To sometimes feel like a brusque tweedy old lady on MN

[Imogentlasting]

I'm not that old, but some of the views on here really astound me. No one touch my child (on a thread I started); Christmas is just for me and my little unit, no relatives allowed; how dare an elderly person park in a P&T space; etc etc etc

AIBU to sometimes think the world is slowly going mad?

Oh this thread restores my faith in humanity. I thought it was just me that was at all the anger and vitriol on here. The attitude to MILs is depressing for a mother of boys.
What does worry me though is that these views influence others and that some young women will learn to be offended and outraged because they see so much of it online.

No need to be a crabby cockwomble when crabby cockwomblery isn't called for.

Ooh Dingle I've been thinking about a new name. Might have to nick that.

Oh and YANBU at all OP. Can I join the tweedy moustachioed gang too please?

Crabby Oi! who's talking moustaches?! gets out x10 mirror and inspects

I'm honoured CrabbyTheCockwomble!

Dingle

Rousesette I was mainly referring to my own.

I get mine threaded

Have any of you lovely people seen the cost of tweed these days? or Immac even

Lovely thread, I am soo glad you all feel the same. It was those who dared to touch the baby thread that did for me! Just get a life, arrrrrgggghhhh!

This is my tweed. And my 'not a single fuck given' look.

Oh now that is a cool tweedy look, Dingle! I can't see her being too fussed about an elderly person chucking the cheek of her newborn.

Rousette I use an IPL laser gun thing that bankrupts then burns you flashes hot light and banishes hair until next week forever. When I get properly old and tweedy I'll grow it out and wax and twirl the ends.

I'm so old and tweedy I don't know how to post images

Tweedy AGM.

I think that's you in the centre Imogen.

Jolly good. Proper order.

Don't you all find though, that if you are friendly and polite, most people are friendly and polite back?

Or is it just my indomitable Pollyannna spirit?

Well look what happened to Pollyanna. She fell out of a tree, broke her back and never walked again.

No alcohol? Pah, I have my own tweedy still and my friend helps me test it.

BabyGanoush yes! I just try to be pleasant and smile and chat (when appropriate) and it tends to work some of the time

Damn fine picture of Joyce Grenfell there!

Can I join in the tweedathon? I'm often very shocked on MN at the attitude to extended family and the idea that the nuclear family is this selfish little island and you shouldn't put up with annoying people even for Christmas. I realise it's partly cultural - I'm Irish and one thing I do like about here is the importance placed on family ties and the role extended families play in each others' lives. (I hasten to add we have many faults too and things to be sorted out, don't mean to sound jingoistic). A Dutch neighbour of mine was complaining that her Irish husband phoned his mother "every single week!!!" and was aghast when I told her I phoned mine every day.

Also the loose sense that children are part of a bigger community; I used to roll my eyes at old Dublin ladies telling me to "put a hat on that child would ya" but it's kind of nice. It's the reason my sister moved back after a decade in the UK, she finds it a more relaxing place to be with kids. We may well be heading the same way as everywhere else though - much as I love the internet I can see how it isolates people and encourages them to become entrenched in their self-righteousness. If you had lots of imaginary friends on the internet cheerleading your dickishness it'd be harder for you to realise you were being a dick in real life. This applies to every area of life and obviously it's child-rearing here. I know someone IRL who excluded her inlaws from Christmas dinner even though they were extremely generous to her and her husband/had had a terrible year with major financial meltdown/were very hurt by this and perhaps she was encouraged by some kind of YANBU mob on here, who knows?

God yeah get a fucking grip mimsy nobbers. I'd love to start up a reallife malory towers for certain adults

If I can't cluck over babies when I'm old then I shall just top myself

I read the thread about touching babies and felt like I'd fallen into some parallel, dystopian universe.

I wonder if any use might come from cross referencing "don't breathe near my child" attitudes with "never had, and would never look for, any emotional support from my parents" declarations. The two responses together do suggest words like fragmentation and atomisation (words which I hadn't thought of since my finals and which invariably came attached to "excessive surveillance" and "punishment."

shins I read your first paragraph and for a moment thought I must have written it myself - even though I can claim no Irish heritage.

Oh no! I've had too much tweedy liquor and now I can't feel my face!

It's not the fact that these things irritate people, it's the level of intensity that they do. If someone touches my child, part of me is like