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I had a family bash on Friday, the idea behind this was to see my cousin out of jolly old Kernow with a tipple and a surrounding of friends and family. This is usually a good thing and makes for a great night. With one rather huge problem that has been neatly avoided until now. My cousin's mum is my mum's stepsister, Jo, and Jo's best friend is my dad's girlfriend and has been for the last two and a half years. My mum could care less who my dad sees, she doesn't view it as any of her business so long as she and the other woman can get along somewhat in a social setting.

Mandy despises my mum with a vigor that she doesn't even bother trying to hide. She will make snide comments, if she sees my mum in a shop or cafe she will turn around and go in the opposite direction. She treats mum as the enemy even though my parents are both still on good terms and it hurts. It hurts me and my sisters, it hurts my mum and it even hurts my dad because he still talks quite regularly to my mum's family and still gets invited to the parties.

The real reason that we've avoided having mum and Mandy at the same party in the past is largely down to the two women at the centre of this whole problem. Mum is hyper aware of the fact that Mandy doesn't care for her and so goes out of her way not to step on her toes, similarly if Mandy can't do anything else she will turn down an invite to something to avoid seeing mum. Usually fine, but Gem wanted mum and Mandy both at her party. Mum wasn't going to go, and then she split up with her boyfriend and figured she would rather be out and about with her family than at home brooding.

She couldn't have been more wrong and what makes it worse is she didn't do anything. Most of it was on Mandy, and Jo.

We've noticed for a while, that's me, Ros and Gwen, that Mandy is really stand offish with us when my dad isn't around, to the extent that if we so much as look at her she'll ignore us or turn the other way. She won't go to my dad's place when he's not away working because my sisters (who still live at home) might interfere with her time with dad. This is fair, but it's getting to the point that dad hardly sees us when he's home. She hates that I see him on my day off because it interferes with her (even if she's working) and she even changed opticians because I work in the one that she goes to and she didn't want it to be awkward.

Dad makes excuses for her, but she's constantly saying that we have no interests because I write, Ros draws and Gwen plays piano when she isn't with her boyfriend. We all like gentle passtimes that don't use a lot of energy because we're just like that. If she's not complaining about the lack of surfing/football/rock climbing that we do, it's that Ros is destroying her liver because she likes to drink and party a little bit. Mandy has three grown sons, all older than me and my sisters, so I think she's being just a touch unreasonable in her argument that we should be more like them.

Friday was terrible and all things came to a head. She arrived just after Jo's eldest daughter and her boyfriend, who both joined us at our table and started chatting. Mandy found the seat furthest from us and took it, rolling her eyes and mumbling to Jo. When I said hello to her, she blanked me completely and did the same to Ros. If that wasn't bad enough she was downright rude to Gwen who's already said to dad more than once that she thinks Mandy really hates her. She basically monopolised Jo, made Gem feel really bad for even inviting mum and while I was talking to Jo at one point she interupted just so that she could make some low comment about how stuck up my mum was.

Right where I could hear her!!!

I went home with a migraine not long after that, but according to my sisters she just got worse. We've tried, we really have, we've always gone into a meeting with our parents partners ready and willing to like them and for a time we did like Mandy. Then you take into account a holiday where Mandy blew up at Ros and Gwen because they opted to go back to the appartment and give her and dad alone time rather than go out with them (add that Gwen had spent most of the holiday vomiting anyway and you can see how they wouldn't want to go to a club), an occasion where she went nuts at me on facebook for passing on thanks from a friend and the fact that even when my dad told her he wanted to be home for my birthday she still booked them a holiday over seas over it and you can see how we could come to dislike her.

I know she had a bad relationship with her ex-husband, but it doesn't mean that she can assume that all people have the same experience. The same is true about mum being a threat to her relationship with dad. Mum isn't, mum gets no say. The kids, on the other hand, do. Because, and I'm ashamed to admit it, we can make life very difficult for the other half we don't like. We've done it before, we'll do it again. Last time it was mum, this time it will be dad.

Incidentally, dad phoned from his work on Sunday. He didn't speak to me or Ros, who would have told him there had been a problem and left it at that, he spoke to Gwen. Gwen was seething on Sunday, two days after the fact, and I think she may have lat fly at dad a little bit. He'd going to have a serious talk with Mandy when he gets home and no doubt she will put all the blame on mum. Which will be hard given she didn't talk to her. Dad's worried though, and I have a feeling that this is the latest in a string of lows in their relationship. It also got a little out of hand but he asked for my point of view on the night. So I emailed it to him, at length and as politely as possible.

Doesn't mean I'm not still mad as hell though.