Meeting your boyfriend’s family for the first time is one thing, but when that means meeting two brothers, one sister, sister’s boyfriend, grandparents and Most Adored cat, let alone the parents, it’s quite another experience. On top of this, the family house is right at the top of Wales in a relatively inaccessible village, at least compared to where I come from just a one hour train ride south of London.
Imagine: It’s winter. You’ve just spent a lovely Christmas day etc with your family in surroundings you know like the palm of your hand, all is nice, easy and relaxing. After rising at the crack of dawn, you’re on a train from Winchester to Birmingham. It’s sunny, the flatish countryside of southern England races by. But the further north you go the thicker the clouds become. By the time you’ve reached Birmingham and changed to Crewe, waited nearly an hour in the pouring rain to get on some train to the Middle of Nowhere in Wales — a train which has “request stops” - yes, you actually have to tell the conductor which station you are travelling to and ask him, kindly, to make the train stop there — you can feel the beginnings of a heavy cold scratching at your throat. Two hours later, you’ve met boyfriend at the station, been driven home by his Dad who seems keen to talk about the weather, but not the usual “terrible day today,” more like, “this low pressure has caused some heavy precipitation today, don’t you think?” and now you’re at the family dinner table….
The First Encounter with boyfriend’s family went well. You didn’t knock over any glasses of red wine, tell inappropriate jokes followed by extended silences, or find the only tough bit of meat in the stew loving prepared by Mother, that you then had to regurgitate. Phew. In fact you can’t remember much of the rest of the First Encounter because your cold developed into something nasty and you spent a large part of the time asleep, asleep in the back of the car with mouth open and making a loud snoring noise, or pretending to be awake.
Tags: boyfriend, family, First Encounter, London, Most Adored cat, precipitation, rain, train, Wales, Winchester
