what is the oddest thing someone has done when you have visited their house?

I don't want this thread to ever end

Background:
We used to travel to my mother's on Boxing Day (60mile trip down). A duty that neither OH or myself looked forward to.

One time, when DD1 was quite small 2yo(?) we arrived for what we thought was going to be lunch. Mother trundled back and forth to the kitchen, so hopes were high and we were salivating in anticipation. Conversation continued, but was frustrating due to M's poor hearing (a condition she sort of ignores - but that's a side issue).

Eventually lunch, for the 4 of us, arrives on the coffee table. A couple of small plates of those party snacks (heat up from frozen). They were of the Chinese variety - tiny sring rolls and sesame toast etc. I could have scoffed the whole lot myself and then some! But we managed to politely eat a few before pud was brought through - mince pies (well, one each to be precise).

Thanks and goodbye.
She has repeated this "meal" on a couple more occasions.
We don't visit anymore.

bump for more :)

I honestly don't know where some people get off thinking that behaviour like that is acceptable, Hilly. I guess it comes down to people not wanting to upset them? Or being too shocked to pick them up on it? Just outrageous though!

halfway round the world and left on the doorstep!!

at Hilly's BIL

Oh yes, just remembered! Same mad BIL and SIL. My other SIL (who is lovely, and normal) lived abroad and she came home to the UK for her once a year visit. Mad SIL was knew she would be coming round to see them that evening, and when nice SIL knocked on their door Mad SIL answered it and said 'Oh Hello, Steve isn't in at the moment. Perhaps you should come back later.'

They'd known one another about 12 years.

Nice SIL pissed herself when I told her about the above story - she said 'well at least you know it's not just you! I travelled halfway round the world and I still wasn't let in!'

Oh good - at least you get to feel justifiably smug. Can't believe they made you kill time wandering round in the cold!!

Yes, and it was alright, but not as nice as mine.

Hilly what we all want to know is.... have you ever seen the garden? ... and was it good?

I've told this before on MN but I'll tell it again.

We lived a long way from PILS and DH's DB and SIL, who lived in the same town. They usually all came to stay with us, three or four times a year, and alsways at Christmas, so I was often putting all four of them up at the same time, cooking huge meals etc. Anyway, one year we had a big family party at the PILS, and they had other relatives from abroad staying at their house, so couldn't put us up. We naturally assumed we'd stay at BILs and SILs, but the aprty approached and arrangements were being finalised, BIL got on the phone (prompted by SIL I suspect) to say he hoped we'd understand but they couldn't possibly put us up either, as their house was too small and we'd have to book a hotel.

They had a three bed house. All immaculate and fully furnished with spare beds etc, and room on the floor for a travel cot and a couple of little people's sleeping bags. No problem - or so I thought. But no, to them it was just not possible.

They had no children, only two of them in this three bed house.

(SIL is a real stress-head, one of those people who cannot cope with anything outside of her usual routine, and who hates having other people in her house if she can possibly help it.)

But they said that the day after the party at PILs they would love it if we would go round for a cup of tea in the morning, before we went back to PILs together for lunch. There was an ulterior motive - they wanted to show off their newly landscaped garden.

So, we duly booked into a hotel (right around the corner from BILs) , then in the morning after breakfast, we checked out, it was 10am and we had three small children in tow. We rang BIL to say we were on our way, and he said 'Oh no, you can't come yet. SIL is still out at church and then she always stops for a cup of tea with her mum on the way back. She won't be here until after 11. Come about 11.30'

So we said 'that's ok, we'll just come now and chat to you on your own while we wait for her - and besides, we've checked out of the hotel and it's Sunday morning, it's cold and there's nowhere to go.'

He said 'No. I'm sorry, you'll have to wait until 11.30. She'll be terribly upset if I let you in before she is here. She wanted to be here when you saw our new garden for the first time.'

