No .... after the embarrassing incident with the MiL all the locks on doors have been removed .... In fact all the doors have been replaced. Only Bathroom and bog are now lockable BUT are also unlockable from the outside.
As for being fair to the THW life is all about trade offs .... which is really what I would like her to learn. Having her room done up has been deferred as a punishment for failure to tidy for three years. Now I'm trying the other tack .... have the room done, to her spec, and hope that she will "repay" by keeping it reasonably tidy (I do not expect miracles). What I do if she reverts to type I'm not sure ..... probably go in there and trash it.
As you know I edit a community magazine ..... One irate father sent me a photgraph of his daughter's bedroom with a plea that I publish it, together with her name. I did and she "improved" for a week but was soon discovered proudly displaying her fame/name in print at school and then on her website. She has grown up in the past four years and is now a model citizen and doing well at uni he tells me. He also tells me she is now obsessively tidy and whenever she comes home for the weekend he spends the following weeks trying to find things like his pipe and the TV remote. She, on one occassion, even took the dog for a clipping 'cos "it looked scruffy"!
What embarassing MiL incident?
I was a messy/untidy teenager and I am now a messy/untidy "adult". Mr Wench despairs.
Long story but here goes with the abridged version ......
This is an old house, not as old as Nick's but old by today's standards. It was built at the end of the war (2) but to a design and spec from the early 30's. It would have been built earlier but for the war. The same family built all the houses around us on what was their farm. So all internal doors had proper locks and keys. Realising that if these keys were left in the locks small boys would pretty soon lock themselves in somewhere or other I removed all the keys and we had a "house rule" that if a door was shut you knocked before entering. Not an easy rule to enforce with little boys and frankly nobody minded that the smallest (by now aged about 2) would wander in for a chat whilst one was in the bath or even on the loo. Nobody that is except the MiL
So to accommodate her desire for total privacy whilst visiting us I hung a key to the bathroom on the inside of the room by means of a cuphook screwed into the door frame .... well above child height. All one needed to do was take down the key, lock the door, do your business (and she even locked the door to clean her teeth!), unlock the door and replace the key on the hook.
Problem number one was that I am 6 feet tall and Mrs S is 5'10" so I put the hook at the top of the door frame. MiL is only 5'2"
So everytime she wanted to go into the bathroom (and I kid you not it was at least twice an hour) one of us had to go up and issue her the key. OK so I had two keys and gave her one to "keep about her person".
She always left it on the inside of the door when she left the bathroom despite our pleas that she remove it after use. Inevitably one little boy went in there and turned it. He couldn't turn it the other way when he wanted to get out, called for help but nobody heard him so curled up and went to sleep.
Just at the point where I am dialling 999 to report a child abduction the MiL is found wailing outside the bathroom that she can't get in and is "desperate".
I realised where the missing child was but of course both keys are now in there with him. MiL is called a few choice names (to which she took exception) and told to use the downstairs toilet (which she hated using because it is too narrow for her to be able to pull up her tights 'cos she is a ..... how can I phrase this? ........ a WIDE woman).
Meanwhile I set to with a tool box, a pair of tweezers and a hairgrip to attempt to turn the key, which you will recall is still in the lock on the other side of the door, and release the child. I am also very worried because at this point I do not know that he is asleep and I can hear no sounds from him. I got the door unlocked in about ten minutes and found him curled up on a pile of towels looking like a cherub.
MEANWHILE:
FiL has been told that his advice is not welcome and if he can contribute nothing better than a suggestion that I hire a ladder and break the bathroom window then he can f*ck off. So he is in a huff.
MiL has gone downstairs complaining that she hates our downstairs toilet and manages to piss all over her tights that she had failed to lower sufficiently and "They were a new pair on today".
Wife is not helping by telling her mother that a little weight loss would be useful and anyway had she not been told about leaving the key in the door and how did she (MiL) manage to raise three of her own and still be so f'ing gormless? (Doesn't mince words when she is scared that one of her own brood is in trouble doesn't Mrs S).
Older boy (aged 4) is running round the house telling the world that "Daddy has save XXXXXXX's life AND told Grandpa to f*ck off".
Daughter, a pre-teen hormone wreck of 9, is "Disgusted" that "Grandma can't even go to the toilet ~ At her age" in the withering tone that only a 9yo little girl can muster ~ "I mean ..... It's Sooooooooooo Gross"
The planned happy family week by the sea was curtailed that very afternoon.
AND THAT IS THE SHORT VERSION.
