Carolyn Bourne – the Mother in Law from Hell? Yes, she is.

On By southwerkIn business ethics

This story has been generating a great deal of media attention. My inclination after reading about the case was to let other people criticize and move on with my other issues. Then I read the e-mail message the future mother in law sent.

Here it is.

from: Carolyn Bourne
to: heidi withers
subject: your lack of manners

Here are a few examples of your lack of manners:

When you are a guest in another’s house, you do not declare what you will and will not eat – unless you are positively allergic to something.

You do not remark that you do not have enough food.

You do not start before everyone else.

You do not take additional helpings without being invited to by your host.

When a guest in another’s house, you do not lie in bed until late morning in households that rise early – you fall in line with house norms.

You should never ever insult the family you are about to join at any time and most definitely not in public. I gather you passed this off as a joke but the reaction in the pub was one of shock, not laughter.

You regularly draw attention to yourself. Perhaps you should ask yourself why. No one gets married in a castle unless they own it. It is brash, celebrity style behaviour.

I understand your parents are unable to contribute very much towards the cost of your wedding. (There is nothing wrong with that except that convention is such that one might presume they would have saved over the years for their daughters’ marriages.)

If this is the case, it would be most ladylike and gracious to lower your sights and have a modest wedding as befits both your incomes.

One could be accused of thinking that Heidi Withers must be patting herself on the back for having caught a most eligible young man. I pity Freddie.

This is the bottom of the barrel wretched. I want this woman to have to hide in her house from a vengeful press for many years to come.

However, I do have one belief in common with the “Mother in Law from Hell;”  – I pity Freddie, not because of his future wife but because of his current mother. Maybe, his mother-in-law will be an improvement.

James Pilant