"Media centre" ffs.

[BubblegumBrigade]

Packing up to spend Christmas with my PILwhom I do generally like and get on with.

BUT, I am already in an irrational rage about three things:

1, They took out their table from the dining room a few years ago and put their television in there with two chairs facing it. There are book shelves lining the walls. The stereo is in the living room. This is all fine, except they insist on calling this shabby, cramped little room with a telly in it The Media Centre, in a very smug sort of way. Each time they say it I want to scream at the ridiculousness of it.

1. They will produce something completely ordinary for lunchtimes (such as cheese with those part-baked baguettes that you finish off in the oven) and then go ON AND ON for the whole meal about them, as though they were caviar encrusted venison steaks. "I must say, it's lovely to have warm bread. It's lovely, isn't it? Isn't it lovely everyone? I do love warm bread." (DP and I always cook the dinners btw, and I am very grateful for the lunches. I just don't want to be required to have an orgasm over perfectly unremarkable fare)

1. They insist on cloth napkins for every meal. Fine, no problem with this. The thing is, they only have one cloth napkin per person, so we are expected to wipe our hands and mouths with it and then store it inside the napkin ring for the next meal. This continues for at least four days. It makes me heave, especially as we have under eights, who turn napkins into a Pollockesque mess after a single meal. We are not allowed to use kitchen roll instead as it is "common".

I am not being unreasonable in finding any of these things entirely maddening, am I? I intend to be nothing but gracious and grateful and enjoy their company, of course, but I need to know that I am entirely justified in having an internal NOITSALLWRONGANDTERRIBLEAREYOUMAD alarm about these things. DP thinks I should just be able to let it wash over me as mild pretentions/eccentricities, and feels I am U to become so riled.

I can beat this one.... My in laws have beautiful linen napkins. They have engraved napkin rings. Guests however get a plain ring. At the end of the meal they get collected into a heap and the plain ringed ones get randomly given out at the next meal (repeat for whole stay) so not only do you have to re use the napkin you have to use a napkin that other people have used... Boak!

hackmum my mother never used to get lemons when I was a child because lemons were just WRONG and WEIRD.

Much like parsley. If I had to have some for domestic science she would demand it from the fish and chip shop. They'd never refuse because she bought fish and chips every Friday and they like were scared of her.

When she became very old she revised her opinion because lemons were reduced to 5p a piece in her local Sainsbury's and they did Basics honey very cheaply too.

Then they became a cheap cough remedy.

My mother is like this about every single meal she serves. 'Isn't this lovely ham/cheese/bread?' 'I do love this recipe for xxx?'

And you have to keep on saying how wonderful it is for ages. I think it's to cover her insecurity about cooking. I always thought she was a fantastic cook but it seems she needs constant and wearying reassurance.

My former PIL used to do napkins. Admittedly they were changed regularly and everyone in the family had their own napkin rings - including ex-husband, BIL and SIL who'd all gone off to universities years earlier and never returned home to live. They were quite nice, if nothing particularly special, but there was a second-class sort of napkin ring that was pointedly given to any unmarried partners. This was replaced when you got married and you were upgraded to a "family standard" napkin ring.

I've just remembered that my Nan used to keep her Radio Times in an A4 laminated cover. You need to get them one of these for the Media Centre.

Nan's TV Times was kept under one of the sofa cushions.

We call our office-cum-piano room the Nerve Centre, though it is with large dollops of irony.

Bless them. I would have huge problems with the napkin thing though -- we don't have to have napkin rings any more because we have washing machines. Can you not just use kitchen roll, loudly pre-empting their protests with, "Now I'm going to be awfully common but with my two I don't have much of a choice ..."?

Another fellow napkin ring sufferer whilst at PILs, although our family does expand into "novelty" napkin rings. Last weekend it was pineapples.

They don't bother to change the beds either inbetween guests so you can pretty much be guaranteed someone's mascara on your pillowcase.

Oh, and as a Christmas present one year MIL presented me with the "ancestral" napkins (complete with stains and rips).

MissBeehiving they don't change the sheets?

I think I'd have to bring my own or a sleeping bag or something.

