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Original poster

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

138 replies

sandyballs · 03/07/2006 13:27

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.

OP posts:
Crackle · 05/07/2006 22:33

This is so theraputic.

Tomorrow I'll start my very own thread about my FIL and list from beginning to end all his maddening quirks. I have 15 years of stories.

moondog · 05/07/2006 22:34

Yes please Crackle.

sugarfree · 05/07/2006 22:37
Crackle · 05/07/2006 22:41

But just one more because I cannot resist.

He is in charge of 'directing' the Christmas dinner preparations and has his own copy of Delia Smith that has each and every turkey he has ever seen cooked listed in the front cover. He lists weight, stuffings, length of cooking, any special notes, appearance, oven type and finally a brief note on taste.

He forgot his book last year so wrote in my copy.

'Very Dry.'

I'm giggling now.

marthamoo · 05/07/2006 22:42

Love this thread

Can I vicariously recount one of my friend's MIL From Hell stories? When my friend got married she and her husband rented a cottage on the MILs farm (they eventually took over the mortgage and now own it outright). Every day, my friend would get home from work and things in the house would have been moved around: cushions rearranged, curtains tweaked, flowers past their best thrown away and the vase washed out, washing put away in drawers. MIL was letting herself in with her spare key and 'helping'. Friend tried to be nice about it - "you really mustn't, you have enough to do.." but got more and more pissed off with it. The MIL even adjusted the time clock on the central heating - left a note "you really don't need the heating on as long as this." The final straw came when they had rearranged the furniture in the living room and my friend got home from work to find it had all been put back the way it had been in the first place

She had a blazing row with her dh because he wouldn't speak to his mother "she's only trying to help..." which culminated in my friend taking a baseball bat to the partition wall between their bedroom and the bathroom and beating a hole in it..."Lets...>...see......put...>...this....

liath · 05/07/2006 22:43

Snort!

Sounds like a more extreme version of my dad.

sugarfree · 05/07/2006 22:43

giggling with you! What a twunt!

I would be unable to resist writing all sorts of little messages through his Delia Smith.

moondog · 05/07/2006 22:44

lmao at last two fresh offerings

sugarfree · 05/07/2006 22:45

..."Lets...>...see......put...>...this....

JanH · 05/07/2006 22:45

moo, is your friend Ruth Archer by any chance?

Love this thread

aitch71 · 05/07/2006 23:21

very dry. the man's a genius, LOL.

NotQuiteCockney · 06/07/2006 15:05

Crackle, do you need to keep a book logging his behaviour? With notes like "supercilious" "bizarrely bossy" and "insane"?

Crackle · 06/07/2006 16:34

I am almost too angry to talk about him today.

Almost.

Ds birthday last Saturday. Today he receives a card with a £10 book token in. Fine.

On closer inspection, this is one of the three £10 book tokens we gave him for Christmas. I can read the indentation of our names on the paper. Also, it is for the specific book shop near his office, as specified in great detail by him last year.

We live approx 350 miles away from the nearest branch. Tightass fucknut.

I am going out to get a bottle of wine.

sugarfree · 06/07/2006 16:36

I hope you mean you are going to get a 'special' bottle out of the blanket box.

LeahE · 06/07/2006 16:55

Send it back to him this Christmas.

Ladyb1rd · 06/07/2006 16:56

In fact, glue the token to the front of one of his special bottles of wine and drop it as you hand it over.

moondog · 06/07/2006 18:37

Crackle.
Fecking outrageous.
Drain the wine.
All of it.

Crackle · 06/07/2006 19:56

Operation Alcohol well underway.

I have decided, in the spirit of Mumsnet to send the token back at Christmas neatly wrapped up with knicker elastic.

Just thinking about last Christmas brings me out in hives. My SIL nearly killed him. She still can't talk about it.

sugarfree · 06/07/2006 20:00

Go on tell us about last Christmas.Please.

WideWebWitch · 06/07/2006 20:10

Oh please tell us.
Marthamoo, oh thank you for that story, I am giggling and I had a SHITE day and felt like crying when I came in so that's some achievement.

Ha ha at Crackle too, very dry, ha ha ha.

Crackle · 06/07/2006 20:17

It really wasn't a dry turkey at all.

I'm talking to my sil at the moment and if she agrees, I'll spill about Xmas. It probably isn't interesting at all to you lot but it was.just.awful.

marthamoo · 06/07/2006 20:23

You're welcome, www. Janh, I don't partake of the Archers but if Ruth is a petite five footer with a penchant for home renovation then yes...maybe

JanH · 06/07/2006 20:27

Ruth sounds tiny, moo - it was one of the classic Archers plots with the saintly MIL (Jill) forever popping in with casseroles and changing things round - it bloody nearly ended in violence (maybe one of the scriptwriters knows your friend!)

moondog · 06/07/2006 20:44

Crackle,believe me,we will love it.

My Ils were lovely. Both dead now though.

Crackle · 06/07/2006 21:25

Ok. Firstly I have to say that my MIL is a really lovely lady. She loves her sons and her grandchildren and I know that she genuinely likes us DIL's too. It's just him.

I have approx 4billion stories that make me cringe but last Xmas was particularly horrid. My SIL, her husband and two kids came down for the day. MIL and FIL had already been here for 4 long, long days. They always like going out and keeping busy but I was getting over an ear infection and just couldn't combine Xmas prep, inlaw duty and child wrangling. This resulted in my FIL getting progressively more cross. He wouldn't take the car out himself as he was 'on holiday'.

He is hard of hearing and keeps turning his hearing aid off. This means that he thinks I can't hear him moan. He kept passive/aggressively asking what we were doing today. I would give him some suggestions and he would humpf. When I left the room he would shout 'why is she hanging about? We've come to see our son, not her. What is for dinner? Christ, why can't we go out?' Really loudly.

He then acted all confused when I confronted him and asked him exactly what he wanted to do/go/eat. When I left the room he would shout 'what's wrong with her, all she's got to do is make the dinner, which will be crap as usual'. When confronted, he denied saying a word.

My MIL was in tears.

Anyway, Xmas morning my SIL arrived festooned with many gifts for FIL who opened them all with no comment. When she left the room, he shouted 'Christ, she's let 'granddaughter' get fat'. We all, including my lovely niece, heard this. Cue crying and shouting.

Happy Christmas.

All day he critiqued every.single.thing my niece ate. She is 8yo and gorgeous. My husband had to take him out of the house and explain that he was not welcome and he needed to apologise to everyone. The atmosphere was horrible. He didn't apologise and went into his bedroom where he loudly talked about how rubbish his presents were and how working mothers can't feed their kids properly. He also said that he couldn't believe that me and my dh (who are normalish and very content) weren't divorced yet.

To top it off, he has been telling the kids a rolling story for the last 9 years of a magic land and a magical boy (frankly this is his only redeeming feature) and he decided that Christmas bedtime was a good time for the magical boy to die as he was tired of the story.

Wanker.

When he gets old, he's going in a home. The cheapest one we can find. Other people think he is clever and witty. He is an utter shit IMO.