This is appeared as a small item on the BBC news yesterday and in many of the daily newspapers here in the UK because it is so unusual. Here in Britain, families tend to be spread around the country. It is becoming ever rarer to find large numbers of a single family living very close together.

The Hall family live in one small street in Gateshead, in the north-east of England. Out of 35 houses in the street, the family live in 12 of them. They socialise together, either in their homes or in the pub. They organise daytrips and hire coaches (buses) for transport so they can go en masse.

Since I’ve been an adult, I’ve always lived at least a 30 minutes car journey from a relative, usually further away than that. I can’t imagine what it would feel like to walk out my front door and know I could bump into my daughters, grandchildren, brothers, sister, nieces or nephews, sisters-in-law, my mother, aunts or uncle, cousins.

To be honest, I would hate it. I would feel that my privacy was constantly being invaded. How can you turn a relative away when they pop in for coffee when you were just planning to do something? I would hate my every movement being monitored even though I haven’t anything to hide. I’m an adult and I’m used to being autonomous – I don’t have to tell anyone where I’m going or why. This might seem silly as I rarely do anything more exciting than go to the library to change my books! I’m sure there would be times I would start wearing army camouflage, with twigs coming out of my helmet and crawl along the road to avoid them seeing me on those days I really wanted to just go out and come back without a long chat.

I would hate being expected to join in with trips to the pub – I don’t drink and I find pubs boring. I don’t want to go on day trips mob-handed. If I go away for a day with my partner, we potter around quietly looking at things that interest us, not as part of a big noisy gang which is what I imagine a large family outing would be like.

With 69 members of the family surrounding me, wouldn’t non-family get squeezed out? I expect friends would feel unwelcome and, anyway, when would I ever have time to spend with them when the family would expect me to join in with them?

Actually, my family are quite an argumentative bunch. We can argue about almost anything from politics to the weather. Having said that, we do pull together in a crisis and we are all funny with a gift for understated humour that can have people laughing themselves sick sometimes.

I love seeing various members of my family which I do several times a year – but not altogether, and not all the time. That suits me just fine.

I’ve just heard that a relation by marriage died during the night. He was in his 80s and had been ill for some time so it wasn’t unexpected. His death is probably a merciful release. He had cancer which had spread and there was no hope of treatment, just alleviation of the pain. This was so bad that he was prescribed morphine.

My thoughts are with his wife. They had been married for about 65 years and had known each other since they were in their early teens. At the moment, his wife is coping but probably because it hasn’t really sunk in yet.

I can’t imagine losing a partner that you have lived with for 65 years. When the full impact of his death hits his wife, I imagine she will feel as if she has lost a limb. They have been retired from work for about 20 years and so have spent most of every day together.

How sad it must be for her even if she also feels his death was a merciful release.