Home Sweet Home

Those of you who are unfortunate enough to follow me on twitter will have seen that this weekend my boyfriend and I stayed with my parents in Winchester. It was one of the most stressful weekends of my entire life even though everyone else (including to some extent my boyfriend) enjoyed it.

Since my family live in America most of their exposure to my ex-boyfriends has been a single meeting after which I normally realise I no longer want to be with such an emotionally retarded jerk and dump the poor lad. However this time we all agreed it would be nice for the boyfriend and I to have a weekend out of London and spend a few days ambling around a provincial English town.

It all started to go wrong when while carting my sister around South Kensington’s museums she announced that I’d be sleeping on the trundle bed in her room. Where would the boy be sleeping? On the sofa? On the trundle bed next to my sister with me?? On the floor of the spare room? When we all arrived at the house in the evening we discovered he was going to sleep on a bunk-bed in what is normally a teenage boy’s bedroom. We both looked at the bed in horror, not only did it creak and wobble but it was also a foot too small for him. As everyone drifted at 10 pm my insomnia and I lay awake until the early hours listening to my sister gnash her teeth, fart, and attempt to sleepwalk on me.

Although my family and the boy were perfectly well behaved, sleep deprivation and being on my best behaviour was turning me spare. Fighting my inclination to burp, swear, talk nonsense, and bite my nails was a constant struggle. Equally I was terrified that my boyfriend would see the petty, childish behaviour I revert to in the presence of my parents, think me a complete moron, and promptly break up with me on the return journey.

On Saturday afternoon some friends of my parents arrived for dinner and turned out to be the most dull people we had ever met. Ideas popped up in my head that as a middle aged person I too would become like this: talking about how the CIA own Facebook and ITV telly programmes. I imagined myself in a mid calf length linen dress drinking Blossom Hill and it made me want to be sick. The feeling stuck as the boy and I wangled a way to be in the same room (him in trundle bed on the floor, me in the top bunk) and I read a moronic, mysogynistic, dull children’s book till I fell asleep.

After night dreaming of Jeremy Clarkson, the Daily Mail, and drinks at All Bar One I was so filled with panic I felt mute. The boy and I ate lunch with my parents in town then wandered aimlessly till we found a pub full of eccentric winos and stopped for a swift half. As I necked my drink I tried to explain what was freaking me out but it all sounded too ridiculous. On the train back I felt relief flooding me and by the time we were back in London I was so happy I wanted to kiss the ground, but on further inspection decided it wasn’t a great idea.

While the boy and I waited for a bus I tried to explain why I’d been so stressed. All I could think about was how I didn’t want to grow old and become a mediocre person content with the middle ground. My parents used to be super left-wing, down at every march, and dancing at every gig, and now they like visiting cathedrals and watching America’s Got Talent – would that happen to me? “I just want to have fun and do cool stuff.” I bleated to the boy, and then we started laughing at how silly it all was.

My fear of becoming middle aged and middle class had coloured a weekend where my family had been perfectly nice, and cooked some bloody great dinners, and we’d escaped east London for a moment or two, and I felt daft as a brush for letting it get to me. That said the boy and I have decided that we’re limiting our trips out of London to the seaside and abroad. No more provincial market towns. Ever.

Photos by Katie Shapiro and Ali Bosworth