describing my family as a mental/visual aid

Because it's nice to have images, I reckon. Otherwise, you'd just make your own up and get it all wrong.
My mother looked like a horse with a Joan of Arc wig on. There, I've said it now. I don't wish to sound uncharitable, but who the fuck was cutting her hair? The council? High fringe, short hair, long face, sombre expression. As I get older, I sometimes see her when I look in the mirror - a fate that befalls many men, I'm told.
She also used to make a lot of her clothes herself, because she could and because it was cheap, I suppose. A heavy wool, red-and-grey checked poncho with huge pouch-pockets is one that particularly gets my memory shuddering.

My father looks the spit of Rudyard Kipling these days, so I suppose if you pictured Kipling dressed as a groovy Polytechnic lecturer from the 70's, you'd be close. I remember that he favoured silk scarfs worn with a shirt for a number of years, and was over-keen on Aramis after-shave. He's always had his moustache, except when he shaved it on a whim when I was about seven. He turned up at our school's Christmas Carol concert without it, and the general consensus was that, clean-shaven, he looked like the most sinister kiddy-diddler that ever lived, so he grew it back pronto.

Me - Smack-rat skinny since the day that I was born. A metabolism that pie-loving, fat birds would kill for as I'm completely unable to put weight on, no matter what I've been necking. Big brown eyes, light brown hair, exclusively brown wardrobe.
Oh, and small. I was always small for my age. But hey, if you have to be a smart-arse, be a small one - it'll drastically reduce the amount of beatings you'll pick up from your peers as you make your way through life.
Wor Kid looked not unlike me, but darker-haired, taller, chunkier and wearing gepps, or spectacles, if you will. Also owned a wardrobe of clothing in radical colours such as blue and red, the jammy bastard.