The fun in Piddledorf just goes on and on. By never having any kids of my own, I thought I could avoid ever dealing with childish petulance and narcissism, but for now I'm stuck with two senile rellies who unfortunately still have all their critical faculties, plus the usual German high-level OCD, overlaid with Retention Deficit Disorder.
I try to approach the whole situation as a Buddhist challenge. The only way to get along with these people is to suspend all your desires. Expect nothing from life, except food, water and sleep. So far I am practising the advice of my UnHeard Of guide, never (or rarely) reacting to all the little attempts at provocation.
Thanks to the good people at Somaloft™ I have the octuple-strength bliss pills to help me with this, and I have discovered huge reserves of patience. I'm so blissed on SSRIs that I drift happily through the stultifying boredom, the screaming by the deaf people, the awful kraut TV with the volume turned to 11. Without the pills I would have had to meditate day and night, just to avoid slaughtering the lot of them. I have only another 10 days of this before I can escape back to my secure little bunker in Berlin.
You though I was a nice person, but I'm probably as bad as the rest of them. Basically, I'm realising that these people, my family, are just not very nice people.