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JM #120: Nihilism on a Plate
JM #120: Nihilism on a Plate
Gosh , it's as though you know my (step) mother in law!....only we were never invited round to their house at all over Christmas and in all our years of marriage we only went to my in laws house twice ( and then got a bowl of soup and cheese scone) and the only presents my children got from her were an 'Oxfam' donkey...ie a family in India gets the donkey .....while her thoughts were obviously well meaning?I know why that miserable 'Christmas' pile of nihilism on a plate bothers some fraus.
It's the meanspirited half effort made by the ex mother in law on the day you were informed that you had to go there rather than have your own Christmas 'Because visiting family is what middleclass families do'.
You aren't allowed to give the kids all their presents to wake up with, as it's not the done thing, so they've had three each. You've been told that because you'll be eating Dinner soon, you're not to let them have anything more than toast or a bowl of cereal at 8.30am, rather than making a proper Christmas Breakfast accompanied by a Bucks Fizz or boozy coffee as he's going to be driving, so you aren't allowed either. 11.30am comes and you dutifully wrangle children into acceptable clothing when they just want to play with toys and watch Christmas movies. You drive in silence to deepest Suburbia, past houses full of giggling children and cycling lessons in the streets and parks.
Once you arrive, you notice just how little has been decorated. There's a thirty year old and dusty like a long dead Aunt decoration on the inside porch door - no putting a wreath on the outside, as somebody said once that wreath mean 'All Welcome' and nobody wants that. The Christmas Tree lights are off 'because it's not Christmas Eve any more'. It's either deathly silent or the father in law is going through his 27 CD collection of Christmas carols as performed by a synthesizer orchestra from the early 70s as per A Clockwork Orange . The dogs have been shut out in the garden and the washing still stands on an airer in the conservatory.
Three hours later, the other sibling and spouse turn up. MIL now goes into firefighting mode as there are SIX people in the house. Dinner is nearly ready, apparently, not that you can smell anything. The children are allocated a plastic table in the conservatory next to the FIL's Y fronts in case they giggle. You assemble hopefully, thinking that it can't really all be ready from the two saucepans you've seen boiling for the last hour in the kitchen. You've offered to help, but this has been turned down.
And then the plates arrive. You have one small slice of white/grey meat, skin removed. There are two pieces of slightly greasy, yellowish potato about the size of a Jersey Royal. Three strips of carrot. A piece of greying broccoli in its own puddle of cold cooking water. And about a tablespoon of chicken Oxo. That's it. You're sitting there in silence, feeling vaguely jealous of the dogs in the garden who have been given their own Turkey leg each as part of their raw feeding regime. The kids come back from the pants drying area to see where the rest of the food is. There is no more food; she's already slightly miffed that they expected more than one potato each. MIL declares that she is simply full to the brim and won't eat again today as everybody has had so much to eat already as she picks up the plates and goes to wash up, refusing your offer to help/escape from the silence, punctuated by a soundtrack you associate with beating somebody to death with a giant china phallus.
Then it's Present Time. You all have to sit down and take turns in opening the things you never wanted, including the 18 months out of date biscuits that FIL retrieved from a skip next door to his workplace. This goes on for so long that it's getting dark. But you're obliged to stay until after even the smaller shops have closed. The TV never goes on. Eventually, you leave after being offered a tablespoon of Christmas Pudding. There is no ice cream or anything the kids would have liked. Even a single cup of tea is accompanied by the instruction to use the secondhand teabag on the side as 'You can get two cups of tea from a teabag, you know'.
You take your bottle of £2 bubblebath, regifted diary and packet of biros from the Pound Shop (because middleclass families 'don't waste money on fancy presents'), get home and go back to a home that would have been warm, bright and comfortable. The food would have been joyful and filled with colour and flavour, the kids would have played and relaxed and eaten and watched a film cuddled up on the sofa in their new pyjamas whilst you finished the evening with the warm and fuzzy glow of a couple of drinks. And you think 'I am never, ever doing that again'.
I think the teacher was a cunning cover story from Jack that was as robust as a single sheet of tissue and instantly destroyed by the simplest of innocent squiggle questions.Maybe the teacher story was a cover for BB/Louisa, or everything all worked out coincidentally that just as SB’s teacher tested positive for COVID forcing him to isolate, so does BB which means Jack and BB do too. OR it’s all crap and Jack got herself in a tangle when the Squiggles pointed out the errors. It doesn’t make sense.
This was so well written and really hammers home the drudgery of spending Christmas with difficult people. It's incredibly hard when you don't get along with your family/in-laws and can make you dread Christmas and feel envious of everyone else with warm families having a great time.I know why that miserable 'Christmas' pile of nihilism on a plate bothers some fraus.
It's the meanspirited half effort made by the ex mother in law on the day you were informed that you had to go there rather than have your own Christmas 'Because visiting family is what middleclass families do'.
You aren't allowed to give the kids all their presents to wake up with, as it's not the done thing, so they've had three each. You've been told that because you'll be eating Dinner soon, you're not to let them have anything more than toast or a bowl of cereal at 8.30am, rather than making a proper Christmas Breakfast accompanied by a Bucks Fizz or boozy coffee as he's going to be driving, so you aren't allowed either. 11.30am comes and you dutifully wrangle children into acceptable clothing when they just want to play with toys and watch Christmas movies. You drive in silence to deepest Suburbia, past houses full of giggling children and cycling lessons in the streets and parks.