So we wandered around a garden centre trying to kill time in the freezing cold, we couldn't even go and get anything to eat as we'd all had a huge hotel breakfast and then we just gave up and went straight to PILs, arriving early for lunch. (at least they let us in!) When BIL and SIL turned up for lunch they were acting all disappointed that we didn't turn up. We explained that the DCs were cold and bored and they wouldn't let us in the bastards we had nowhere to go, so we went straight to PILs. So they insisted that as soon as lunch was over, we must all go back to their house to look at the flipping garden, which I really did not give a stuff about by this point.

Lol Thumbwitch, so had I and the male friend, so you can see why we were shocked/horrified!! Neither of us have been up to Scotland since!!

Dictionarydiva - that is a horrifying story! Glad you rescued the puppy as well and both survived to tell the tale.

When I was about 6 I went to play at a friends (Nicola) house, at one point she was upstairs and I was at the bottom of the stairs and called up to her using a short version of her name (Nicki). At which point her mother flew out of the kitchen like a bat out of hell and put her face two inches from mine and screamed her name is NICOLAAAAA

At which point I nearly wet myself and galloped upstairs never to come down again until parents came to collect and I never went back (or dared call her anything but Nicola again)

I am all for keeping to full given names if that is what you want, but when flecks of your spit are landing on a 6yr old girls face as you make your point you have maybe gone too far! I can picture it to this day 30 years later!

I later discovered it was not unusual for her Mum to fly off the handle with minimal provocation. :(

Thank goodness you rescued the puppy! Did she ask about the puppy?

That was at ferret, btw...

double ewwww

I have been lurking on this and LOVING all these stories. I have to share mine as I think it's up there with the best of them! Apologies for the length of this!

When I was 20 and at uni me and a good male friend from school were invited to the 21st birthday party of another friend, who was female, that we also knew from school. She was having the party up where she was at uni and she asked us up there to stay with her for a couple of days.

She was at uni in Edinburgh and so we were going to get the train up there. We were all originally from the south coast- I was at uni in London and our male friend in Manchester.

The party was due to start at 7 so the female friend had said to get to her about 4 so we could get ready. We had intended to stay overnight and then the next night too so we could spend some time with her. I set off at 9am and rendezvoused with my male friend at Manchester Piccadilly at about noon. We brought a load of booze and set off on our onward journey. The female friend had told us to phone her when we got to Berwick Upon Tweed and that her boyfriend would pick us up from the station. We had never met the bf but he was older than us and not a student. We also knew he was a genuine Scot.

When we phoned her she sounded wildly uninterested and a bit stoned. This was path for the course as she did love drugs, but she was fun and a bit zany and I never thought she had a real problem. She said she'd send her boyfriend out to get us. When we got to the station though, suitcases and bags of booze in tow, there was no one to collect us. We tried ringing again but there was no answer. We had her address so had little choice but to get there ourselves. Not having money for a cab we had to brave three buses to get us out into the Edinburgh suburbs. When we got there, 90mins later, and knocked on the door, no one answered. We hammered on the front door for ages until a bleery eyed Scotsman answered the door - the boyfriend- he was about 40 and not the ?older? 27 or 28 we were expecting. He ushered us in. In the front room was our friend and about six or seven assorted others all stoned off their tits and lying on beanbags etc. Me and the male friend looked at one another in horror and asked if there was anywhere we could freshen up. The boyfriend showed us to our friends room and told us to get ready. The room was an absolute hole, full of old bongs, the roach ends of joints and all manner of drug paraphernalia. As well as this there was a very small, very young puppy who seemed to have the run of the room and had been doing his wees all over the floor!!!

Once safely upstairs we got dressed in our party gear and proceeded to drink ourselves silly so that we would at least be blocking out the horrible pain of what was surely to come. Then our female friend came up and, still whacked out, thanked us for coming and then started chopping up some coke and snorting it up through a broken biro. She asked us if we wanted some and we politely declined and got back to necking our Vodka.

