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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

My Australian MIL

253 replies

WS12 · 10/04/2018 10:49

So I just wondered AIBU to be peed off with my MIL, or am I just being precious...

I am from the UK, born and bred in northeast England. Met my DH there who is Australian and got married had kids, lived there together for 7 years. Then we moved to Aus in 2016.

I get so annoyed at the digs all the time from my Australian MIL (culture clash I think) about England (she always loved visiting us though and came regularly often twice a year!).

Yesterday she said she was concerned about my DHs health when we lived there as he was always ill with cold Hmm... ummm 60 million people manage to live here just fine....

Tonight's digs are (she's staying with us for three nights). Out potato peeler is old fashioned and she will bring me a new one "I'm going to bring you a new peeler. This peeler is so old fashioned. This is from England" and I said it actually isn't it's from Woolworths...

Second dig. My son is receiving speech therapy to help his clairity and sounds. She asked if it was to help him learn to speak Australian. I could've punched her. She isn't saying it nastily, but it's like she just doesn't think of how offensive that actually is to me as a native English speaker.

My DH says she has no filter, like the rest of his family. She still also insists we have a ghost in our house.

👊👊👊👊 I feel like moving back to England just to piss her off.

OP posts:
GibbousMoon · 13/04/2018 07:53

The thing about the weather is that we do have good weather and it gives us a chance to enjoy beautiful scenery, if you are somewhere where it is always sunny their leafy spring is over by the end of May and it's downhill to brown and dusty after that. How quickly that happen depends on how hot it is. No rain means no greenery. This seems fine if you are a 2 week tourist but I wouldn't want to live with that all the time.

thefunbegins · 13/04/2018 08:08

Clicked on this thread hoping it wasn't another Australian bashing thread. What do you know - it is.

Really puts me off MN. For all your talk about racism, you sure know how to make people feel extremely unwelcome.

heartyrebel · 13/04/2018 08:17

Anyone living in another country will experience this. Im from new zealand and I lived in London in the early 2000s and was always asked if I was on benefits or generally there to steal jobs or bludge off the system.

Davros · 13/04/2018 09:14

Bludge - great word
Don't forget the UK invented the Bessemer Smelting process, whatever that is Grin
The people who talk to me most about UK weather are from other countries, including some extremely cold and dark all winter ones. I hate talking about it, it's boring and pointless.
One thing about the UK that can't be denied, it's extremely popular to visit, live and settle.

Hypermice · 13/04/2018 09:36

the number of people killed by Australian wildlife, even though they are some of the deadliest in the world, was lower than the number of people who had died taking selfies.

That is interesting! I don’t get the Aussie bashing tbh. It’s a great country to live in and the national psyche seems alright to me. Direct, positive but not annoyingly so and a decent sense of humour. Great lifestyle, low crime, good healthcare. What’s not to like ? The heat I think I’d struggle with but otherwise it’s a great place to live and work. I lived in NZ for a while and went to oz every now and again. Loved it.

Degustibusnonestdisputandem1 · 13/04/2018 09:52

Thefunbegins I couldn't agree more, this thread has made me feel very unwelcome.

GibbousMoon · 13/04/2018 09:53

I like Australia and Aussies. There is the most amazing scenery. Friendly people, sunny weather. But as you can see that makes a pretty boring post, so I think the 'ones who have something to say' are the complainers. Hence these Aussie/ Usa/ etc bashing threads.

AjasLipstick · 13/04/2018 09:59

I live in Australia....I'm British. The thing that is most stand out to me at the moment, after 14 years of coming in and out of the place, is that Australia has NEVER been as self-aware as it currently is.

There's a real feeling of growth here in terms of National Identity.

Even as few as ten years ago there was a bit of a "We're not quite as good as England" feeling here....like, you'd go to the shop, looking for Christmas decorations and find robins and snow scenes...now I can go out and buy Christmas paper with koalas on it or the flowers of December as seen in Australia...and not in England. With added glitter of course!

But that to me, signals a growing up...a moving away from "The Motherland" and it's lovely to see.

