Mumsnet Talk Round-up sponsored by Boden

To subscribe to the Mumsnet Talk Round-up, please do so on your member registration page.
To unsubscribe click here. counter

CABBAGES AND FROCKS CHILDREN'S DAY IN CENTRAL LONDON: Sat 9 May, 11am to 5pm, St Marylebone Parish Church Grounds, Marylebone High St, London W1 5LT. Activities include pottery painting, craft workshop and chocolate-making, plus lots of stalls with stylish children's clothing and accessories, and food and fashion for all. A fun day out for the whole family.

Talk Round-up
8 May 2009

What inanimate objects wind you up? demanded a crabby stainesmassif, who was getting furious with coat hangers: "They gang up on me." GetOrfMoiLand was maddened by her Dyson: "It's so messy and craply designed. I get back at it by calling it a Hoover." "Christmas cards that look all neat standing up," tutted BigusBumus, "and then you shut the door and they all fall over." Conservatories drove beardydad up the wall: "Ice cold and useless in winter, first glimpse of sun and it warms to 5,000 degrees, bleaches any clothes left in it and fills instantly with flies, bees, thick bastard bumblebees and lazy spiders that don't do their bloody job." Veet wax strips were the nemesis of MumtoCharlieandLola, after an incident where she stuck her legs together and had to be rescued by her DH: "DH gets the instructions, which of course don't tell you what to do in this type of emergency. So he gets the cotton wool and baby lotion, neglects to put enough baby lotion on and attacks the aforementioned area. At this point, I now look like I have Santa Claus trying to get out from between my legs."

Further domestic horror this week when Snigger's husband did the ironing: "He's hurting my eyes. It's agony - he's trying his best, and he still looks like Mr Blobby with a household appliance taped to his hands." ABetaDad encouraged her not to intervene: "He will learn, once he has to go to work in a shirt that looks like corrugated cardboard." But SomeGuy thought the problem was perhaps the wrong kind of tool: "Men need MACHO irons. Ones that generate six bars of pressure and have honking three-litre tanks." "It's very hard on the nerves to watch the incompetent," sympathised echt, "Mr E is a splendid ironer, but watching him peg washing out is like watching a cow with a gun."

Am I being unreasonable to think that Spot books are just really, really badly written? asked a frustrated Emkana, adding: "I have to make up my own words to them." PortBlacksandResident admitted she got so bored reading Where's Spot? that she cut heads off all her DS's immediate relatives (in photos obv) and stuck them on the characters: "My particular favourite was my dad hanging like a monkey and MIL as a crocodile. Doesn't half cheer the book up!" "I had to skip the bit in one of the Beatrix Potter's when the animals get a beating for being naughty," shuddered Nevergoogledragonbutter, "hardly conducive to sleep." Horton rather relished being raised on Potteresque violence: "I used to terrify my much younger sister by rolling her up in a duvet and putting real butter and salt and pepper on her head before 'cooking' her in front of the stove." While mamadoc discovered a positive side-effect of a spot of Potter: "It had DD shouting 'want go sleep now' by halfway through!"

We were chortling over the bizarre nonsense our children have spouted: Picante's DS (3.0) "thinks that policemen climb up ladders and get into those yellow boxes with a camera to take pictures of people driving too fast". While JimmyMcNulty's DS (2.9) is convinced he is driving the car from his carseat in the back: "He regularly apologises for bumping over speedbumps." Scoobi6's DD (2.5) is convinced that one strand of grated cheese is called a 'chee', singular: "She won't be persuaded otherwise." While 5inthebed's very cute DS used to 'ham' with a hammer and 'hoove' with a Hoover. I expect he would have been baffled by a Dyson.

MORNINGPAPER XXX

THE PRESTIGIOUS ALTHORP LITERARY FESTIVAL, hosted by Earl Spencer, has teamed up with the Roald Dahl Museum again this year to produce a series of children's events including former children's laureate Anne Fine and the uproariously funny Louise Rennison. Enjoy a fantastic family day out in the stunning grounds of Althorp and choose from an array of talks, readings and debates involving writers and celebrities such as Fern Britton, Sandi Toksvig and Alastair Campbell. 12-14 June 2009. For a full programme click here.

You have received this email because you are a registered member of Mumsnet. We do not want to send email to people who don't wish to receive it. If you would rather we did not send email to you, please reply to this mail and put the word "unsubscribe" in the first line of your reply. We sent this email to #email#. To check your registration details, log in at http://www.mumsnet.com/member/. If you don't remember your Mumsnet password, you can get a reminder.