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It was tradition, that’s how he put it to Michael. It was something all the men of the family had done since time immemorial, used the cloth tape measure of Great Aunt Joyce to measure their…progress. He couldn’t say it direct, because it might get back to Mum. This way he had deniability – I meant measure his height, mother. He’s lifting weights now, it was girth of the biceps I was on about.

Seeds sown, George left Michael in his bedroom gazing with wide eyes at the fraying cloth of the tape measure of Great Aunt Joyce. He went down the stairs whistling cheerily, making music with the loose change in his pockets.

Cynthia was at the dining room table nursing a gin and tonic with no ice, or tonic.

He slid into the chair opposite.

‘What’s up, duck? And what’s with the sunglasses?’

Cynthia lifted them a little to reveal one eye rimmed red.

‘Chilli eye.’

‘We’re having Mexican for dinner?’

‘Not exactly.’

Cynthia returned to staring into her glass.

‘Great Aunt Joyce?’ Michael said.

Cynthia had the look, one of weary shell shock.

It was another tradition – once a year Great Aunt Joyce would stay for a fortnight. She put the battle into axe, and then she put the axe into anything and everyone. He was having a slightly easier time of it this year, because Cynthia was getting married.

‘Of course…the shopping trip.’ George topped up Cynthia’s glass. ‘Was it terrible?’

‘Awful.’

‘Were there tears?’

‘In every shop.’ Cynthia lifted her glasses to stare earnestly at him. ‘She made a mannequin cry, I swear!’

Cynthia shuddered then gulped some gin. ‘And of course, no one can measure properly these days, so she’s going to do it later.’ She shuddered some more. ‘Ugh, with that awful tape measure, and the way she has of running her tongue along it each time.’ She looked across at George. ‘Who does that? I ask you.’

George was feeling chills, memories of all those Christmases martialled against the wall to be measured for trousers and socks and shirts, dry rustle of the tape and the damp slither sound of her tongue moistening the edge. He went for his sister’s glass and took a gulp.

‘Exactly,’ Cynthia said.

George sat back, arms folded, grin on his face.

‘I have a scheme to make it bearable, might make up for all those awful years.’

‘Yeah?’

‘Think how it will feel, out pops her tongue but you’ll know what that tape was wrapped around half an hour ago.’

‘Huh?’

‘It’s a boy thing,’ George said. ‘Everyone measures. So why not subvert that to our cause, and it’s for Michael’s benefit too. I told him to be scientific – measurements at different points, and repeat with different parts of the tape measure. I guarantee it – there is no single spot on that tape measure she can lick that won’t have been pressed up against a teenage boy’s genitals.’

Cynthia stared for a moment.

She said, ‘That’s disgusting.’

‘Yep.’

‘That’s terrible.’

‘Yep.’

‘She deserves it.’

‘Oh yes.’

Cynthia raised her glass.

‘I will drink to-‘

Her glass thumped the table, a look of horror spreading across her face. She took off her sunglasses and pointed to her red eye.

Faintly, she said, ‘I had my own plan. I had the tape soaking overnight. A solution of pepper and white chill oil.’

His loose change was still by the side of the bed. I dusted around the handful of coppers, trying never to move the clumsy pile of one’s and two’s. Every night before getting into bed he would empty his trouser pockets onto the bedside cabinet, ready to be picked back up and shoved in his pocket the next morning before heading off to work. They were the last thing he touched.

The women in our family have an uncanny and tragic habit of losing their husbands young, so when Andy, a tender 42 years old, went to bed that night and never woke up the next morning, I should have seen it coming. My mother was widowed before her fortieth birthday and had picked herself up with a superhero level of stoicism, and she was adamant that I would follow suit. With two small children to care for and a full time job to hold down, I’d donned sunglasses for the first few months of summer to hide from the sympathetic gaze of concerned friends and colleagues. Summer turned to autumn, and as the nights drew in I increasingly fumbled around the house. ‘For God’s sake Lucy,’ my mum admonished, ‘You keep bumping into things. Take the damn sunglasses off and get over yourself.’ Compassionate woman, my mother.

