My weekend

I'm going to break a rule of etiquette here, because generally it's not acceptable to lecture somebody on their morals. However, without the person being there to defend themselves, maybe it's not so rude.
Last weekend, the family flew out to see my brother, who lives near Gothenburg. Not quite en masse, because I wanted to work that Friday rather than use up holiday, and also because I hate Ryanair.
Perhaps my parents detest SAS and their apparent inability to run planes that don't lose a wheel from the undercarriage every now and again, so while I was flying into Landvetter they were off to a small metal shed called Goteborg City airport. More on this later.
I go to Heathrow, get my plane (which is running late, as per normal), eventually get to the hotel, get checked in, go to my room and find my mother and father asleep in it, and then have to phone my sister to figure out where my room actually is.
Probably swearing too much at this point, but I have spent all evening on the plane reading a dictionary of Japanese slang, so forgive me.
Next morning, get up bright and early and there's a huge performance about going to the train station to buy tickets in advance. Mother Cushtie has been advised by my brother to buy a carnet of 10 tickets - that will cover Father Cushtie, Mother Cushtie, Ms Cushtie and Mr Cushtie out to Brer Cushtie's house and back.
But what is this strange arithmetic, you ask? Surely if there's FOUR of you and two journeys each, then you need eight tickets, not ten?
Too true. As it turns out, eight returns are cheaper than a carnet of 10 singles, and the more uncharitable among us might suspect that a man as fantastically mean as Brer Cushtie might have been hoping to swoop on the two 'spares' and claim them for a free day's travel of his own.
Now, the hotel is fifty yards from the railway station, so the huge panic about getting there three hours early to stand in the cold seems rather over the top. We go to Nordstand shopping centre instead.
I hate going shopping. Well, actually that's a male cliche, and I quite like going shopping, if there is not something better to do. Much though I like Swedish shops, I feel that if you have never been to Gothenburg and you only have a morning there, it might be nice to do some sightseeing. But apparently not.
I buy some CDs that I could have bought in England or off the internet, and some buns. We go back to the hotel. Ma and Pa Cushtie begin to pack. They begin to panic. Neither of these actions are explicable to me. Surely you get up in the morning, shower, breakfast, throw everything in the suitcase there and then and then you don't need to panic to beat the clock five minutes before check out? Not so in this world that they inhabit, apparently?
However, finally their bags are packed and we get an hour or so of waiting at the station, 'to make sure we don't miss the train'. My eyes are already beginning to bulge with frustration.
Train is ok, although the heating doesn't work in the carriage we're in, and I can't face the performance of us all getting up and changing seats. Never mind, at least it's punctual.
This leads to the next of the thousand cuts that will be administered this weekend.
Just like in Japan, if a train is timetabled to arrive at 13:52, that's when it gets to the station. If you know this, and you know it's cold, and you have two aged parents with all their luggage arriving, maybe you'd get to the station for 13:52?
Not so.
OK, bear in mind that it's a ten minute drive from his house to the station. How does it happen that he doesn't arrive until we've detrained, wandered up and down the station concourse twice, and walked out to the street. Somebody swinging the lead, perhaps?
And when he does arrive, half the luggage won't fit in the boot because he's left it full of plastic boxes. What was going through his head? These boxes are too small to put anything in, but just too big to enable the luggage to fit in alongside them. Since boxes are obviously more important than people or suitcases, I have to wait with Father Cushtie in a urine-scented waiting hall for Brer Cushtie to drive the others off to the house and come back.
So far, so ill-planned. When he does come back, I try and engage him in conversation.
"I'll tell you something interesting" is what he usually says, before dispensing some bit of wisdom about autoclaves and uranium. Something so dull that my brain is trying to evacuate through my ears. In a monotone. Has he been doing oxycontin up in the woods, perhaps?
I try an experiment. Having been around the world quite a bit recently, I've tried to be nice. I really have. I've sent them a postcard from everywhere I've been. I sent them a moving in card when I went to Stockholm, for goodness' sake, I think they got one when I was best manning a wedding in Donegal, and they certainly got one when I was in Japan. Haven't heard a word back though.
So I ask "did you get that postcard I sent you from Japan?"
[Correct response, in case you haven't spotted it, would be "Yes thank you" or "Yes, what a nice picture of a tree/buddha/fish/hookworm/lungfish/E. coli" or something to fill the conversational gap]
"Yes" he says. Well, grunts it, as though it's painful to admit the experience. Who says that mutual politeness makes society possible to stand? Also, do you think I'm going to get as much as a thank you note for their Christmas presents this year? (Here's a clue: last time they bought me a present, it was a packet of 'chocolate penguin poo'. Ha fucking ha.)
Get to the house. It's chilly. OK, it's chilly outside, because it's rural Sweden in the winter, but it's almost colder inside. Again, I think somebody is being 'careful' with the heating to save money.
