If you travelled 3 hours to visit relatives ...

[Xmasgingerperson]

would you expect a biscuit with your cup of tea? I ask because we did this recently and thankfully we had taken something along as well as loads of presents.

People are strange, very strange.

I would never offer tea without biscuits/cake/pastries to a guest.

OP a proper meal with be the norm with travelling that distance, but if they have a newborn and don't have form for being ungenerous I'd just write it off as sleep deprivation.

It all sounds like a very awkward visit - I hope the conversation wasn’t as abrupt as your vague posts OP.

OP invited herself over

They didn’t want the visit and made excuses

they were shoe horned in to it by the OP

they (cleverly) worked out that if they make this annual visit unpleasant for the Op, then it may mean she won’t want to come next year

I’d cook a meal, no way I’d give a cup of tea

We don't have them kind of things in the house so unless someone wants a meal it wouldn't even enter my head. I offer snacks to children who come but not adults. Although anyone who visits knows me well enough to either say something or help themselves if they were hungry.

i suppose i am thinking, do i have cakes and biscuits in my house? nope as anything i have just gets eaten THAT DAY

so someone saying - they are calling in one afternoon to drop off a present - and they'd arrive at 1, after having lunch, and leave in the afternoon, i'd assume wasn't hungry - as they have just had lunch.

I would assume i was a stop gap fitted in between some places (ie whereever you are going for lunch and wherever tea is being done) and a chance to have a wee/do some family obligation visit.

i'd clean the bathroom! and that would be enough to say i was "visitor ready"

I suspect there is a lot of background that OP is not sharing here.

I don't have biscuits in the house but if I knew I had guests coming, I would buy them in or get some cakes etc.

Oh sweet lord I would have been mortified. prr arranged arrival around 1pm I would have been hounding you do you want lunch etc. if I knew you had lunch would have done light tea or something depending on time of year. no way what so ever would have let you leave the house without dinner. my sis lives an hour away anytime she here we either have lunch or dinner here and she also doesn't come empty handed and vice versa. it's not that bloody hard

I used travel to my mothers 6 hour round journey by train. I am NC for 7 month.
I used to travel there ...have to make my own drink and anyone else's...no biscuits. I used to buy own food shopping and feed mum with that...i had to cook every meal and wash up.. constantly making drinks and running about after folks.
My sister would travel there , mum would give her £100 petrol and last time sis went mum also gave her money for new tires, fed her and cooked for sister..made her drinks.. never cost sister a thing. She was on more money than me too. I never received so much as a ty or a pound.
I stopped going. Not my sister's fault..its mum. Shes just horrible to me. So im NC, for many reasons

No because id have stopped on the way and fed myself. Same as on the way back

I'd always have something in or nip to the garage if caught short. Would you not buy something in if you knew someone was coming? Just a cup of tea when you know someone's coming would be seen as really inhospitable and bordering on rude here.

But even if the new mum wasn't up to it, it surely isn't beyond the capabilities of the new dad?

Or if there was only mum and baby, what's wrong with "There's biscuits in the top cupboard - please help yourself. I'm shattered!"

I think if you drove for 3 hours and stayed 4 and then had a 3 hour drive back your relatives have bad manners if they didn't offer a meal and refreshments. I would offer biscuits/cake to anyone who visits regardless of journey and certainly a snack or meal if they were with us for 4 hours. How ungracious.

No but none of my friends or family do when I visit them either. It seems a bit formal

Yanbu. Guests should always be offered a biscuit / cake.
Tbh after a 3hr drive I'd expect lunch.

So you invited yourselves to see them for 1-5 pm but weren’t staying for meals. The journey was 3 hours each way. When were you eating?

That's really bad manners and I'd have done a lunch because you'd travelled a long way and bringing gifts. Your relatives are cheeky grabby fuckers with a massive sense of entitlement & no manners. Next year just post a selection box to the ill mannered relative. As they're not considerate towards you then you should dial back the effort you spend on them.

Obviously it depends on whether it’s a newborn or not but I would have said that I’d have lunch ready for you when you arrive if or sandwiches if preferred.
I always offer biscuits with hot drinks, nibbles with cold drinks.

I'd expect a meal and probably a bed for the night

An arranged visit for !pm, i would be making you lunch. We drove 4 hours to visit someone, never even got a cuppa, have never been back in over a decade.

So your relative drives 4 his to give your kid a present and you couldn't tweak food timings to feed them or keep something back for them?

This reminds me of an old friend I used to drive to see. Only 30 minutes drive each way, but not once did she ever offer me even a drink although one time was quite happy to declare that she wanted curry, so placed an order and I drove to collect it.

Another time she even said she'd forgotten I was coming.

Always had to pay for her on nights out even though she could afford to spend hundreds at the hairdresseers, on new furniture and once refused to pay back some money I had lent her, as she "needs the money more than I do".

Not everyone buys biscuits.

I don't.

My family don't.

I think I'd have offered something more along the lines of a 'snack' before setting off home on a 3 hour journey because you'd not be home till 7pm.

If it's family, did you not mention you were hungry and scout around the kitchen for something to eat?

Seeing as the OP hasn't returned, I suspect you've nailed it.