Most boring family Christmas conversation competition

[GinNsnowmen]

So far this Christmas break we have had how the woman across the road keeps her bins to the SIDE of her path at the driveway and a long extended discussion about the pros and cons of bin positioning. Apparently "we just don't know what she gets up to" is a comment that was appropriate in that conversation. I'm not sure what my neighbours think about my bin position?!!

High drama of the day has been when an unknown car parked perfectly legally near the house. This prompted lots of walking back and forwards at windows and some fake retrieval of stuff from our cars to nosey. Can anyone compete with that level of drama? A friend suggested we log it with 101.

(And as it seems necessary to say this these days this is lighthearted. I love my family but in large doses they are exhausting and this is just some light relief to keep me smiling politely.)

A retrospective of the roadworks in a place I have never been to and have no intention of going to. Even if I did, I don't have a car and the roadworks are now over.

"Did you lock the back door?"

"Are you sure the back door is locked?"

Because once years ago the back door wasn't locked.

You need to lock the doors of beach huts in case people break in.

Bus routes. Whether it would be better to get the 5A which goes every 20 minutes along route X or the 13B which strictly speaking should go every half an hour along route Y which has a better bus stop. Or maybe it was the other way round, I lost concentration quite early on.

Will the baby be Catholic, like you?

^

Weeps

Service stations
Minor operations/current ailments
The best supermarket for turkeys (this was the most heated)
Home improvements

How many cars are parked on the road.

Was spared it this year by having Christmas at home. If we'd been at one of them the conversation would have revolved round how child A is a genius in everything he touches/does/moves near. Vast details would be given of his reports (which beloved parents take at full face value), and descriptions of what he has said (never very impressive) and what he has done (in which I haven't yet heard anything that I wouldn't think was usual for his age). Thankfully my dc are older and I can roll my eyes. Unfortunately there's a cousin who's the same age who is always compared negatively even though I suspect he's at least as bright, probably actually because he's at least as bright and they don't want anyone to realise that.

Dad telling my SIL about what mat leave she is entitled to.. He doesn't work where she works and she used to work in HR so will be wise to it all.

DH told MIL about how our car broke down on his way to work on Christmas Eve, luckily the day after we had done a long motorway trip with all 3 DCs the previous day. He called the AA. Engine failure. Garage said X, DH said Y. We need a new car, I like this model etc etc.

DH told my mum the same story.

DH told my dad the same story.

DH told my nan the same story.

I was fit to weep the fourth time around.

MIL telling me (not DH note), all about her goddaughter's' (I don't know her) hip replacement. And how well her goddaughter's DH and DS (17) coped without her whilst in hospital.
She was also scathing about another goddaughter's trip to New York with her DC for New Year. Said goddaughter's would have been better going to Legoland apparently! MIL doesn't do foreign travel.

Mil and fil have decided to do their family tree

They have signed up to ancestry.com and now bore me to death about relatives 400 years dead

They have vague links to the royal family , me saying 'doesn't everybody' was not well received....

While I can relate to all of these, I can’t actually recount any conversations. My mother doesn’t have family/ company, she has An Audience. And she monologues.

I’ve spent quite a bit of energy, time and patience keeping DM and DMIL apart as the cracks are beginning to show, abs the competitive ignoring and general one upmanship is taking over.

I confess my brother and I had a frank exchange of views concerning how people queue at different bus stops in Edinburgh. My brother is convinced people queue especially badly at the bus stop at the end of our road, whereas I insisted the queuing is far worse at the stop in front of the Cameo cinema, and there is no excuse for this as the pavement is very wide there. DSIL chimed at a slight tangent about the ill thought out location of the bus stop at the foot of their road, which obstructs the traffic. We have become our parents, only worse.

During Christmas breakfast - my mum telling us all how her friend's son in law had helped his mum ( yes, me too -- who?...are you still following)to dig up his dad and have him buried in a different cemetery...and how it wasn't a coffin he was in - but a casket...we even got the measurements!

Things could only get better and more Christmassy from that point onwards.