As the year seeped away, I began to dread Christmas. Andy had loved Christmas more than anyone I knew, and every bauble and string of tinsel was a reminder of him. We’d always had a real tree, and each year was a trek to the garden centre, tape measure in hand, for Andy to make sure we had the biggest tree we could possibly squeeze into our lounge. We went artificial the first year without him, and I felt sorry for the sales assistant in Argos who had to witness my tears as she passed the cardboard box across the crowded counter.

Christmas Eve, and the house was groaning under the weight of an overcompensated celebration, the kids with a level of excitement that I felt a betrayal of their father. We curled up on the sofa watching trashy TV and drinking too sweet hot chocolate. Hannah handed me a battered copy of ‘The Night Before Christmas.’ ‘Can you read this to us Mummy’ I took the book but couldn’t open it. Callum, curled up the other side of me, snatched it from my hands. ‘She can’t’ he shouted, full of all the seven year old rage he can muster, ‘That was daddy’s job.’ And he’s right, I couldn’t. It was Andy’s job alright. Every Christmas Eve he would read it to the kids, starting when I was pregnant with Hannah when he whispered the words, head rested on my bulging tummy. ‘It’ll be our own family tradition,’ he’d said, ‘This will be our thing, for this baby, and all the other babies we’ll have.’

Hannah wriggled away from me and pulled the Ipad onto her lap. She fired up a video, and it took my breath away. All three of us are drawn into a video that I barely remember taking, of three years ago, Hannah and Callum squirming on Andy’s lap, as he starts. ‘Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the house…..’

We fell silent at the end, tears rolling down our cheeks. ‘Happy Christmas Daddy.’ whispered Callum.

Ad nauseum

Stephen put up with the matching shirts, the braying laughter and the constant innuendo (in your end-o, bruv). He even put up with the not-so-surreptitious hiss of Paul’s can of Stella opening when the flight attendant turned her back, just so that Paul would be forced to relinquish it ostentatiously in front of all the passengers.

He was Paul, ‘lead lad’: always up for a beer and a laugh, little bit edgy, little bit wild. When Paul handed out the old penis sunglasses Stephen looked back at him.

“Really?”

“Course - tradition, mate. It’s a laugh” his loose change jangled as his joggers sagged over his pallid, hairy bum. Stephen didn’t think it was a laugh, but the others were creased up waggling the plastic dicks at each other.

17 years they had been doing this. It was the only break some of them got. Look at Joe - two kids and doing shifts in McDonalds. Or Karl, a solicitor now, though you wouldn’t believe this tubby man-child wearing naked women on his tshirt and a plastic dick on his face could be allowed to represent people in court.

So Stephen packed his cowboy hat and his t-shirt with ‘SteveO - Paulie’s 21st Y2K+3 = LADS’. And reluctantly bought his ticket.

“Shots boys?” bellowed Paul, beckoning the attendant, who forced a smile and pushed the trolley over. When she handed Stephen his he refused, trying to apologise with his eyes. But Paul saw.

“Mate - what you doing? Got to have shots on the way to Mag-a Loof oof oof” - the others joined in on the ‘oof’ in a chant - “Or is your knob so small you can’t drink like a lad?”

This didn’t even make sense, but Stephen knew, from experience, that Paul had a tape measure and if he didn’t drink Paul would attempt to remove his trousers right there to measure his penis. So he drank it, grimacing.

In Paul’s world it was always 2003, his hedonistic last year of laddishness before all his mates got boring and settled down. Stephen was the worst offender - daring to move away and missing the regular meets down the Scholars every Saturday. Paul proudly eschewed success, wearing his council temp worker status as a badge of honour and working out a system for taking as many sick days before triggering a disciplinary.

Stephen wound himself up into a ball of frustration as he sat listening to him spouting crap. This year would be the last. And no more penis paraphernalia - he was nearly forty years old for God’s sake!

Then he looked up and saw Joe’s battered daps, his toe actually poking out through the left one. And he saw Joe’s grin as Karl told another filthy joke. How much had Joe had to go without to afford this holiday? How could he, Stephen, ruin his one treat in the year?

And so Stephen slid the penis shades on, joined the conversation and bellowed for another round of shots. After all, it was tradition.