Poor Liz Hurley. I mean poor in the same way I'd say poor Allegra Versace. Or poor Dannielynn Smith. None of them is poor in the cash sense.
What I mean is poor in the sense that things are a tad difficult for them at the moment - or, in the case of seven-month-old Dannielynn, the famous offspring of Anna Nicole Smith, look set to become difficult in the future.
Anyway, poor Liz Hurley. The honeymoon period isn't even over and the in-laws are on her case. Hurley, you may remember, married Arun Nayar, her Indian husband, in celebrations that spanned two continents and involved several hundred pageboys and obligatory head-to-toe henna tattoos for the bridesmaids. Guests were forced to belly dance at the reception and the Dalai Lama flew in to give the happy couple a blessing. I may be exaggerating, but only a bit.
Now it turns out her husband's da is boiling mad. Hurley's father-in-law said he and his wife were treated "like social outcasts" during the wedding. "We were pushed into the background like poor relations," said her father-in-law, who, like his son, is actually stinking rich. Anyway, his "heart is heavy with pain" about the whole thing, and it's all La Hurley's fault.
The in-law issue is always tricky, but with the influx to Ireland of different, in many cases better-looking, nationalities, increasing numbers of us locals are going to face the more difficult scenario of cross-cultural in-laws.
This brings a whole new set of problems. At least with Irish in-laws you kind of expect that Mammy-in-law will be casting aspersions on everything from the cut of beef you serve for Sunday dinner to your potty-training methods. But with Matka-in-law, the Polish mother-in-law, you also need to know that, for example, Polish mothers like to be treated as you would treat your own mother. And that Mother's Day in Poland is May 26th. And that they hate carnations from a convenience store as much as your average Mammy-in-law. Researching these matters is vital to preserving good in-law relations.
Liz clearly didn't do her research. If she had she would have discovered that wearing shoes as she danced around the holy fire was verboten. And she might have decided against having a few scoops before the Hindu ceremony, which is another reason she's been cast out of the family. You'd need a pretty hefty handbook to negotiate in-law territory at the best of times, but throw in cultural differences and it becomes a minefield.
I've been lucky. Back when I was married to my Bosnian ex-husband the cross-cultural-in-law issue never arose, because they lived in a different country, which limits the amount of in-law damage that can be done. Our interaction extended to very occasional pidgin Serbo-Croatian phone conversations. Me: "Sta ima?" ("How are you?"). Mr and Mrs Popovic: "Dobra" ("Good"). Repeat on a loop for several minutes.
My current in-laws, or my in-laws-in-waiting - and let me just point out, in case any of them are reading, that they will be waiting quite a while - are Protestants from Portadown. They may be geographically close, an hour and a half's drive up the road, but culturally they are a million miles away. First of all, they speak a different language, Portadownish, which is an obscure dialect of Norn Iron. "I cuddin be barred," for example, means "I couldn't be bothered", which is what I say when my mother-in-law-in-waiting, Iris, hints that I might, for a change, try my hand at the washing up. And "ach, I'm away to get my head sharred" has nothing to do with showers. It just means giving yourself a break.
One of them, a sister-in-law-in-waiting who is a good-living, born-again Christian, recently got married. Her wedding was another example of the cultural differences between us. No alcohol was served with the meal. I repeat, the wedding reception was dry. She walks the walk as well as talking the talk. This meant that the tables were laden down with glass jugs of a drink called cordial, which, it turns out, is Portadownish for MiWadi. There was blackcurrant cordial. Orange cordial. Cranberry cordial. After the meal we played party games involving balloons and hats. Then, sober as Liz Hurley's father-in-law at her wedding, I sang a verse of She Moved through the Fair.
See, Liz? This cross-cultural-in-law lark is a breeze. You just have to do the research, understand the differences and then, most importantly, make sure you laugh your head off about them. Iris laughs at my ability to wear the same clothes two days in a row, and I laugh at her obsession with Daniel O'Donnell. In-law cordial. Yum.