They ask if we'd like a drink. I'm meaning to give up, but today, damn right I need a drink.
Here's another problem. People who don't drink are wankers. That's the short description. If you do drink, they regard you as some sort of alcoholic stuntman, who should probably be kept well clear of the boot polish in case they try to neck it, but are fare game to dispose of anything else which has been lying around the house for a while.
They get out a bottle of wine. Or rather, a wine bottle full of something. The label reveals that it's Asda Bordeaux. No vintage. An inscription on the back says 'drink within 6 months of purchase'. Brer Cushtie thinks he's a posh wine waiter and tries to cut the foil off the top of the bottle with a blunt kitchen knife. No, no, no. No, no, fucking no. If you're a cossack you're allowed to chop the top off champagne bottles with a sabre. If you are a wine waiter and have a sharp knife (or the proper implement) maybe so. The rest of us get the sharp end of the hook, stick it through the foil on the top of the bottle and tear it off.
"But that leaves a jagged edge" he protests. Well, I'm not so much of a tramp that I'm going to be necking Asda from the bottle just yet, so what difference does that make?
In any case, nobody's going to be necking this stuff - it's already vinegar. So a second bottle comes out. This time it's from Sainsbury's, and this time it really is covered in dust. It looks like a prop from the Hollywood remake of The Wine Cellar Time Forgot. And once again, no vintage, but it tastes like finest ... vinegar. Down the sink for you.
Third time lucky, some chardonnay. I always thought white wine was chilled, but apparently it's better if it's the warmest thing in the house. To be fair, that's not a complaint given how perishingly cold it is, so I get a glass of that.
That was probably enough to stop me drinking. It takes me four hours to finish this one glass. My sister and mother get through a bit more, my father has a pint of 'lager' and falls asleep.
All this time, there's two west highland terriers barking continuously. After a few hours of this nonsense, my brother puts one outside, where it carries on barking. So he brings it back indoors. Where it carries on barking. At least when the little pile of white fur and dog turds was outside, there was a window in the way.
On to the evening. There's a rant about Phillip Pullman being evil (not sure what provoked that, but I did think of piping up and saying "but his books are very good, you know") and after an interminable game of Trivial Pursuit, everyone goes to bed.
I get an air mattress a head's length shorter than my body to sleep on. My parents get 'the guesthouse' - a garden shed with a set of slippery steps outside. I give my mother a hand carrying out her suitcase, while Brer Cushtie admonishes me 'not to step in the dog mess'. What dog mess, exactly?
(a) it's pitch black outside
(b) you haven't been feeding them winalot mixed with uranium particles, so funnily enough the stuff won't glow in the dark.
Perhaps at this point you'd give your guest a torch. No, you'd stand there like an idiot, asking "what do you think you are doing?". I'm trying to write a criticism of Montaigne, right? Oh, sorry, got confused, I was turning the torch on my phone on, so I can make sure my mother doesn't trend in a heap of dog shit and slide to her certain doom on these rickety icy steps.
So I go to bed and seek consolation in a book. Half an hour later I give up, go to sleep, and am occasionally disturbed by my mother and sister both being violently ill.
Next morning they're shaking like shitting dogs and looking like the dead people from a zombie film. I'm not having any more of this crap to be honest and need to get out, so I go for a run.
My brother and his dogs follow me for a bit. He'll say something like "I'll tell you something interesting... this is a very interesting building ... it's grey and nobody lives in it except cats ... " until I run off rather than try to smash his head open with a rock so I can see if there's anything interesting inside.
I come back from my run about an hour later, having run through a big pine forest that looks like it might be ok for a bike if you bombed it first. Breakfast is some black coffee, and then we get a second bite of the cherry at sightseeing. Or rather, Mother and Father Cushtie get in the car with me, the Cushtie-In-Law and her daughter, and off we drive for 50 miles to a retail park.
(This part of Sweden is flat as a pancake and has nothing in it, so perhaps I was over-hopeful on the sightseeing front, but I'm not sure that hanging around in the Swedish version of McDonalds and buying some 14 year old emo kid her dinner (thanks for saying thank you, by the way - but it's better if it's audible, you know) really counts as anything better.)
Go to the shops. Walk around for a while. Notice that the * key on my phone no longer works, so I can't unlock it unless I take the battery out first. Things just get worse, don't they? The odious child spends all her money on a new SIM card for her phone (that will make a nice present for her friend's birthday next week) but it's hard to criticise - she's 14 years old and clearly has no moral sense or ethics yet inculcated in her. Then back in the car again and back to Brer Cushtie's house. Very slowly, while all the mental Swedish hicks charge past in their Volvos. Here's the thing about driving - it's like a vernacular. If everybody else on the road is driving at 100 and overtaking lorries, do so too, or else don't complain when somebody in a V70 appears inside your boot.
