Yesterday ended badly, with my father-in-law informing me in the pub that I was talking “shit”. I wasn’t but he wasn’t interested in what I was saying. It was an uninteresting conversation about the difficulties of drilling into a certain wall. I’d had enough, so I left at that point, mumbling an apology. My wife can look after him, I hope.
He’s been down helping replaster the kitchen but the fact is he takes pleasure in being offensive. Low points today included him being repeatedly rude about a friend of mine, who he’s never met, on the basis of something he never said. Despite being repeatedly informed of what my pal actually said, my father-in-law repeatedly insisted that my friend is a “wanker”, an “arsehole” and a “prick”. Aside from that he vented his spleen on all lesbians on the basis of a story he heard third hand about a lesbian couple once. Imagine the situation, a sunny Sunday afternoon, with everybody out working in their garden, our kitchen door wide open whilst he plasters it and in a loud clear voice he announced that lesbians should be “burnt to death”. The other day he mentioned that he didn’t have any friends. I would have felt sorry for him but I do think some effort is required to make friends. I forget who said, “A man must keep his friendship in constant repair”. It is good advice.
My father-in-law is a complete bigot. He hates everbody. Certainly he dislikes me, probably because my wife and I haven’t produced any grandchildren for him. He’s a complete racist but my sister-in-law has fallen in love and had a baby with a black man. He’s absolutely ideal son-in-law material but my father-in-law’s bigotry is so intense that he refused to meet him for nearly three years. The only thing that changed his behaviour was my mother-in-law threatening to divorce him. Bless her. It wasn’t easy for her. I guess it still isn’t.
My father-in-law tells me that he likes buttocks. I tried to keep him on that topic of conversation because he stays positive then. It is a bit limiting though. Unfortunately his love of buttocks means that he letches at any young woman walking past in a pub. He’s 72. Perhaps in his youth this was acceptable behaviour. I suggested that there might be websites to cater for his fetish but he said he preferred them in the flesh. Shortly afterwards he told me that my mother-in-law wouldn’t mind if he went to a prostitute so long as he was “discreet” about it. Perhaps she wouldn’t. It’s not a subject I want to talk about to him. Perhaps I might, if we genuinely got along but we don’t. Clearly. Time for a video.
Classic.