Not boring but ridiculous, my grandmother suggesting to my grandfather (both in their 80s) that they should have a baby because we were all busy cooing over our baby and not listening to their stories that we’ve all heard 1000 times before!

When I still lived at home my mother worked at a very well known retailer @wejammin

I would hear the exact same stories usually involving everyone who worked there being allegedly in absolute fits of laughter

I would hear the same story about 5 times in one day depending on changeover in visitors.

They were never funny

It is not ill thought out @AssangesCat .
It is a deliberate attempt to make driving in Edinburgh difficult.

highlandcoo

^^
Thanks

I thought he'd be like Dobby the house Elf

This could be my father in law, I love him dearly and would never want to upset him, but he is the single most boring person in the history of the world- and repetitive on top of it. A run down of anything he has eaten since we last saw him, places he has been and who with, hours he has slept, places he has driven too in the past in other countries and road names and alternative routes, everybody he has ever worked with's pets and why they were stupid, bus routes and why they are stupid, anybody who has ever disagreed with him and why they are stupid, why light rain is stupid, why other peoples driving is stupid, parking is stupid, why christmas is stupid, why birds shitting on his car is stupid- and on and on and repeat as required. Sigh....

reminds me of my long gone parents when they got together with their friends it would start with who was married / getting married then new babies followed by the slides taken by both families since last meeting oh god the slides analysing each one mainly the toilets where they had been who they spoke to what they ate etc etc then a buffet was laid out when conversation turned to who had died! ideal for eating time after that it went rapidly down hill onto operations who was having an affair etc i was glad to go to bed at this point

My Mum on how her friend Dorothy had to go to the hospital at Bracknell to collect her tablets, and they wouldn’t send them to the chemist in the village or the surgery. And there are no direct buses to Bracknell, she had to change at Wokingham and wait for another bus, and she tried to get a volunteer car but there were none available, and they wouldn’t let her go to the Royal Berks instead. Then we heard about Jim’s prostate and Derek’s dementia, only his wife Ivy doesn’t think it is because he has always been forgetful.

Then we got onto whether Keep Mobile was better than the Readibus, and whether she should belong to both schemes or whether that was even allowed.

@GetOffTheTableMabel

My in-laws like to discuss roads, speed cameras and traffic conditions in intricate detail. They tend to drop the road letter though, so A303 becomes The 303, M5 is The 5 etc etc.

Dear old FIL would do this just as we were about to head home after visiting them. I’d usually sigh inwardly, shuffle off to stick the kettle on and settle down for a snooze while I waited.

During one visit to them, MIL sidled into the room we were sleeping in to tell us all about BIL’s tax return. DH had been attempting to get ready for bed but just had to stand there awkwardly clutching his pyjamas and looking interested. Luckily, I was already in bed so was idly placed to just fall asleep...

At PILs there was always the amazing ongoing conversation ‘where has so-and-so gone?’
99.9% of the time they had just left the front room to go to the bathroom or to get a drink... however if they didn’t announce loudly every time they left the room where they were going this was the conversation...
MIL: where has Mr Sunday
Me: the bathroom
FIL:not sure, has he gone out?
Me: the bathroom
MIL: has he gone out, where has he gone, did he say where he was going.
Me; he was in his PJs, he’s gone to the toilet.
PIL: he never said he was going out, we are going out later, what will we do?
Me: HES GONE TO THE TOILET, HE IS STILL IN HIS PJS
Mr Sunday returns
PIL: where have you been, you didn’t tell us you were going out?
Mr Sunday; I’ve been for a piss..
MIL: why are you telling us this, I don’t want to know these things.

Repeat this 30+ times a day....

MIL talks over everything we are watching on tv and over anyone already attempting a (more interesting) conversation.

Also,
Her: "Shall I put the vegetables on now?"
Me: " Let's leave it a bit, we won't be eating for another 2 hours"
Her: "Shall I put the vegetables on now?"
Me " Well, the rest of dinner won't be ready for another hour and a half so not yet"
Her: " Would you like me to put the vegetables on now?"
Me (to myself) "Oh my god, no. No, no, no,no. Just no"
etc etc

However, I suspect this thread is proof that given enough time, we'll be doing it too...