I'm fine with the napkins. you try to eek them out your whole stay don't you? if you can't you can't but it is not a clean napkin per meal.

and we all share a couple at home

and kitchen roll is beyond common now you mention it

This thread is bitchy and horrible. Your PIL will be making loads of effort right now, to give you a lovely Christmas when you arrive, and you've said you like and get on with them, so why post this, I don't get it. Not funny.

^ and there it is

I would totally buy them 'Nice Napkins' for xmas every year until there are enough to see every person through a 4 day visit...

My FIL and MIL are a bit like this.

However, FIL wouldn't not, in a million years reuse a napkin. He would think the germs would kill him. How unsanitary

Come to think of it my family have napkin rings! They come out heavily guarded by my gran and grandad for every family occasion and there are some proper silver ones that have names on (made with those little machines that you feed the sticky back tape into) for family members and then some steel ones without names for guests. DH and I have been married 2 years and together 7 but he still doesn't have his own named ring I think this is punishment for the upduffed out of wedlock thing but there are also about 4 sets of napkins, and they're only to go on your lap, there are paper napkins for faces and spills...

I heave at the sight of even a clean cloth napkin thanks to ex pil. He had a huge hideous handlebar moustache. The hairs used to curl round his upper lip. After every drink or meal he would take a cloth napkin and wipe his horrible tash with great gusto and the thought of all the food and drink in that hairy mess made it so I could hardly eat anything in the same room as him.
current ils don't have any offensive facial hair but mil does that 'ooooo isn't it delicious' thing even in £5 all-you-can-eat carvery things where the meat is that reformed stuff and the veg look and taste like they've been sat under the lights for days.

I think it's just some people's way of making conversation at mealtimes.

oooh YES Summerisle! I dated a man whose family all had initialled napkin rings and you'd go over for lunch and get this awful sort of blackened husk of a ring, that they'd clearly bought when he started bringing girlfriends home after some sort of 'dear god, what can we do - we can't give these girls RINGLESS napkins - but they couldn't possibly use OUR rings' conversation.

One birthday he bought me my own initialled napkin ring. He was trying to be nice, and I could even see that it indicated a certain level of commitment to the relationship but I still struggled with it.

Then I left him.

On the topic of napkins generally, it's just dawned on me that I come from a 'non washing' home. Unless they're visibly stained, or due their thrice yearly wash, they go back in the napkin drawer after meals. I suppose the implication is that if one had REAL manners one wouldn't USE one's napkin and thus it would never be soiled.

Then I grew up and now we all share one tea towel, if hand wiping is needed. Maybe two on special occasions. Though come to think of it I don't always wash those immediately afterward either. But that's because I'm a slattern.

Am I the only person not surprised by point 3?

I have stayed at small hotels in France where this was quite normal. After the meal you put your napkin back in its special holder and you get the same one the next night

Errrr I would be a bit about using the same napkin the next day, I use cloth napkins when guests are staying but these are replaced at every meal with freshly laundered ones or just other clean ones from the drawer, using the same one for 4 days is nasty !

I'm a naturally lazy, messy dirtyperson. I only clean because I have to. I'll re wear clothes until they're dirty and only change sheets once a month fortnight.

But I'm fairly grossed out by the number of people who reuse napkins. I mean...really? I still can't quite believe people can be serious.

Napkins? That you use to wipe crumbs or spills from your mouth? With, like, saliva and everything. That plenty of people use for the odd nose-wipe too?

Really ? [Suddenly feels better about own pretty low standards]

I can't see a problem with "The Media Centre" After all, I have a Sky Parlour. (It's the attic/loft. I read it online and renamed it. It's not converted or anything, it is full of crap, but it's a Sky Parlour.) I may have to think of different names for all the rooms now.

I know someone with a 'guest suite' She refers to her dh as "the baron"

I used to have a room christened (by my sister) "The Dumping Ground". Then DH moved in and I had to sort myself out, because he is tidy.

Lots of older people I know reuse napkins, but usually only for 2 meals. And not the ones the small children had.

Not washing the sheets is beyond the pale! My mother does that and it is vile. I used to arrive to find previoys guests stains. I take a sleeping bag with me whenever I stay somewhere other than my own bed.

Use this story to show them that only the povs use napkin rings