery and many other essentials to get us started off.  When we got married, we were determined to enter the Guinness Book of Records for having the smallest wedding ever by having just Claire’s parents present to witness the marriage.  Somehow, Caro managed to get the truth from her parents (by beating them up or something), She, Pedro and their two children turned up at the council offices in time to enjoy the official struggling to pronounce my name correctly.  They then insisted on taking us back to their house for a celebratory BBQ lunch.  When we had our three children, Caro and Pedro were the first to arrive and help us adjust to the new reality.  I lost count of how often they would arrive for a Sunday visit and ended up helping us build a green house, plaster a wall, fix the plumbing and many other DIY activities which Pedro excelled at.

When Claire and I suddenly had a panic attack and wondered in the event of both of us suddenly dying, what would happen to the girls (8 years and under at the time), it really took less than one minute to reach the conclusion that Caro and Pedro were the ideal people we trusted the most to bring the children up in the way we would wish.  When Claire called Caroline to ask if they would take on this onerous responsibility, Caro took 5 seconds to say yes in her own style by saying: We would have been pissed off with you if you had asked anyone else.  When Claire and I decided to spend Christmas 1985 / 86 with my family in Jordan, we returned in early January 1986 in the middle of a cold spell.  Not thinking far enough in advance, we took public transport to Heathrow Airport.  Our return flight was delayed, which meant we would arrive late and it was during the flight that Claire asked the simple question: ‘how are we going to get home from the airport?’ that we began to consider various wild options, all of which were either impractical or expensive.  We decided to do the expensive option and take a taxi all the way home.  As we cleared passport control and collected our luggage, we emerged to the main ‘Arrivals Concourse’ and in between the hundreds of faces waiting for their loved ones, there were the two faces of Caro and Pedji with their two young children Anna and Jon!  They somehow sensed we would need help, jumped in their car and came to collect us. Who does that?  Young Jon over-entertained us on the way home by incongruously singing over and over again Madonna’s ‘Like a Virgin’.  He was handsomely rewarded by Caro with a few clips round the ear.

When I fell ill in Cyprus, Caro flew over from Majorca to London then to Cyprus to visit me, except I did not have the common decency and stay well enough while she was with us; I developed an infection and had to be rushed to hospital before she actually reached the house so, the taxi driver took her straight to hospital.  Last year on her birthday, I called Caro in Majorca while being transferred from a hospital in Swindon to one in Oxford, suffering from a severe case of Hepatic encephalopathy (HE) which causes delirium.  Instead of saying happy birthday to her, I asked her to bring me back some Jamón Ibérico (posh ham).  Caro laughed but sure enough, next time she came to England with Pedro, they brought me the ham I asked for.

I can go on forever, but I won’t in case Caro gets the grandiose idea she is someone special and I wouldn’t want to give her the satisfaction!

Anyway, last week Caro took the dog Ben for a walk and unbelievably, they were attacked by a swarm of angry / anxious bees.  Stung over 400 times, Caro fell to the ground and broke both her wrists.  Unconfirmed reports suggest it was Ben who, Lassie style, raised the alarm and Pedro rushed to the scene only to be attacked too.  Caro spent a few very worrying days in ICU and was finally released two days ago.  Two broken wrists?   Many bee stings?  ICU? Caro is up to the task of getting over all of that, and then some.  A lesser person would have buckled under such trauma but, not Mrs. Dampatch, she has a titanium personality.

Today is Caro’s birthday 19th of March so, here are a few words that will prompt her to tell me to piss off in no uncertain way:  Well old girl, I wish you a speedy recovery from your latest illness and I hope you will have many happy returns of the day.  I love you more than you can imagine, and my life is the richer for you being part of it.  Thank you for always being present during the hard and easy times, they are all treasured.

Now, I shall have the grace to piss off before I am told to do so.