The "party" started at about 7 as promised and just seemed to involve more and more stoners turning up in her front room, flopping on beanbags and getting more stoned. We sat and watched a quadruple bill of Friends for an hour or so and me and my male friend continued drinking in the hope we might become unconscious. All the while these stoners were trying to get the puppy stoned! The boyfriend had been missing for some time, and it turned out he was picking people up to come to the party. However, when a few more party goers came in it turned out he was actually charging them £1 a mile and was operating as a cab for the evening so on reflection we were glad he didn't pick us up!

About two hours later and with the stoners all more or less asleep, suddenly the boyfriend/cabbie brought about 10 or so really big, scary lads in with him. Suddenly it all got really rowdy and more and harder drugs were being consumed. Me and my male friend were looking at each other more and more uneasily and then suddenly a huge, scary fight broke out and someone broke a bottle and suddenly there was some blood coming from somewhere. My male friend grabbed the puppy, me and a very large bottle of Tequilla and we all legged it upstairs, where we locked ourselves in the bathroom. All joking aside we were shit scared and soon the bad lads were banging the bathroom door down and shouting "Come out here and stop being pussies!" and other such charming phrases. We were in there for four hours before it calmed down and even then we didn't trust the silence. We drank the Tequilla and discussed how we were going to probably be killed. My male friend tried ringing the female friend who's party it was to see what was going on but she never answered. At about 3am we cracked and phoned the police who said it was a really busy night in the city but they'd come and rescue us ASAP. They came about an hour and a half later and when they broke in there was actually no one but us left in the house, but more or less everything in the communal areas of the house had been nicked: telly, chairs, toaster? you name it. They took statements from us and then asked us if we wanted a lift anywhere. We said yes, please, anywhere but here and they let us gather our bags and the puppy and dropped us at Edinburgh Waverley station. It was by now 6am and we only had non transferrable tickets... as well as the puppy now in a cardboard carrier that the police had given us. The police went and explained to the train folk that we needed to leave Scotland immediately as we'd had a rough night and they agreed to transfer the tickets. My male friend was so traumatised he decided to come back to the south coast with me and have a few days at his dads to relax. We were pretty sure our friend whose birthday it had been must be dead or sex trafficked as we couldn't reach her on her mobile and had sent her about 50 texts.

We made it back to Brighton, puppy and all and went back to my mums where we just sat, shell shocked while my mum made us lunch and told us we should probably alert the authorities to our missing friend. Then, about an hour later just as my friend was leaving to go and throw himself on the mercy of his dad, our friend texted me and said ?So where did you two go last night? Why are police trying to ring me?? We rang her and it turned out that her boyfriends mates ?often got a bit out of hand? and that when that happened they would just go and stay at his mums till it died down. She was pissed off we had got the police involved. My male friend took the phone off me and went mental at her calling her a nutter and saying we thought she?d been killed. She was very blasé and just acted like this was pretty usual and like we were in the wrong for ringing the police.

We avoided all contact with her after that and never spoke to her again. I know she got kicked off her course but I have no idea what became of her. The dog still lives at my mums though!!

Unless he wasnt wetting the bed in his sleep....

mimi... surely the wife should have encouraged her DH to wear incontinence pants to bed?

That is so grim

Mimi - I am utterly that the wife just allowed that to carry on! My DH did it once before we were married (and he was very pissed) and I completely freaked out on him, obviously stripped the bed and did what I could to try and soak it out of the mattress (impossible) then stood the thing up to dry it as much as possible. If he had a problem like this man, he'd have been in man nappies! With a waterproof mattress cover! That mattress must have been a serious health hazard - blech!

... addendum: He might have some sort of phobia of queues, combined with an OCD need to be first? He'd still make a great video.

fuzzpig, that's amusing Can you video him, please, and put him on YouTube?

Not strictly a visitor issue (and not that crazy) but strange and annoying behaviour nonetheless.

Every morning at the bus stop this man insists on standing about 30 feet from the bus stop itself - despite the fact it's a very quiet stop and he's always the first one there. Then when the bus arrives he makes a Very Big Thing about charging past the rest of us to get on first