Greetings from Lancashire, once again. Regular readers will recognise what this means - a week in the company of my husband's family.

As usual, it has been a largely joyous break punctuated with moments of high tension and short sulks.

The issues remain the same.

With our house move imminent, my husband's parents have been keener than ever to offload on to us some of their much-cherished furniture and furnishings.

For years, we've been able to resist their offers of 30-year-old kitchen chairs and rugs that had their heyday in the Fifties by giving the excuse that we had no space.

Now it's time to be either brutally honest or to accept what we're given and then find some way to get rid of it.

My husband's brother and his wife went through the same ordeal last year when they bought a bigger house.

They now have a garage full of old curtains, whose fate is as yet undecided. They were also given two old Swiss armchairs but, before my sister-in-law had got round to updating them, some of the local cats got into the garage and discovered a new use for them as litter trays.

They've since been dumped, much to the disappointment of my husband's mother and the relief of my brother-in-law.

After yet another tour of his parents' basement, which is filled with remnants of their days as hoteliers, my husband and I have finally agreed to accept a genuinely attractive sofa, a chair that might be nice if we can strip off its 15 layers of paint and a set of pink and yellow crockery.

I felt like teasing my mother-in-law about holding a plate-smashing Greek evening but she wouldn't have seen the funny side at all.

It sounds ungracious to say that I would be happy not to have anything that belonged to my husband's parents. But it isn't actually their possessions I dislike so much as their attitude towards them.

My husband and I used to look after his mum and dad's house when they had holidays every January and we were given strict instructions never to leave the property.

They didn't trust burglar alarms and were obsessed with the idea that people were waiting in the bushes ready to steal all their worldly goods as soon as they stepped out of the front door.

As a result, we'd spend a miserable week cooped up with nothing to do but watch television and drink the contents of their wine cellar.

It's a sad fact that their lives have been ruled by their chattels.

They have always defined themselves by what they own. And now they have no space or need for most of them, they are finding it impossible to let them go.

On a lighter note, the charmingly rural area of Lancashire that has become the adopted home of my husband's family has some saucy secrets, so I've learned.

I've always thought people around here were surprisingly open and friendly, always ready to share their chip butties with you and talk about their racing pigeons.

But I've now heard that their openness reaches levels of intimacy that I find a little shocking.

Some near-neighbours of my brother-in-law made a video of themselves making love, which can be bought in the village for a tenner.

Copies have gone so fast that my brother-in-law has had to join a growing waiting list.

Some people clearly prefer to define themselves by what they do.