There’s an awful lot of blood around that water is thicker than.

The aphorism twists “blood is thicker than water,” the cliché that family bonds outweigh other ties. McLaughlin’s point is that “blood” is not only a symbol of kinship but also of injury, violence, and inherited conflict: family closeness can come with cruelty, obligation, and harm that no amount of “water” (distance, time, civility, or chosen relationships) can dilute. The line compresses a skeptical view of family loyalty—suggesting that what binds relatives may be less warmth than history, trauma, and the hard-to-escape consequences of shared origins.