My Middle – Uaetodaynews

The first inkling that my then-boyfriend Jon’s parents were rather better-heeled than mine came when it took us than 45 seconds to drive up their driveway in an affluent area of Devon.

It was rather a different proposition than driving up to my parents’ three-bedroom semi in Birminghamwhere the only parking options were the double yellows outside.

And it wasn’t just the house. An artist with a clipped RP accent, Jon’s mum Margaret was incredibly intelligent and well-read, the sort of person who knew the Latin name of every plant or flower. People often commented that she’d be their first choice for a ‘phone a friend’ if they got on to Who Wants to Be A Millionaire.

His father, Gordon, was an engineering executive whose well-salaried job saw him fly around the world, treating Jon and his sister to holidays in Switzerland, FloridaNorway and beyond as children.

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By comparison my mother, Irene, worked as a cleaner, while my dad Mick didn’t work due to his severe epilepsy. Their home would have fitted into the downstairs of Jon’s parents house.

Come the summer holidays, they’d pack my brother and I into our beaten up Vauxhall Chevette with a Thermos and roast chicken sandwiches and headed to resorts like Barry, Scarborough, Rhyl and Prestatyn.

And meeting the people I hoped would one day be my in-laws, I felt the differences keenly, suddenly embarrassed at the thought of Jon’s upper middle-class parents and my working-class mum and dad being in the same room.

That embarrassment sparked what would become my secret mission, over the course of mine and Jon’s subsequent 18-year marriage, to keep his parents and mine as far apart as possible, be it at our wedding or family Christmases. Even after our three children – Eddie, Sammy and Annie – were born, I put off hosting both sides of the family together at our home as long as we could.

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It might sound mean and ill-mannered but, to my eyes, they were simply too different – and I didn’t want the extent of those differences to become apparent by putting them in the same room.

Yet I’ve since realised how wrong I was to do so – and it’s something I bitterly regret.

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It’s why I’ve been following Holly Ramsay and Adam Peaty’s wedding saga with great interest. For in the glamorous, multi-millionaire Ramsay clan and the humble Peatys, I see echoes of my own situation.

My mum was born in Madeira, and left school at 11. After moving to the UK in her 20s, she worked a series of blue-collar jobs, before retiring in her 50s to care for my father after he developed epilepsy in adulthood as a result of a childhood operation, which forced him to give up work.

Dad had an accident when he was 14, which had resulted in a brain operation and a year off school. After struggling to catch up, he spent time at art school before working as a hotel porter in Jersey, where he met mum, who was working as a chambermaid. They moved to Birmingham after marrying.

Their experiences left them determined that my brother and I would have a better life, with Mum always saying how heartbroken she’d been to leave school at such a young age. Each night after school she’d pore over our homework, learning as we did and helping us where she could. When at 18, after getting my A Levels, I told her I’d like to take a year out to go travelling, she told me in no uncertain terms that I’d be heading straight to university to make the most of the options she’d never had.

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Studying English at Edinburgh University, I worked three jobs and was always aware that my background was different to my student friends; it quickly came apparent that egg and chips weren’t a staple of everyone’s diet growing up.

But my parents’ belief in me meant I never felt embarrassed about my background. If anything, as I forged a career as a journalist I wore it as a badge of pride.

Until I met Jon, also a journalist, that is. Caring deeply what he – and later his family – thought of me, it suddenly felt like the first arena of consequence. I felt isolated in my class in a way I never had been before; I was on eggshells in case I made a ‘wrong’ move.

When Jon’s parents invited mine down I’d suggest to Mum it was too long a journey, or cite the fact the fact Dad might have an epileptic fit and hurt himself falling on their tiled floor in the kitchen.

There was always a way to ensure they didn’t spend time together – further helped by the fact we spent time living in New York for work. When it came to the kids’ birthdays, I made sure my parents came one weekend, with Jon’s parents travelling over the week afterwards.

No one knew the real reason, not even Jon, though I think Mum also worried too about what might happen when they got together with the in-laws. Though Jon’s parents were never judgmental, she was always embarrassed about her accent; it didn’t matter how many times I’d remind her she was fluent in two languages, she was acutely aware of her upbringing as much as I was.

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While I now feel ashamed that I may have fed into her fears by my actions, at the time I didn’t feel guilty about trying to keep my parents and in-laws apart. I kidded myself I was somehow doing everyone a favour. And because no one lost out on seeing the kids, I wrongly told myself it didn’t matter so much.

But a decade into our marriage, something changed.

I started to realise that, though they may have been poorer in some ways, my working-class family were incredibly rich in other ways

Yes, my parents didn’t have matching chairs around the dining table, or even matching cutlery. But they made up for it with their compassion and kindness. While visitors to Jon’s families were greeted with what could sometimes feel like surface-level pleasantries, my parents have always been warm and compassionate in their no-nonsense way. My mum thinks nothing of sleeping on the floor so that guests can have her bed.

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And as the years went on and Jon’s mum Margaret was widowed, it became harder to split time between both sides of the family equally.

So, while it elevated my stress levels the first few times it happened, Mum and Dad started seeing Jon’s mum .

And the time they spent together, the I realised theydidhave things in common. Dad may not have made a career as an artist like Margaret, but they loved debating their favourite works of art.

The three of them discovered a shared love of birdwatching, and who cared if one was watching from the window of a larger home than the others? And Margaret – a fabulous baker – clamoured for mum’s Portuguese orange cake recipe.

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When Margaret passed away in 2020, we all missed her greatly. I couldn’t help but think of all the moments that could have been shared – from the kids’ christenings where Jon’s parents were absent, to Christmases when we could have all mucked in together. The fact that I was so embarrassed by the parents who had worked so hard to provide for me is something I’m now incredibly ashamed of and bitterly regret.

It was only after Margaret’s death that I finally confessed my behaviour to Jon. He had no idea the lengths I went to – though he said that, in hindsight, he had noticed my stress levels rising when my parents were in a situation which I thought had the potential to be awkward or embarrassing.

Like me, he was sad that we’d all missed out on spending time together – particularly as he knew his parents would never have judged mine on their backgrounds.

A few years after Margaret’s death, Jon and I got divorced, after 18 years of marriage. It was an amicable split, and my idiocy over keeping our parents’ apart all those years is something that we can laugh about now, even if we’re sad at the time lost.

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I don’t know the ins and outs of Adam Peaty’s situation, but if feeling ashamed of his family in comparison to the glamorous Ramsays plays a part in their growing distance, then all I can say is don’t make my mistake.