Grandparents Make Mealtime Crazy

The seasonal influx of Grandparents has begun, with the Welsh lot arriving yesterday and the Austrian/ Hungarian lot arriving some time after the others have gone (the two do not mix well; not since a fight at my fourth birthday party about who got to make the sandwiches.)

Unfortunately, my mother has a slightly tense relationship with her mother, as they are very different in terms of world knowledge and culinary tastes. This means that she is currently slightly hysterical with the stress of discussing the right way to cook salmon, organising Christmas some more, and arguing with her parents over whether or not she ever wrote to them from university. Mealtimes are usually the worst, as my Granny will undoubtedly use her catchphrase 'Oh dash' (imagine that in a Welsh accent, with the 'oh' elongated, in fact, you've probably heard me imitating it anyway) and then my Dad and I will try and avoid laughing. It's our family's equivalent of 'what's occurin'?'

Anyway, this particular mealtime, my Mum was talking to my Grandparents about my Grandad's 'fancy woman,' or, to us modern day folk, the woman to whom he had once been engaged before he met my Granny. Then my Grandad started talking about someone called 'Marjorie the Gypsy,' at which point I laughed so hard I nearly choked on my drink, because I was confused and thought that Marjorie the Gypsy was his ex-fiancee.

Thank goodness she wasn't, because 'Marjorie the Gypsy' apparently had a grand total of two teeth, wore one man's boot and one man's shoe, and was apparently related to Tom Jones, because he has Welsh Romany Gyspy blood and my Mum described the Stop-And-Call Gypsies (that's actually the name of the town where my Grandad grew up) as 'one big Romany Gypsy family.' My Dad chose to interpret this as 'in-bred.'

Anyway, not my Almost-Grandmother; who I still know nothing about.