So much for trying to keep it in the family

Indeed, I am so keen that I have made great efforts to form my own small society on the model of David Cameron’s larger one.

Some months ago, I decided that nuclear family life was too quiet and restrained. My husband and I both work full-time, and he does strange hours, so we don’t see as much of our children as we, or they, would like.

What I want is a large, multi-generational household in which there’s always someone coming or going, a guest arriving from Italy with a large suitcase of presents, a child’s piano lesson tinkling away in the background, someone climbing a tree in the garden and a large Le Creuset casserole bubbling on the stove.

But if I put a casserole on the hob as I leave for work, it burns dry before supper, we don’t have room for a piano, and the only tree in our garden is four foot tall.

What I do have, though, are parents whose house is but a mile away, and a sister and her family who live even closer. It occurred to me that if we all sold up, we could buy a house that was really pretty big and nice and all live together.

That way, my children would have constant access to cousins, aunts, grandparents and a permanently stocked fridge, and we wouldn’t feel so guilty about missing bath-time.

My sister was keen, my parents were interested, and we started our search. We were looking for a house with a minimum of 10 bedrooms: one for each member of the family plus a studio for the elderly sculptor who lives with my parents, and a bedroom for my sister’s teenage stepson. There would, in theory, be five generations living under the same roof. How eco! How inclusive! How Big Society!

But 10-bedroom houses in central London that aren’t intended for billionaires are hard to find. We all went to look at one on Highbury Fields on a freezing rainswept March morning. I was full of hope, disregarding unsightly council-installed fire doors and damp patches and concentrating on the high ceilings and enormous garden. But my parents were dismayed by the décor and by my proposal that they should drastically downsize their living space; my daughter winced at the smell; my brother-in-law and his son pulled shocked faces at the two squatters in residence, and went to sit on the swings in the playground opposite like a pair of depressed hoodies; my sister had a sore throat and didn’t even turn up.

My visions of a scuffed but scrubbed pine table with 11 people sitting down to a huge communal bowl of boeuf bourgignon evaporated.

I had most to gain from the arrangement, so of course I was keenest. It’s the people who have to provide the help that are harder to convince.