"Wendy should wear a long nighty?"

Me: Hertfordshire, England

My Family: Hertfordshire, England

Him: Nairobi, Kenya

Distance (Me-My Family): 0 Miles

Distance (Me-Him): 6,658 Miles

I like to think my parents' home is akin to the top of Enid Blyton's Magic Faraway Tree, which is fitting given that one of my best friends swears I grew up in the 1950s. Guests crossing the threshold never quite know what they will find, and I can almost hear the whispers that linger in the driveway.

"Weren't they the ones that had the welly-throwing competition in the back garden?"

"Isn't that where one of the dogs weed against your leg at their wedding? No, not the dog that almost ate the village chicken, the other one."

"I believe I scored the record for the fastest row of the dinghy round the pond that summer."

Living so far away I hear about many of these adventures via the Family Banter WhatsApp group (a group which would be more appropriately named 'A Bit Of Banter And Could Someone Please Pick Up Milk?'), but every fleeting visit is a potential opportunity. For example, passing through the UK from San Francisco to Nairobi.

While most families would have thought a mere 30 hours having their eldest daughter/sibling on the home continent as a good opportunity for a group meal, mine decided it was a good opportunity to film a pantomime to send out to our Canadian relatives. I was informed I was cast as Wendy in Peter Pan, received an email from my Aunt suggesting "Wendy should wear a long nighty?", and was asked to comment on the script composed by my sister. Amongst other things, the performance was to include:

• 'Flying' to Never Never Land via the rope swing over the pond

• My brother's apprentice (a carpenter) using company work time to make a plank

• Pantomime staples of cross-dressing, terrible poetry, and audience participation

• An inflatable crocodile

• A 'rocket' to shoot down the 'Wendy-bird' (which sadly in spite of my Dad's best scientific methods, failed given the damp, autumnal conditions of filming)

It is difficult to explain the rationale of any of this to anyone who has not met my family in person, so I will not attempt to try. Instead, I consider it fortunate for the reader we had an unwitting visitor in the form of my sister's future mother-in-law, and so I can accurately represent how it looked from the outside.

"You do know you're all mad..." The future mother-in-law stated, first in a whisper but then with increasing confidence and volume as she was presented with new and growing evidence of the depth of our collective insanity. Her son being fitted for his mermaid tail (made with a recycling bin-bag); her future daughter-in-law accidentally falling in the pond and ad-lib her way through the mud; her son's future father-in-law being forced to 'walk the plank' by Captain Hook. The fact was undeniable. We are all mad.

But the thing about our particular breed of madness is that it is contagious. By the end of the afternoon she had gone from confused bystander to playing both a Lost Boy and a Pirate in what can only be described as 2017's hit version of Peter Pan. The only thing that could possibly have made it better was if my husband had also been in the country and required to take up the role of cross-dressing mermaid with his brother-in-laws. Living 6,658 miles away from family is hard, but boy do we make the most of being together when we can.

Oh no you don't!

OH YES WE DO!