Are we there yet?

Does Rye hold the secret to ending family feuds at Christmas?

We all have a chair we prefer to sit on at the end of a hard day – including me. Or rather, I have a spot on the left-hand side of the sofa. It’s opposite the telly and has a side table on which to balance wine. It’s a space the kids aren’t allowed to occupy, just as I was banned from sitting on my father’s chair. My wife never sits in my space either. She sits on my right-hand side, compensated for her inferior position by being permitted to sprawl out across the remaining two thirds of the sofa. The arrangement works… until the in-laws stay.

“I wouldn’t mind going away this Christmas,” I say, casually looking up from the paper one Saturday night. “Would your parents mind?”

My wife’s parents stay every Christmas. In the old days, Marian would grip my elbow affectionately as she tottered inside after their drive from Somerset, and Bert, in turn, would shake my hand and hold up tantalisingly from within their luggage the neck of a good bottle of wine he was anticipating us drinking later.

I’d take their luggage to their bedroom with a spring in my step, eager as I was to return to the bonhomie of the kitchen. But recently it’s changed. Bert’s getting older, or maybe I’m getting older.

“Tenerife.” I show her the page featuring a sandy beach. “Sunshine. No worries about the turkey or shopping. No making up beds…”

“Hang on,” says my wife. “This is about your bloody chair, isn’t it?”

That night I’m still explaining myself. My wife’s not a man, so she cannot understand the principle. I wouldn’t sit on Bert’s chair in his house, so I don’t expect him to alpha-male all over me in my house. It’s not an Englishman’s home that’s his castle; his chair is.

“Ben, he’s 80!” says my wife. He knows what he’s doing. Bert doesn’t just sit there; he luxuriates in my chair. He stretches his legs out, he sighs contently in my chair. He laughs at me in my chair. She says it more forcefully. “HE’S 80, BEN! He sits there because his hearing’s going. If you’re that bothered, ask him to move.” But I can’t do that. That’s petty.

“Sorry,” she gives her final word. “I’m not flying to Tenerife to eat a Hawaiian buffet on Christmas Day just because you can’t watch

in your chair.” So this year we’ve compromised. We’re going away, but to Rye. Her parents are coming too. There’ll be no Hawaiian buffet, just half-timbered houses and cobbled streets in a town that inspired John Ryan to write the children’s cartoon series

In fittingly post-Brexit fashion, it’s a former bastion of defence against French invasion.

Moreover, the cottage has two armchairs. They’re equidistant from the telly. I checked.