Two months ago my mum came over from Europe for a ‘short holiday’ and my life has gone down the pan ever since.

I know there’s a lot of rubbish about how you’ve got to love your mum. Well I don’t, and I never have. She’s one of those woman that other people call a ‘lovely woman’, full of smiles and loves a natter, but she’s always had it in for me since I was a kid.

You know what I mean? She makes these sly digs, and nothing I ever did was good enough for her, while she just doted on my brother and babied him all his life?

He is, as expected, a waste of space, unemployed and alcoholic. I came to the UK as soon as I could get out, got a job in catering, loved it, met a lovely man who is now my husband, and have two great kids, a boy of seven and a girl of five.

My mum’s latest live-in lover has moved on and kicked her out, and I think that she plans to stay around at ours for the foreseeable future.

When we were going out together I did tell my husband that I didn’t get on with my mum, but I don’t think it sunk in. I keep trying to tell him now, but she’s always around, so it’s hard to come clean with him and I don’t want to sound paranoid about her.

She’s taken over the kitchen, and she’s insisted that the kids don’t go to their childminder. She picks them up from school and the light is going out of them. She’s got very definite ideas about what boys can do and what girls can’t do, and sets brother and sister against each other.

She’s trying to turn him into macho man, buying him toy guns, and trying to dress my daughter in pink frillies, which she hates. She tells my children, they say, that I have ‘funny ideas’ and that she’ll sort them out.

As for my husband, well, he just feels sorry for her, believes she’s had a difficult life, and wants to help her. She spends hours telling him about her woes and her illnesses, and he’s an old softie, but I know it’s sort of getting to him, too.

We don’t have any private time. She even comes into our room in the morning and brings us a cup of tea. First thing in the morning has always been our cuddles time, so that’s our sex life down the drain.

I’m angry all the time, want her out of our lives, and want to get back to the noisy, funny, loving family we were. My daughter is sleeping on a camp bed in her own bedroom while grandma snores in the bed because of her arthritis. It’s not good.

How can I make her go away, short of yelling at her that she’s trying to ruin my life again? I can’t put her out on the street.

Barbara says: Take your husband out. Leave grandma to babysit. Tell him what you’ve told me. Explain to him how it’s getting to you, and how you can’t deal with it. If you can beg or borrow any money, lay on a ’surprise’ community party for her, and present her with her ticket home, as a special gift. Make speeches about how wonderful she is and how she misses her own country and how everyone’s going to miss her, and tell everyone to bring her a going home gift, but sadly… she has to go.

You can’t let her poison your adult and family life as she poisoned your childhood, and you can’t let her take the light from your children’s eyes.