I've just returned from a week's holiday with the in-laws. Never ever ever again.

[sandyballs]

I need at least another week's holiday to get over it. How I managed to stay reasonably calm and not give her a serious bollocking, I will never know. The woman is completely barking. A few examples:

• when we arrived at our holiday cottage she was flaked out on the sofa, fanning herself, in a foul mood because she "doesn't do travelling". It was Hampshire FFS, not Australia. It was 2 hours in the car!

• she is manically, obsessively tidy. I couldn't go for a pee without her plumping up my cushion or putting my half finished coffee in the dish washer.

• she didn't like my DDs to get a single speck of dirt on them the entire holiday and everything had to coordinate. She would whip off a t-shirt if she saw a crumb on it. Unfortunately this wound me up so much that it made me go to the opposite extreme and I took them to quite a smart restaurant in grubby purple shorts, long stripey yellow socks, and a green t-shirt with a bit of lunch on it, just to piss her off. It worked .

• she decided to go for a swim when we were at the beach one day, even though she can't actually swim. The result being that I had to swim out to rescue her in my shorts and t-shirt, whilst my DDs screamed hysterically at the waters edge, thinking nana was drowning. I had no other clothes with me, but MIL didn't want to go back to our cottage, she was too traumatised, so we had to sit on the beach for another 2 hours and talk about her near-miss and how she saw a white light .

• on the last morning I wandered into the kitchen, reached for the bread and she screamed "What are you doing". "Err, having some toast", I replied. So she screamed "Noooo you're not, I've cleaned the grill", and she slapped my hand .

God I could go on and on .... it's endless. I won't bore you any more, but it's been quite therapeutic writing this.

Oh dear - poor you. She sounds completely barking. Must be nice the be back home for some peace and quiet.

rofl
i think the white light is hilarious

lol
What possessed you to go in the first place????
(More examples please.I'm not bored!)

LOL

Aaaah..ROFL... sorry Sandyballs but the drowning thing is just hilarious....thankyou so much for making me smile, (nay, piss meself) for the first time today.

This is absolutely hyserical - although obviously not if it happens to you. Agreed, the woman is two cans short of a six pack.

Sounds like the holiday from hell! Where was your dh through all this? What was he doing?

We have been away together before and it didn't seem too bad. Not sure if she's got worse as she's got older or if I've become less tolerant of it.

Oh I forgot to mention the voice. She suddenly becomes a lot posher on holiday, as though the fact that she's in Hampshire means she has to have a plum in the mouth. But it sounds so so odd and false . Very loud too.

I need more, I need pictures...no, ...a novel

DH managed to slope off with his dad quite a lot, usually to the pub, which pissed me off immensely and caused a load of arguments. He also got out of bed at about 11.00 every morning, when the girls were all washed and dressed (coordinating of course ), the cool bag was made up with lunch, the cushions had been plumped , and basically everything had been done. All he had to do was get himself in the car, the poor love. Of course MIL thought this was completely acceptable, because her poor darling works soooo hard and it was HIS holiday after all. I work hard too FFS you silly silly old moo and it is also MY holiday.

Deep breaths, deep breaths

Message withdrawn

I have day dreamed about a different ending to that, where I didn't actually get to her in time .

Yes, more examples - especially if it's helping you to write them down, SB.

Bloody lunatic woman! And grr at your DH too - I'd have kicked mine out of bed early at least once

I feel your pain, I really do. I've just had my mil here for the past week. She's been telling me how lucky I am to have dp and dss and how lucky it was that dss could cook a meal for dp after his long day at work whilst I was away. FFS I had to explain to her that it was the 21st century and I was away working and that I had to teach dss to cook (he's 17) so that he could be a well balanced young man who diddn't have to depend on his mum (luckily as his mum threw him out). She also intimated that I was wasteful because I diddn't like fake flowers and wasted a whole £3 on them a week. And she was rude to dsd's boyfriend because he is mixed race and shes a fucking racist!!!
Sorry about the rant

God, she sounds a nightmare too. My MIL is also a racist. I've had to tell her so many times not to say certain things in front of our DDs, winds me up no end. She says its her age and I'd be the same if I was old, but my mum is 10 years older than her and not a bit like that.

sandyballs, that sounds grim but also cathartically funny as we have narrowly escaped a similar fate this year.
Was this gargoyle paying her way, out of interest?

She also thinks I'm a raging alcoholic because I had a couple of glasses of wine every night on holiday. I felt like drinking a couple of bottles, not a couple of glasses. She'd watch me drink one of them, then when I poured another she'd tut a bit and start talking about binge drinking females and their livers, and how the Daily Mail says it is all out of control .

Sandyballs the life saving thing is perfect! Everytime she challenges you on something (mismatched clothes etc) you can say "I saved your life and now you're criticising xxx/won't let me have toast/whatever". It's perfect because either she does owe her life to you, or she has to admit that she wasn't that close to drowning and is just being melodramatic. [wicked grin]

Yes exactly my dad is the same age as mil (76) and he is definitely not a racist and even if he was he would never embarrass his family by being rude to a guest. He will also happily eat all types of food, mil will only eat English food so as we hardly ever eat English food (we eat pasta, noodles, curry, you know wierd stuff like that!) we had to cater seperately for her. She was totally unwilling to try anything else. Grrr.
I should add that the reason the poor old bat was staying with us was because her partner of 10 yrs died. Hence my frustration as I had to keep my mouth shut!!!!

I'm sorry you had such a rotten time. But it makes hilarious reading!

That's a good point Bran. She's very good at melodramatic, it's her speciality, so I do think there was a bit of that involved. After all, this is the woman who wept for 10 minutes when she saw our newly decorated lounge .

Oh Sandy I got the raised eyebrows about the wine too. and a 'I've never drunk beer in my life' as I had 1 bottle of corona!

I feel your pain. I had to endure a week with my entire in-laws last year (MIL, FIL, BIL wife 2 kids and SIL husband and 3 kids). It just doesn't work, so many people with different expectations of what a holiday means to them. But at least they didn't try to drown.

I have got out of it this year with being heavily pregnant. Not sure I can come up with this excuse every year mind.

did she like the lounge? Or was she crying cause it wasn't traditional.

LOL at crying at your lounge decoration. Had you had Laurence Lewellyn Bowen in?