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    While I was at Bristol, a film crew visited the university to film a TV show called Single and Ready to Mingle . I had been neither single nor ready to mingle at the time, but I’d gone to watch them filming at the student union. I got talking to one of the researchers who worked on the show and it had struck me what a fun job she had, being paid to travel around the country talking to people about their love lives. Most of the grown-ups I knew had really boring-sounding jobs, like urban planning (my dad), accounting (my uncle) or banking (Lorraine-next-door’s-son-Ian), so I had little idea that such a fun way of earning a living was even an option.
    My dad sometimes worked from home, and when I asked him what he was working on, he’d say something along the lines of: ‘I’m writing a proposal on how to revitalize the physical facilities of Swindon. I’ll present my findings to the council, where they’ll be universally ignored on account of a lack of funds. I tell you, Poppy, it’s a bloody waste of my time.’ He’dthen shut himself in his study until all hours to finish said proposal and emerge in the morning looking haggard and world-wearied. This made me depressed on my dad’s behalf. Imagine spending your life working on things that not only sounded mind-numbingly dull, but would probably never happen anyway.
    A lot of parents must clash with their children over the ‘secure, money-making career’ versus ‘creative calling’ debate. However, in my family there were reasons why this debate was a particular source of contention: namely, Aunt Josephine. When I’d first mentioned the TV idea to my parents, my mother had cried, ‘Oh no, Harold! It’s Josephine all over again!’
    Aunt Josephine was my mother’s older sister. In the seventies she’d been a highly regarded, rather controversial modern artist who, the way Aunt Josephine tells it, ‘invented graffiti as a modern art form’. In her mid-twenties, she became a sensation when she created an illegal mural made out of honey-glazed ham on the side of a police station on the Edgware Road. She’d called the piece Pigs. Question Mark. Ham. Question Mark and was hailed by people in the art world as a maverick visionary. The mural was removed after just twenty-four hours, but you can find photos of it even now in books on the history of modern art.
    After her mural success, Aunt Josephine got invited to all the cool parties, and galleries wanted to exhibit her hamthemed work. Suffice to say, being catapulted to fame and fortune rather soured her relationship with my mother, who was working as a rather lowly legal secretary at the time. Family legend has it that at this point, riding high on her mural success, Aunt Josephine got in the with ‘the wrong crowd’. ‘She got too big for her boots is what happened,’ said my mother. The details are rather hazy, but Clemmie and I have deduced that Aunt Josephine indulged in a few too many psychedelic drugs.
    Anyway, one thing led to another, and before anyone really realized what had happened, Aunt Josephine had squanderedher ham fortune, started making murals out of cat hair, which no one liked half as much as the ham art, gone a bit ‘doolally’ – my father’s words – and moved to Wales to live on a vegan commune.
    We do see her once or twice a year as my mum feels a sisterly obligation to keep in touch, plus I think my parents believe that seeing Aunt Josephine serves as a warning to us girls about what happens if you ‘live an unconventional lifestyle’ and end up with no money. In reality, the only lessons I take away from the Aunt Josephine parable are that taking too many drugs is not a good idea, and if you’re making a shedload of money out of ham art, don’t diversify.
    If I could only get a steady income and show my parents that television was a viable career, I