This is just to prove that Sue is a normal woman still, as she so much loves to remind us in the second movie. She's a normal woman, and this was so tempting to write.

Why Your Mother Is Unwelcome In The House

The door shut, perhaps too quickly to be classed as a polite way of seeing guests off, but this was no ordinary guest. No, this was the devil in guest form. Actually, she was probably worse than that. The devil had to be afraid of her, it was the only logical explanation for the fact that she wasn't already the ruler of Hell.

Ok, it sounds cruel, and I'm not usually one to show my guests out of my house with more determination than someone evading a charging bull. This is different.

Imagine having a house guest who's striving so much for perfection, that the mere fact that my children aren't speaking fluent Shakespearean at the ages of seven and three means that she has to lie about how well the children are really doing just so that the neighbours don't disown her. Not our neighbours, of course. Our neighbours could care whether or not my children are even speaking English, let alone a language that no one in public schools understands anymore. It's her neighbours. The neighbour of the beast, as it were.

Ladies and gentlemen, let me introduce my mother-in-law. Evelyn Richards.

No one likes their mother-in-law. Not if they're sane. Ok, so a few girls out there actually get lucky, and find a mother-in-law who doesn't make them want to dive into the pits of Hell readily, if it weren't for the fact that their second mother would already be there waiting for them. Getting this lucky is probably harder than getting lucky with Brad Pitt. That is, of course, unless you take fate into your own hands, and find an older woman who is extremely pleasant and then marry her son no matter how much you'd really prefer the world to just open up and swallow you.

Mother-in-laws are one of those unavoidable trials in life that we just have to put up with. In the same category, you'll also find such events as streams of lava destroying small Hawaiian villages, hurricanes destroying hundreds of lives and homes, and global warming. My mother-in-law, however, is not a natural disaster. She's a constant disaster. Only there's no charity benefit concert hosted by Bono to relieve the suffering.

Don't get me wrong, I'm sure she's a charming person. I'm sure she has plenty of friends that adore her personality. I'm sure her parents even loved her as a child.

I'm just not quite sure that I can put up with her in my house for one more visit.

The fact that we live at one end of the country and her at another was a blissful separation, one that could easily be made more enjoyable if we'd go a bit further up north and cross the border into Canada, and if she could go a bit further south and remain completely isolated and frozen in place in Antarctica. However, the large distance did mean that when she visited, it wasn't just for a cup of tea or to mind the children for the night.

Oh no.

It lasted a couple of weeks.

Not a weekend, not a week. A couple of weeks.

Have you ever had to survive a couple of weeks with your mother-in-law? It's hard, isn't it? After a while, you start to beg for one of you not to make it out alive. At first, you have a clear indication of who you'd like to be that human sacrifice, but a few more days leaves you feeling not so fussy about the choice.

With my mother-in-law, you have to be on edge all the time. While I'm doing ridiculous tasks like helping Franklin with his homework and making dinner from whatever food we've got left from the cupboards the day before the weekly shop, Reed's mother, dear, sweet old Evelyn, is watching like a hawk from the corner, and inside, she's laughing.

Either that, or she's watching for the perfect opportunity to snap and kill us all.

One of the hardest things to do for the three weeks she was visiting was to hold my tongue - something that Evelyn doesn't even try to do. It goes the same way every time she arrives. She'll pick an awkward time, usually just after Reed's left for work, giving lectures at a nearby university, so that he doesn't have to see her for at least eight hours, and turn up on the doorstep with bags. Hundreds of bags. Every time I open the door and see her standing there, I get scared that she's planning to move in with us.

The first thing she complains about is the dog. Alfie's a beagle, so he's got so much energy that he'd still be buzzing around the house even if we took him for twelve walks a day. He's a friendly dog, so he'll try and jump up at her, thinking that he's going to get attention from her, just like he does from every other poor soul who suffers one of his bouncy greetings. Poor Alfie. He should have known by now that when Grandma comes to stay, the pick-me-ups he's so used to go down the drain, and are replaced with put-downs instead. It takes a lot of dog treats to make up for Evelyn's comments. Her favourites include "savage beast", "foul smelling creature", and her all time personal favourite, which never fails: "a danger to my grandchildren".

Sometimes, I wish that Alfie wasn't such an affectionate sop, so that perhaps he'd be a danger to her.

Then, she'll demand a tour of the house, wanting to see the latest developments in interior design. Every time, I want to scream at her that we don't have time for DIY. Between saving the world, Reed's lectures, picking Franklin up from school and Valeria up from nursery, before carting Franklin off to his after-school clubs and friends houses, not to mention walking Alfie, keeping up with Alfie's vets bills, and all the other bills we have to pay off, we just about have time to keep the house standing, let alone have time for adjustments. Especially adjustments that might have occurred since her last visit all of three months ago. Who has money to build an extension or re-do the bathroom after Christmas?

But I'll smile, and give her the tour of the house she's been in a million times.

First stop is the downstairs. That's when the 'hmm's start. "Hmm…that looks like damp to me. Hmm…weren't you going to fix that banister, dear? Hmm…I see you haven't done the washing up. Hmm…is that the dog's muddy footprints? Hmm…I see you've still got that 'interesting' artwork your aunt brought for you. Hmm…is that a games console? Are you really sure that's a good idea for Franklin? He's a bit young for all that violence, isn't he? Hmm…hmm…hmm…"

The temptation not put a sound-proof force field around her head is incredible. Instead, I calmly make up the excuses that she no doubt doesn't believe.

Yes, that is damp. Someone's coming to look at it on Friday morning.

