to think that falling in your plate is not on at lunch?

[Hullygully]

So, Sunday lunch at a friend's yesterday. A couple that we know slightly are also invited. The woman who is very bright and very pleasant for the first hour, drinks so much that she is literally unable to speak (but doesn't stop trying), and we all carry on with lunch pretending that everything is normal and not laughing where she can see.

Is this normal? In any way?

I would have been cringing and felt uncomfortable - I used to work with someone like this, she was perfectly fine at work albeit dippy, but if we went out for a drink in the evening she would be plastered after 3 drinks, really staggering drunk.

It turned out that she drank all day at a very low level, and the few drinks in teh evening tipped her over the edge. She was sacked in the end for stinking of booze and drinking vodka and coke at work.

I had never heard of a funtioning alcoholic before. I wonder if this woman is like that hully. It is a bit odd that her DH didn't leave with her as soon as she started slurring. I would hope that my DP, if I had had one too many and was acting like a twat, would cart me off to save me from embarassment the next day.

Nervous laughter in that kind of situation is a very normal reaction. It does not mean that you are ignorant of real life issues that may or may not be present.

Some very "holier than thou" reactions on here today.

Good lord no!

That sort of behaviour is totally unacceptable.

At least until the sun is over the yardarm.

Yeah, walking into a lampost is exactly the same as systematically ruining your life. Clearly noone should have doubted your empathy skills.

Oh rhubarb - I have done that. I sneezed heroically into my hand whislt talking to my boss. I had a great gob of snot in my hand. He knew I had a handful of snot, I knew he knew, but we were terribly british about it and carried on talking until I could run to the loo and wash my snotty mitts.

Getting tiddly, on occasion, at lunch - systematically ruining your life.

Crikey. I have been systematically ruining my life for the last thirteen years.

Some very weird posters recently Hully, the whole tone of Mumsnet does seem to have changed a bit sadly.

I'd still have a quiet word with her, just something like "we noticed you weren't acting yourself on Sunday, obviously there was a lot of alcohol around but we were all a bit concerned about you, are you ok?"

Vampires - I would have taken the tissue, removed the offending snot and handed it back
As for hoovering out snot - GROSS!

I was once on a dog walk in the freezing winter and stoppe dto have a brief chat with a very posh old boy that I see regularly on dog walks. It was only as I walke don that I realised that in mid chat I had removed my leather glove and wiped my nose on my hand before putting my glove back on.

The horror.

Wotevvs again Clarence

Hully I think we have been at the same dinner party with the same woman.

Call me heartless, I would have left the baby to suffer rather than suck snot out of its nose.

Oh and Clarence - just about my entire family are raging alcoholics, dad died of it, brother going the same way, BIL in intensive care etc etc etc, so perhaps I've grown a little more hardened to it.

I learnt from a young age that if someone is determined to drink themselves to death, all you can do it refuse to go down with them.

HTH.

Mind you, she could just be a complete lightweight, or on a diet.

i remember getting spectacularly comedy drunk after 2 glasses of wine once, after a crash diet and no alcohol for months. DP seriosuly thought I had had my drink spiked when I rolled in.

The snot-sucking story is the WORST thing that I have read on MN (apart from when the nanny fed that OP's baby non-organic pasta, that had me feeling peaky)

YOU SUCKED SNOT!

She really drank a lot. At least 8 large glasses of wine, and she'd been to the pub first, apparently.

Did you swallow or spit?

I think every dinner party I have ever been to had that woman there! Might have even been me sometimes .
Hi bupcakes, like your halloween name

What is going to happen to a baby with a snotty nose? it won't explode. It will just be snotty.

Leave the snot, people.

That would be like crossing the motherhood rubicon to me.

OMG hully, it only takes me 3 to get there!

Christ I would be comatose after 8 glasses of wine - that is nearly 3 bottles. Crikey.

She didnt say tiddly on occasion, she said regularly and well known forbeing so drunk she can barely speak.
Your ingroup wants to take a look at your norms before you start saying how strange its got around here. You must have spent too many nights on the drunk threads on here, youve lost all sense of perspective. Maybe go over to the thread where a poster is boasting about having drunk a full bottle of gin and still being sober, and tell her how normal that is too.

I was a new mum, I was on my own, I was freaking right out because she was wheezy - i could see the ball of snot so I stepped up!

Just like pissing on someone who has been stung by a jellyfish

Don't make me flounce again!

Yes I read that thread clarence - a bit odd really.

hully, you are spot on with the statement about if people are determined to drink themselves to death. Lots of experience of that - so sad, but very true.

Perhaps if I got a pole and shoved it up my arse I might be able to see things your way Clarence.

Or not.