Humbug, indeed.
I’m still unsure how it happened, but today I ended up driving for over two hours through heavy rain and bollocks Christmas traffic to Wakefield Westgate station to pick up my sister-in-law, only to discover that she’d changed her plans and gone to Crewe to be collected by the mother-in-law instead, and hadn’t bothered to tell us. And she had the nerve to imply that it was somehow my fault for not psychically deducing her modified transport arrangements. She also didn’t tell us that they weren’t staying for dinner after all, so my wife has prepared a shitload of food that wasn’t needed.
This year we had elected not to see my wife’s family, because, as you can hopefully see from the above example, they’re a bit of a nightmare. This was my wife’s decision, not mine, I hasten to add, I am perfectly capable of MTFUing and dealing with them when necessary. Somehow, however, said sister- and mother-in-law managed to break the embargo and invite themselves round, for reasons too spurious to go into here; we’ve only seen 20% of the buggers and it’s not even Xmas eve, yet my in-laws are still well in line for being the most awkward bit of the whole festive period, as per bloody usual.
Next year I want to spend Xmas in an undisclosed location, preferably somewhere fancy and warm in the southern hemisphere. 🙄