I don't get to see much of my extended family. I live with my parents but their siblings all live quite a way away. In the case of most of my mother's family I'm pleased about it as the crazy/evil/bitter might be catching and I don't need any of that.
In the case of my dad's family though, I wish I saw them more often. They're all lovely people that you can talk to and have a laugh with and on the occasions we do get together its always fun to catch up.
Recently one of my uncles was over from Norway. He lives out there with his wife, who's Norwegian herself. She's a real sweetie, not to mention extremely intelligent and, as is the case with most people "on the continent", she speaks very good english. They were over as he had some work business to attend to and so I guess they were trying to make a little holiday of it. Part of that was to spend a bit of time with us one evening.
I'll spare you the story about my dad and I busting our arses to clean the house while mother did nothing more than expand hers. The house was clean by the time they got here and I'd managed to have one little dig at my mother's laziness in the process (good times!).
After a quick coffee at our house, its decided that we'll go out to eat and we settle on a curry. I was in full swing of my diet at that point and I'm sure chicken korma did me no favours, but who cares.
It panned out that in the restaurant, the three of us ladies were on one side of the table and the gents were on the other side. Unfortunately for her, my uncles wife was between my mother and I and that meant no escape.
My old mother isn't all that great in social situations. She seems to think she is, but she tends to come across as patronising, overbearing, condescending. Just plain irritating and during the meal - in fact during the whole evening - conversations such as the following one took place:
My mother (in raised voice to my aunt, who is happily enjoying her meal): IS THAT NICE?
My aunt: Yes, its lovely. Really spicy. We had a curry in London recently, but it wasn't as spicy as this one.
My Mother: DO YOU HAVE CURRY IN NORWAY?
My aunt (hiding her confusion): Yes, we do...
I was dumbstruck. In situations similar to this one that I've witnessed with other people I've been able to say something like "Yes, Adam knows what a trade union is. He's 33." but this time I just couldn't find the words. The total embarassment had eaten them up. Probably with a smattering of mint raita on the side.
This woman, this extremely intelligent woman, who speaks english fluently even down to the use of colloquialisms, is being spoken to in the manner sterotypically adopted by an English person speaking to a foreigner. That good old english notion that if you're abroad and don't speak the language, just shout in english and they'll understand.
Except that it wasn't necessary; she did understand. She's Norwegian, not martian. They have pretty much the same stuff in Norway they have here. We've been there, we saw.
I doubt they'll be rushing back to visit again soon...
