The not so secret blog

Posted by Ellie Omahoney at 22:56 on 24 Aug 2009

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When I first started thinking about writing a blog about living with my father-in-law, I knew I’d have to get his permission first. (Though I did ask Sam whether it would be ok not to. The answer was no).

So, terrified that F-I-L would bark, ‘Is it not enough that I’m letting you rotten scroungers invade my only bedroom? Now you want to make a mockery of me for all to see on the Interweb?’ I plonked myself down next to him while he was watching NewsNight.

‘F-I-L, I was thinking that it would be fun to write about this,’ I ventured, waving my arm expansively across the sitting room, while smiling hopefully/nervously. F-I-L looked blank, so I continued. ‘You know the Us-Living-With-You thing. I think lots of people are doing it at the moment and there’d be lots of material. You’re always doing funny things. And the web editor at marie claire said I could write a blog on it.’

There was a pause and then a smile. ‘Hmmm, that sounds jolly,’ at which he turned back to Kirsty Wark and gun crime.

The nature of his response and the fact that he hadn’t mentioned it since, led me to assume that he’d forgotten all about it. Not so.

Email from Sam’s sister dropped into my inbox last night, subject heading: ‘Are you writing a blog about Dad?’

It seems that over dinner with M-I-L, some of her fellow Women’s Institute members and their husbands a few days ago, F-I-L announced proudly that he was being ‘written about on the Interweb’. M-I-L, who is far more technologically-minded than her husband so probably knows what a blog is, then told Sam’s two sisters and brother. So now they know. And are reading it.

I don’t know how or why I thought that I could keep a blog secret from them, but I did. And it’s a bit unnerving knowing that the cat is out of the bag, so to speak, and now not only Sam’s siblings know precisely what I think of their father, but more alarmingly, the Oxford Wives’ Club are aware that one of their own (or one of their own’s husbands) is being written about on the World Wide Web. I’m busted.

The good thing is that I think F-I-L has yet to read it. I don’t actually think he’d know where to look for it if he tried, and he certainly won’t try. Not interested. So for now I can carry on telling everyone, affectionately, just how mad/domestically dangerous/strangely endearing he is and just hope that they don’t report it all back to him. I don’t think I could take it if he started hamming it up for the purposes of making good blog copy. There’s only so much drama a one bedroom flat can accommodate.

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