Chateau Gizzy - The Commune finally opens at the University of Milton North

[DumSpiroSpero]

Well, it's about time.

Now all we need are furnishings and decorations...

Or we could open Maud's Rose Garden up to visitors like some people do? We've got some fabulous bakers in the commune to make cakes for the Tea Shoppe and I'm sure I can attempt a pot of tea although a pint of PC or Gizzy Champagne may be easier!!

ROFL at Maud's Brownie captions :o

Oh Small, what a pain. If you have your own company, who is this people who give you grief - a client? I presume it's not someone you can fire? Sorry it's so stressful for you :(

Vampy, I think we will be self-sufficient. We can have a wheatfield, a chicken and a cow and then we can live off LadyD's cakes.

Who is this people? ?! I started in the plural, then relised it was one person so changed it to the singular, but forgot to change people to person :)

It's a contractor's mouthpiece. No I can't fire them but maybe I can fire at them

I am picturing a sort of cross beween Lark Rise to Candleford and Hobbiton.

Here's someone else to help with the pesky clients.

And an entirely beserk someone else

Can I just point out those of you who click on my link that "The Colonel" in the list of other related videos has absolutely nothing to do with my colonel and I had to stop watching pretty quickly as it was quite horribly gruesome! Show me some pretty pictures, quickly!!

ROFL at Larkrise to Hobbiton!

Twigs, we'll need a sugar plantation for all the cake icing!!

Any mince pies going btw? I really fancy one. Dusted with icing ugar - the words in juxtapostion in Vampy's post reminded me.

Vampy, LOL, y'know I originally started typing that we need a sugar source too but I suddenly realised I have no idea what sugar grows on ao I just ignroed it :o what does it grow on though? Is it a tree? A plant? I can't believe I don't know

Grows as sugar beet. It's a plant I think! Let's google it later for tonight's academy lesson!!

Two sources of sugar - beet as Vampy says, and sugar cane which grows in more tropical climes

LOL@ Twigs just ignoring the need for sugar in cakes.

A lot of sugar beet is grown in the county around the Priory but I think it's used mainly for animal feed. Same with the maize. Someone told me it's not warm enough here for beet and maize to sweeten up enough to be fit for human use but I don;t know how true that is.

Lovely illustRAtions today, someone's been very busy in the archives - most of those are new to me.

Well I never knew that beet and cane were so different!! And I call myself a scientist!!

see every day's a school day in this 'ere academy!

we used to give sugar beet to the horses in their feed.

Those are horses in my racing stables that I drive to in my Aston Martin. I need to drive there as the estate is so huge.

Or it could of been when I was a teenager down at the local stables.

Good Lord, so beet is a tuber!! I'd obviously heard of sugar beet but assumed it was some sort of plant thing, not like an actual beet

we used to give sugar beet to the horses in their feed.

Are you a closet bumpkin?

::Staggers in::

Well, I was looking for a particular picture of Gizzy - the one where his glove-clad hand is pinching the bridge of his nose and he has a sort of world-weary, exasperated expression - for that earlier facepalm moment, and that necessitated some Googling exhaustive research.

They grow a lot of sugar beet in the area where my SiL lives. It smells something dreadful as they process it, but somehow it seems more palatable in cakes.

I like the idea of the Academy tea shop - Mr Thornton and I could frolic in tend the flower beds, Gizzy could use his broadsword to scythe the lawn and Lucas and John Porter could deal with people who won't pay the extortionate eminently reasonable admission price. Perhaps we could also have a children's zoo, for which Ralph John Standring could look after the ickle lambs and goats.

That is an inspired scenario, Maud. I second all that.

But halt! Where is the world-weary Gizzy pic? I'd pay good money to see that

.

Ralph John Standring could look after the ickle lambs and goats

Here is a little goatee for him to look after

Was it this particular image, Maud?

ROFL @ the little Goatee, Twigs!

LOL @ the little goatee.

LadyD, whether it was that picture or not, it will do nicely. Doesn't it just set your mind racing? I liked that one of him ridng, earlier, too Never mind the expression on his face, the trousers were delightful.

That's not a goatee, Twiglet. To be a goatee, it has to be a moustache that meets under the chin. I don't think there's a suitable illustration in the archive, alas, but as it is Movember the definitions have been well-publicised.

It may well be that one, LadyD. I had remembered it as being al fresco, but that may be because I am immune to Gizzy's charms getting forgetful in my extreme old age.

As it's after the watershed, and remembering our earlier mention of Alan Bates as the Mayor of Casterbridge, I was going to propose .

Oooh, is it the mud-wrestling?