I saw the UK through the eyes of my French in-laws - and it was deeply embarrassing | Emma Beddington

Our rivers run with poo, we have hundreds of food banks and it is virtually impossible to get a doctor's appointment. Sometimes it takes an outside perspective to appreciate how bad things are

My in-laws came to stay recently, prompting a crisis of what some DIY chain has forced me to think of as housebarassment". We don't have many guests, because I get funny when people use my mugs, and offer a welcome along the lines of the peregrine falcon nest boxes I watch on webcams: a few strewn pebbles, dismembered pigeon corpses, me hunched and glaring in a corner, covered in viscera. But some visits are welcome - we hardly ever see my in-laws, since they're fairly elderly and live in France, but I like them! It's a miracle. I hardly like anyone.

But it's shaming to suddenly see your home through other eyes. Before they arrived, we surveyed the squalor we'd got used to, each secretly blaming the other. The shoe and pizza box mountain in the hall, an insanitary trip hazard. A pair of socks left on the radiator since last summer. A mummified - what? Apple? Lemon? Mouse? - in the fruit bowl, an unconscionable amount of hair everywhere, the sofa smelling of old dog and surrounded by crisp packets and coconut water cartons.

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