Orangettes · 13/04/2018 10:09

I lived in Australia for 2 years with dh - I'm Irish and he's English - I got really pissed off with all the anti-English shit, it was so bloody repetitive and dull...dh was less bothered...it's amazing how much energy they put into Pommie bashing...when the English rarely give them a moment's thought.

AjasLipstick · 13/04/2018 10:34

I haven't met ONE Anti-English person since I moved here permanently three years ago. Not one.

AltheaorDonna · 13/04/2018 10:35

And yet Orangettes as a Northern Irish person living in Oz with heaps of pommy friends I’ve never hear any of them moan about pommy bashing! Yes the Aussies take the piss, but they take the piss out of everyone including themselves. I find them very similar to the Irish that way, as long as you can take the slagging and give it back too the Aussies will be the best mates and neighbours you could ever have. I experienced more prejudice in my ten years in London than I do living here, much as I loved living there too.

AjasLipstick · 13/04/2018 10:49

Donna yes, I'm a Northerner and I find the Aussie humour very "Northern" in it's self depreciation and piss taking. People are lovely. Very positive and supportive....I have never lived anywhere where women were quite so actively together as they are here.

Orangettes · 13/04/2018 11:17

@ AltheaorDonna it wasn't piss taking - it came across as ignorance and insecurity.

Shiftymake · 13/04/2018 11:18

She doesn't want you too move back to the UK so slandering the UK is her way of trying to make you see England in a different abet worse light? Just a guess and haven't read all the post Smile

SickofThomasTheTank · 13/04/2018 12:20

@RedDwarves But you wouldn't have WiFi if an Englishman hadn't created the internet to begin with!
The only other thing on that list that applies to me and most people is the refrigerator!

It's not a competition! Hmm

OhWhatFuckeryIsThisNow · 13/04/2018 12:34

And you probably wouldn't have wi fi and Bluetooth without this woman
There are lovely folk and utter twats in every nationality, my dearest friends from school are true blue dinkum ozzies. And we gave the world Boris Johnston and Nigel Farage.

Hypermice · 13/04/2018 12:37

There are lovely folk and utter twats in every nationality, my dearest friends from school are true blue dinkum ozzies. And we gave the world Boris Johnston and Nigel Farage.

Hear hear. I’ve lived in many different places and people are people. Some are great, some are utter arses. Loveliness and twattery transcend national boundaries

RedDwarves · 13/04/2018 13:14

It's not a competition

Then don’t gob on about how the world would be nowhere without the Brits.

JassyRadlett · 13/04/2018 14:11

when the English rarely give them a moment's thought.

Really? My experience of living in England for 15 years (and mostly being mistaken for an English person now) is quite different.

FourFriedChickensDryWhiteToast · 13/04/2018 17:01

you know what i couldnt stand about Australia?
Being a white person, whether my ancestors came with a ball and chain , or paid ten pounds, where the aborigines have been decimated and herded onto reservations.

FourFriedChickensDryWhiteToast · 13/04/2018 17:02

what do they call them? Boongs?

JassyRadlett · 13/04/2018 17:20

Not since the 1950s, no.

Are you British? However do you cope?

peacheachpearplum · 13/04/2018 17:26

I had an Australian SIL, apparently everything here is second rate, our fridges aren't cold enough, our washing machines are too slow as apparently in Australia you can do a wash of a full load of dirty clothes in 10 minutes and they will be immaculate. She didn't approve of our sand when she went to a beach in Devon, so inferior to Australian sand and obviously our weather is rubbish. It got very boring very quickly.

zeeboo · 13/04/2018 17:28

@KC225 Wtf?? I mean Sweden is all kinds of awesome and if I had a flair for languages I'd move there, MIDSOMMER MURDERS??? It's utter TRIPE!!! We make some of the best television in the world and THAT is what she thinks defines England's only good point??
Wow. How did your Dh grow up to be marriage potential with that kind of Mother Grin

JassyRadlett · 13/04/2018 17:30

peach, she sounds like a twat on almost all counts above. But I’ll admit my first encounters with British sand were a bit of a surprise. It can be very different from the majority of Australian beaches.

I shall remain silent on the vexed question of pebble and shingle, in the interests of mutually friendly relations. Grin

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