Back to the house. More packing / panicking ensues. Ms Cushtie is still unwell - apparently has spent the afternoon being glowered at by a silent Brer Cushtie (who didn't have his wife around to grope in front of us and thus was in a bad mood) while the dogs continue to bark. Unable to stifle laughing when Brer Cushtie has a hysteric fit when told he has to put the roof box on his car. Apparently this requires a step ladder, which somebody must have hidden, and is quite hard to do in the dark. Well, you could have done it in the morning, couldn't you, brother of mine? We get in the car (eventually) and he drives very slowly to the station. Every corner he approaches he drops to 10 miles an hour from fifty yards away, slowly sidles up to it and then rolls round. All of which makes the fact that he fucking well SPED UP when a deer ran in front of the car, and goes on in sister-nauseating detail about roadkill, shows that he can drive fast if he wants to, and is a sociopath.
Get to the station. Pull up by the entrance, there's a dear?
No. Let's go a nice long way from the curb, and then sit there like a lummox until you're told that you're needed to carry some of these suitcases (like Ma Cushtie's, which is slightly bigger than she is). So eventually we get to the platform, where he tells us another 'interesting' anecdote about the train that transports logs across Sweden, or how exciting it is that an 'X-2000' might be coming soon. Oh, it's not an X-2000. Well, shit the bed. The only reason I came to Sweden was to inspect its rolling stock. You mook.
On to the train. Which is full of Swedes. Cue more sighs and moans that you can't find a seat. Except there are seats. How confusing. Back to Gothenburg we go, and then another hour's wait at the station for the bus to the airport, "because we don't want to be late". Trust me, dear Mother and holder of the Holy Schedule, the one thing you do want with a Ryanair flight is to be late so you can miss it and take a proper plane like a normal person. (Especially when it cost the same.) At least I get a pint at the station to take the edge off. My sister asks me if I want another. I say not. She calls me a lightweight. I think of telling her to fuck off, but merely point out that it's good to know one's limits.
City airport is a metal shed. You go through security and into a room with a bar, and a shop. Then after a while we go through passport control into a smaller room with no bar or shop. Then every moron on the planet decides to line up for the 9.20 flight at 8.45, which means obviously you get off your chair and spend half an hour stood there like a lummox yourself, before finally trudging onto the plane.
Your father quietly swears at the Ryanair announcement and then goes to sleep. Did he not know that kind of thing gets one flung off planes?
I read an ok, but-really-kind-of-unsatisfactory Murakami novel (After Dark), and by the time I get to Stansted the booze has worn off and I'm in a deep black hole. I get the luggage while the others are still faffing about (amusingly, Pa Cushtie gets to carry all the luggage while the ladies run off, which means he gets pulled up by Customs - like some bloke is busily defying HMRC by bringing back excessive meatballs from Sweden???)
Onto the bus back to the car park. At Stansted, the car park is divided into sectors - A, B, C, etc, and then the stops are numbered 1, 2, 3, etc. So Stop 1 does area A, stop 2 does B and C, stop 3 does D, stop 4 does D, stop 5 E, and so on. Notice a pattern? We're at F, stop 8. I stop, get off, my mother tells me I've got it wrong because we should get off at stop F 1, so I have to sling all the stuff back on the bus while the whole vehicle looks at me like some kind of idiot.
Eventually realisation dawns. She wants a non-existent bus stop. So off we get at stop 11, and here's where it really begins to grate.
We are a quarter mile, in darkness, on a road without a pavement at the side, with all the luggage. One of us could go and get the car and pick the others up, but no, we all have to traipse up the road to where the car has been abandoned. I'm almost treated to the sight of my father being run over by a speeding bus. I'm now filled with rage and despair, but it can still get worse. We get in the car. My father is pretty obviously sound asleep but it's still fine for him to drive. We weave out of the car park (including another farrago where it seems impossible to tell which lane to exit in) and then pull out onto a roundabout into the path of a transit that had right of way. All the way down the motorway he drives at random speeds (only going above 70 when there's roadworks and speed cameras) until at his finest moment decides to drive at 40 over the Dartford Bridge. In the fast lane. While all around people are overtaking on the inside, honking their horns and flashing their lights, and he's claiming it's the rational thing to do, because it's 'hard to move around in all this traffic'. It's fucking midnight on Sunday Dad, there isn't much around, and since you don't check your mirrors, how would you know anyway?
Then it's a quick bumble at 40mph in the middle lane of the motorway all the way back to Kent. So at least now I know who it is that drives in the middle lane and veers all over the place - it's my father. Great. Perhaps I'm taking it to heart too much, but given that I'm the only one in the family to go through a major accident on a motorway, I think I've earned the right. Or at least the right not to be put through all this.
We stop for petrol. Drivers change, which gives the Mother a chance to try to ram the car into the wall of the petrol station rather than out the exit, and then we're home. I have to go for a walk for half an hour before I can calm down enough to even be in the same building as them.
Don't think I'll be doing that next year.