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Talk Round-up
7 October 2011

"What's in the quintessential MN home?" Bringmesunshine2009 wanted to know this week. "On the walls: Farrow and Ball. On the owners: Boden. On the doorstep: Ocado delivery. Am I missing anything?"

"I'd say the honest Mumsnetters will admit to being slumped on the sofa, on laptop or iPad, whilst munching on their DC's Pom-Bears," answered a po-faced TheMitfordsMaid. (It's like she's got a camera in my home, fergoodnesssakes.)

Talking of the site's favourite corn snack... "Anyone else think Mumsnet should have its own class bear to send round?" asked FermittheKrog. "Called Pom, obviously."

Well, obviously. Any takers? "Aw," cooed Picnicbasketcase, "we could take photos of him going shopping for nice ham." UrsulaBuffayTheVampireSlayer - whom one suspects of having form in this regard with her real school bear - shamelessly admitted she would make stuff up "about what we got up to, when really we stayed in watching TOWIE and eating Nutella".

Ah, here's HelenMumsnet with: "Two v. imp. questions. 1. Has PomBear applied for his blog to be part of the Mumsnet Bloggers Network? 2. When is PomBear coming to MNHQ?" "Typical HQ," moaned Honeydragon, "jumping on the bandwagon, acting like you own the place... [grin]"

Last week, Muriel76 wanted to know: "What were the weird things your teachers did which they would be fired for today?" She recalled her entire class being marched to the teacher's home to check up on how quickly work on her new bathroom was progressing. Goodness knows the length of the parental consent form that would have to be issued nowadays, and as for the health and safety risks, oh my stars...

Still, look at what else we survived. "My maths teacher used to shave in class, he'd sit there with his electric razor going while we did times tables," recalled Fishandlilacs, while Rockinastocking remembered one who "used to leave us Duke of Edinburgh girls with a litre bottle of cider and a litre bottle of lager per tent when we went on camping trips, and then told us not to tell our parents".

NotnowImreading's physics teacher taught gravity "by climbing out of the fourth floor window and dangling by his arms, still lecturing, then flipping back in gymnastic style".

It fell to BestisWest to tell the archetypal tale of pedagogical aspiration and its often tragic consequences: "We had a (lovely) chemistry teacher who took us up a coal tip so that we could see sulphur in its natural state. It was so hot my 1970s plastic basket-weave wedges melted." If only her mother had been able to post on AIBU back then...

AITCH

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