But then you get to my house and it’s a bit, well, unsightly. I often get the feeling that there will be a neighbourhood coup to run us from town for being the blight on their Middle-class protentious bliss. I can see why though: overgrown garden, disused race-car on the lawn, exposed brickwork, and that’s just the outside. As soon as you walk through the front door you see more plaster, a garish '80’s green and brown carpet and rooms that have always, in my twenty years of life, been in the process of being redecorated.
I never used to care about where I lived, but then I went to University with a large collective of rich Londoners, dated a public schoolboy and became a tad self conscious. I know that anyone worth befriending shouldn’t judge me by the house I live in, but you try telling yourself that when the ceiling has caved in and you have a conversation with your mortified best friend with the background noise of your dad on the toilet directly above, I shit you not.
My boyfriend Matthew lives in a large, three storey new build on an estate set back by a forest in the country. When I first went there it was quiet, relaxed and cream enough to make me worry that I might have had the smallest spec of dirt on my shoes and instinctively left my leopard-print pumps by the door. It’s quite unusual for anyone to do that back at the building site. You’d be more likely to trail plaster dust behind you as it clung to your clean white socks than deposit any dirt yourself. So you can see that the two environments are rather different. The people are, too.
I met Matthew’s parents a week after he’d broken up with his ex-girlfriend and was greeted with what I believed was a confused look from his father and rightly so, considering that I was a short mixed race brunette and not a skinny, back-combed blonde with a nose stud. But despite the hasty, perhaps inappropriate beginning to our relationship, they politely welcomed me and I began to see the intricacies of the family over a wonderfully cooked dinner. Flip to Maison Macdonald and you’ll be lucky if there isn’t fifty swear words, two arguments and three complaints that dinner is crap in the first five minutes.
I honestly believe I have the most amazing, semi-dysfunctional family that anyone could wish for and usually my friends feel the same way about them. My brother has a summer house in the garden, home to X-box gaming marathons and other illicit activities, the acceptance of which has pushed my parents up to legendary status among his 24 year old friends. They are relaxed to the point of hosting house parties, always providing the witty banter, chilli, nacho’s and beer bong.
My mum is 4 ft 11 with size 2 feet. She changes between children’s trainers and army pyjamas to go to the supermarket, and prostitute heels made, (for some strange reason),for minors, with co-ordinated shift dresses for work. She is my best friend and confidant and is the same to anyone who comes through the door. Dad is the most knowledgeable person I know, closely followed by the know-it-all brother with a memory of the great lawyer he is destined to be. Both are well adept at the Spanish Inquisition, even if they don’t always employ it.
So when it was time for Matthew to ‘meet the family’ I was nervous to say the least. Especially because my track record isn't exactly glowing and they presume everyone I bring home will be an immature tosser with poor conversational skills and more worryingly, teenage hormones. Did I mention that Matthew is nineteen? But I could never have been prepared for what happened when they got together . . .
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