Yes, we did fix the banister, but that was two months ago and since then, it has been broken again by your son's experiments.

No, I haven't done the washing up. I haven't had time. We don't all have a pensioner's time management skills (that part I didn't say out loud).

Yes, that is the dog's muddy footprints by the back door. None of my children have paws for feet, so they must belong to Alfie.

Yes, I have still got the artwork my aunt brought from me. I hate it as much as you do. Reed hates it as well. Of course, I want to tell her that I keep it hung on the living room wall just so that Reed feels a shred of the frustration that I feel when his mother invades our home, but something tells me that won't go down as well as the whiskey does.

And yes, that is a games console. But before she can jump down my throat for that one, I make great pleasure in telling that it is in fact my brother's games console, and that the violent games lined up beside it with clear '15' and '18' ratings on all belong to my brother, not my son. And, of course, Franklin is seven years old. Not many seven year olds are capable of completing a Resident Evil game, and even if he was capable, I wouldn't want to pay for the years of therapy he'd no doubt need for it.

And so we go upstairs, where I am pointed out that Valeria's toys have small parts to them, and that Franklin's curtain rail is dirty. Would she like me to clean it? Yes, because that would really make a beneficial difference to my daily routine, knowing that my son's curtain rail has had a thorough cleaning, when Franklin probably isn't even aware that his curtains hang from anything other than thin air.

But at least after all that, I can leave her behind at home to get settled in, with her begrudgingly beloved Alfie for company, while I go to work where I help out part time at a genetics research lab. Then, when I leave work and come home with the kids after school is finished, Alfie comes running up to us the second the door is opened, wagging his tail as if he's never been happier to see us. I don't blame him. I was just as pleased to see Reed when he turned up from work, although I had the vocal ability to whisper threateningly to him.

"If she's not gone home by Friday, I'm going to stay at my fathers."

But, come Saturday morning, when I went to leave for my mothers house, there was Evelyn, with a falsely innocent look on her face.

"Where are you going, dear?" She asks, looking not-so-subtly at the large bag in my hand.

"Just to see my father for a while." A long while.

"Will you be home for dinner? I'm making Shepherd's Pie."

Great, she hasn't even realised that I actually plan on sitting on my childhood sofa in another living room eating Chinese food that night, and she's already jumping into the perfect housewife role.

Of course, her completely fake 'oh, did I just do that' demeanour throws a huge spanner in the works. With me walking out and not returning until she's more than ten miles away from my house, she'd assume I was leaving for good. If she assumes that, she'd never leave, and when I say never, I'd mean that she'd probably throw Reed in the spare room so that she can take the master bedroom for herself and her awful cat. Her awful cat which, by the way, thinks that Alfie is one of those scratching posts.

So, that night, I sat around my dining table, watching my kids eat Shepherd's Pie. Her Shepherd's Pie.

They never eat my Shepherd's Pie.

The weeks that followed were a strain on my sanity. Just how long did she plan on staying? She never told us how long, and when I asked her straight out, she just replied "Oh, just for a short break."

I considered a short break to be a weekend at Disney Land.

It was like being under government surveillance. Every action might invoke a 'hmm' from her, whilst she sat drinking her endless cups of tea on the sofa. In the three weeks she says, I earned many reprimanding 'hmm's. One came when I was brushing Valeria's hair when it was wet, naturally full of tangles, and Valeria complained about it pulling just at the convenient moment when Grandma walked past. Another came when Alfie made a curious lick on Franklin's ear. The third one was the concluding sound of me and Franklin having a rather heated discussion about why he wasn't allowed to go to a party that three teenage boys on the playground had invited him to. After that, the lid of 'hmm's had been released. They stared flying out from nowhere; when I was helping Franklin with his homework, when Valeria had a tantrum in the middle of the weekly shop, and when the toaster breaking caused a power cut. I particularly liked this one, because she couldn't see the filthy look I shot in her general direction in the dark of the kitchen.

But never, not once, did Reed get a 'hmm'. No, not Reed. Not darling Reed, Mommy's special little boy. He never got one of those withering looks and a 'hmm', not even when Franklin got into Johnny's Resident Evil game case and thought it would be brilliant to play Frisbee with it whilst Reed was doing the Sunday crossword in the paper. Not even when Valeria accidentally threw her cardigan onto the lamp, which knocked over a photo on the table, coincidentally, of Evelyn and her late husband with the children when Valeria had first been born. Not even, (and this is the big one), not even when Reed came back from a rainy, muddy walk with Alfie, and the peach coloured carpet in the hall was turned into a replica of a war trench. How they managed to get the mud on the highest corners of the walls, I don't know. I did leave it there for a while though, just to annoy Evelyn.

And then, after three weeks of draining emotional torture, it happened.

"I'll be leaving tomorrow afternoon, Reed, darling."

I almost choked on my wine. I didn't, of course, that would have been a waste of alcohol I needed to get through an incredibly long evening of watching antique repeats with Evelyn.

It was all over.

She even gave me a 'hmm' for being suspiciously happy the next morning.

So, when she walked away from the house, I felt it was perfectly acceptable to shut the door with more speed than a rocket ship. If I had a basket of flowers, I would have ran through the house, throwing them into the air in an insane way which might have made Reed suspect me of using illicit substances. However, with more composure than that, I turned to him, giving him the one threat that would actually make him panic.

"Invite her for that long again, and I'll invite my father for the holidays."

I'm going to open this story up and take requests for other Sue-rants you'd like to see! Let me know in your reviews which you'd like! xxxx