Some people never get past the child stage. A good friend of mine had a 'boyfriend' for some years. He came to a BBQ at our house, eat the food & drink we'd supplied, & then went home with the just in case bottles of beer he'd brought undrunk. When later I became single, he made a pass at me. I was shocked, since he was with my friend. He replied, oh no, she's just a friend. Being Swiss, she had the habit of hospitality, & you would always be offered decent food if you visited her house. Basically, it would appear, he hung out round there for free food & heating, & presumably sex, even taking laundry round. My brother in law is also quite stingy. We stayed overnight at their house before their big day, & bought them a chinese takeaway & some wine, since they wanted to stay, in, & we had no money to take them out anyway. Next morning, we had to forage for breakfast, since they were busy getting ready. There was just a slice of white bread & some marg. To my horror, at the registry office where we were assembling, there was no toilet & being still early in the morning, there was nothing open within walking distance with a toilet either. I had to go behind a bush in a quiet corner. Afterwords, we went to a wedding lunch for close relatives, about 40 people, in the top room of a grotty pub. We waited downstairs for the room to open, where there were no drinks supplied, or even coffee, since it was still before pub opening hours. We then went upstairs to be greeted with a small glass of sherry. followed by some dreadful blue nun type wine served with a dreadful meal, about a glass per person, all while they cracked open a bottle of champagne at the top table for themselves. After that, it was the church hall, where a huge crowd were invited to a disco. They got in quite a haul of presents all in all. We had been requested to give them some original art. This was a brave request, & to their credit, they have put them up on the wall in their house, which is nice. Two original Frank Forty watercolours, one painted while he was in New York, & the other on a visit to Japan. At the disco, we were fed on some curling up sandwiches & sausage rolls. I went back home early, feeling nauseaus, & then hacked up all night. Everyone else was OK, but I am very sensitive to food poisoning, so pre prepared sandwiches are a no no for me, but I was hungry & ate them. This has happened to me before more than once, I hacked up in a pub after eating a prawn pasta in a nearby restaurant. The people I was with, who didn't know me really well, just assumed I was drunk...a horrible experience. This tightness, in my experience, is a more common thing with the British than one would think. Foreigners & those with foreign roots, however, have hospitailty more ingrained in their culture. In the face of Hitler, & afterwords, we prevailed, but to achieve that, for anything more than a cup of tea, & possibly a biscuit, food took a back seat.