It took me back..... Non-communication has always been something of a tradition in our family. I remember one Christmas, this is going back years to when my father was alive, God rest his soul, and my brother and I were both home on holiday from our respective colleges. We're all in the sitting room slumped in front of the inevitable tv, my father dozing in his armchair by the fire, my mother in her chair doing 'the mending' and my brother reading physics books for pleasure. Perhaps my friends Madeleine and Kathy will call to arrange our return trip to college. Otherwise it will be tv till bedtime.

Suddenly there's a knock at the door. I'm about to rise and let Madeleine and Kathy in when my father leaps to his feet and hisses wide-eyed,
"Don't answer that." I'm so startled I stay put as he bounds past me to the tv and wrenches the plug from the wall socket. The door knocker bangs again.
"Ignore it," says my father head swivelling in search of I know not what. I look in silent amazement at my brother. He has the glazed expression I know well, intelligence withdrawn for safekeeping. My mother is waving her right hand back and forth, eyes half closed, lips pursed. She is signalling, say nothing, you'll only cause an argument.

By now my father is red-faced from exertion, see-sawing as he tries to rip the plug from the flex. The hammering at the door continues. It's obvious we're in as the lights are blazing and the tv was on full blast till a moment ago. My brain races wildly to assimilate my father's frantic actions. Something tells me he has not gone mad, something else tells me to keep still and quiet.

He throws down the resistant plug in disgust, leans over me and whips the rug from the back of the settee. Finally, with a gesture reminiscent of a matador defying the bull he shrouds the tv with our travel rug.
"Right," he says surveying his handiwork, "Now you can let the buggers in." So I do and Madeleine and Kathy, full of youthful exhuberance bubble into the room, to be instantly subdued by the traumatised faces of its occupants. In the stilted conversation that follows no one of course explains, as I am later to learn, that my father has not yet paid the tv licence.