Basically I think we were VVU - DH thinks not. Throwing it open to the mumsnet jury.
We were meant to go to MIL's for lunch today, decided to go shopping in town first. About ten minutes before we needed to leave town to go to hers, we had an enormous row. (It was based on a misunderstanding and is now resolved, so not the point of the post.) In the course of this row I stormed off went to get some air, and DH panic-texted MIL that we now weren't coming.
She then started ringing him and me alternately. Both of us by this point were trying to find each other again so cancelled her calls.
We sorted the row (in the course.of which DH told me that he'd said to her we weren't going), got back to the car and decided he'd better ring her to explain, apologise and say we'd be up in a minute (at this point we were only a few minutes late).
He then opened his phone to find a stream of horrible texts saying we were disgusting for cancelling so late, we had no respect, why weren't we answering phones etc. So DH then said he didn't actually want to go and texted her to explain we'd had a bad row. And got another horrible text back.
I think we were BU to cancel last minute, but have a small amount of sympathy with DH's pov that if a close family member texts last-minute to say they can't come to something, and then you can't get hols of them