Once you arrive, you notice just how little has been decorated. There's a thirty year old and dusty like a long dead Aunt decoration on the inside porch door - no putting a wreath on the outside, as somebody said once that wreath mean 'All Welcome' and nobody wants that. The Christmas Tree lights are off 'because it's not Christmas Eve any more'. It's either deathly silent or the father in law is going through his 27 CD collection of Christmas carols as performed by a synthesizer orchestra from the early 70s as per A Clockwork Orange . The dogs have been shut out in the garden and the washing still stands on an airer in the conservatory.
Three hours later, the other sibling and spouse turn up. MIL now goes into firefighting mode as there are SIX people in the house. Dinner is nearly ready, apparently, not that you can smell anything. The children are allocated a plastic table in the conservatory next to the FIL's Y fronts in case they giggle. You assemble hopefully, thinking that it can't really all be ready from the two saucepans you've seen boiling for the last hour in the kitchen. You've offered to help, but this has been turned down.
And then the plates arrive. You have one small slice of white/grey meat, skin removed. There are two pieces of slightly greasy, yellowish potato about the size of a Jersey Royal. Three strips of carrot. A piece of greying broccoli in its own puddle of cold cooking water. And about a tablespoon of chicken Oxo. That's it. You're sitting there in silence, feeling vaguely jealous of the dogs in the garden who have been given their own Turkey leg each as part of their raw feeding regime. The kids come back from the pants drying area to see where the rest of the food is. There is no more food; she's already slightly miffed that they expected more than one potato each. MIL declares that she is simply full to the brim and won't eat again today as everybody has had so much to eat already as she picks up the plates and goes to wash up, refusing your offer to help/escape from the silence, punctuated by a soundtrack you associate with beating somebody to death with a giant china phallus.
Then it's Present Time. You all have to sit down and take turns in opening the things you never wanted, including the 18 months out of date biscuits that FIL retrieved from a skip next door to his workplace. This goes on for so long that it's getting dark. But you're obliged to stay until after even the smaller shops have closed. The TV never goes on. Eventually, you leave after being offered a tablespoon of Christmas Pudding. There is no ice cream or anything the kids would have liked. Even a single cup of tea is accompanied by the instruction to use the secondhand teabag on the side as 'You can get two cups of tea from a teabag, you know'.
You take your bottle of £2 bubblebath, regifted diary and packet of biros from the Pound Shop (because middleclass families 'don't waste money on fancy presents'), get home and go back to a home that would have been warm, bright and comfortable. The food would have been joyful and filled with colour and flavour, the kids would have played and relaxed and eaten and watched a film cuddled up on the sofa in their new pyjamas whilst you finished the evening with the warm and fuzzy glow of a couple of drinks. And you think 'I am never, ever doing that again'.
Great post, Dragon. My SIL is like your MIL. The last time I had Christmas at her house I got served green beans and nothing else. I had offered to bring food, I know some people can't cope with accommodating vegans. I was assured there was plenty. She had managed to put butter and goosefat on everything. No nuts, or crisps or even bread in the house. I cried a little in the bathroom, then washed my face and proceeded to get drunk. My husband and I have never spoken of that Christmas again. We now always have Christmas at ours or go to my family.MIL declares that she is simply full to the brim and won't eat again today as everybody has had so much to eat already
I think she's just so lazy that every single job she does is haphazardly rushed out so she can tweet it and get those sweet dopamine hits while lying down in her filthy cat hair covered bed. I honestly put more care and attention into posting a pic of my christmas dinner on insta stories for my 150 followers last year.Sorry for harking back to the Christmas dinner abomination but thinking about the dessert, surely if you were Jack, you'd look at that picture and think "hang on, that bit there looks like a beetle. Those horrible ninnies on Tattle will see that and mock me mercilessly about it, I know, I'll facetune it out". She loves us talking about her, even though it's nearly always less than complimentary. She's a strange fish who hates the poors and vegans and wants to punish them by making them eat beetles and sawdust.
I hate this almost as much as her “because, science or something”. Used in the Christmas cake recipe and shows why, so perfectly, it will taste absolutely rank.Then came the dramatic "because reasons".
If it was a cover story, just... why bother? She could have kept her business to herself and not announced anything to all of Twitter. Noone would be any wiser and nor do they need to beI think the teacher was a cunning cover story from Jack that was as robust as a single sheet of tissue and instantly destroyed by the simplest of innocent squiggle questions.
Then came the dramatic "because reasons".
An impossibility for our Jackie. Which makes it all the stranger that we didn’t get a running commentary and howling about her experience getting a Covid test.If it was a cover story, just... why bother? She could have kept her business to herself and not announced anything to all of Twitter. Noone would be any wiser and nor do they need to be.
And then she gets the nark with people offering her suggestions and advice, when she could have kept it private in the first place. But I guess privacy does not = attention.
She needed a get out for lack of content for paypigs. She hoped mentioning rhona would avoid questions, but it backfiredIf it was a cover story, just... why bother? She could have kept her business to herself and not announced anything to all of Twitter. Noone would be any wiser and nor do they need to be.
And then she gets the nark with people offering her suggestions and advice, when she could have kept it private in the first place. But I guess privacy does not = attention.
Is it all just an excuse for not posting the post cards?An impossibility for our Jackie. Which makes it all the stranger that we didn’t get a running commentary and howling about her experience getting a Covid test.
I don't think she's had one. She would 100% say if she had.An impossibility for our Jackie. Which makes it all the stranger that we didn’t get a running commentary and howling about her experience getting a Covid test.
I've never seen roast vegetables look so greasy beforeA cook, Jack is not.
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