Tea Room the Eighteenth - the Cricket Pavilion

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Welcome one and all to our new abode - a lovely old-fashioned Cricket Pavilion, with decks outdoors and a rather lovely Members' Bar, complete with deep-seated leather comfy chairs and any drink you care to mention.

Our outdoor amenities include the well-tended cricket pitch, kept immaculate by Mellors, our multi-purpose man; a couple of tennis courts round the back for those who prefer the Wimbledon scene; and another multi-purpose pitch (can be used for hosting Fine Lad-style rugby matches, or Little Kickers' football, or the occasional All Comers' Lacrosse Tournament.

Bishops abound, mostly snoozing in the leather armchairs; there are sundry animals around - guineapigs and bison mostly - and of course the Naked Mohawk Babies, fetchingly attired in cricket whites (most unusual for them!)

The cricket pavilion tea room is open to all - those with only one child who need a safe haven predominate but having more than one child is fine - come in, have an egg'n'cress sandwich and a glass of Pimms!

*other fillings and beverages also available.

Aren't UK police on absolute high alert???

In Paris everyone is nervous and the police and army are many, serious and busy.

I was on a metro train that came to a stop between stations and everyone's eyes wobbled...

On Friday, where I live, the mosque overflows (they pray in the street which I find terribly romantic) last Friday the police were there too... with machine guns!!! !!!!

Today there were lots more than normal purposeful looking soldiers parading the shopping centre with scary fuck off sized machine guns too.

Dunno, Tea. But there was an evacuation of Victoria station this week which felt too real for comfort.

Scout - sympathies. I work with a lot of Americans who find me difficult to understand. I can understand them fine so it seems really odd to me.

I am now having flashbacks of asking a Canadian friend if I could borrow her rubber and the confusion and loud screams this caused...

I was living in Minneapolis when 9/11 happened. That Christmas I flew home. Leaving MSP the army and marine boys looked like that, boys. Blond, blue-eyed, fresh-faced and about 12 years old, with guns. Land in Philly and walk through the airport to marines who's arms were bigger than my waist with the biggest locked and loaded weapons I've ever seen in my life. Scared the pee out of me. Then I come to England where most police have never even seen a gun let alone been trained to use one so when I saw an officer on patrol with a gun at Heathrow I nearly fell over.

I do not miss travelling to/from London for work every day. Since I didn't regularlly take the tube it wasn't a big deal normally, but the days where I'd go into Kings Cross and find it swarming with teams of armed police would freak me out a bit. Especially when I was heavily pregrant because by then I'd been out of breath, dying for a drink and a wee and a seat, so getting out of their way would have been impossible.

EEp! What is going on over there? have there been more threats? and if so, why?

I remember taking DH to the airport once when they were on high alert, probably just after 9/11, and seeing armed police with submachineguns under their arms trotting around in groups of 6 - it was pretty scary in its own right!

How many of the British athletes have decided not to go to Delhi? We've had a few Aussies refusing to go - just not worth the risk, especially when they have small DC.

Scout - hope your migraine has subsided.

Oxeye - have sent you a message - check your inbox at the top of the page, should have a red blob on it :)

tea - your day sounds lovely

UniS - no advice on the lying, miniThumb already tells fibs because he really doesn't know what he's on about, I think. Bad habit though - reflex fibbing - have to break it somehow. Hope Boy is nicer tomorrow.

Small - I talked all the time to miniThumb about anything and everything as well; kept him parent-facing in his pushchair way beyond what MrThumb believed was necessary because I liked being able to see him and chat to him - we had a M&P travel system so he could either sit in the car seat facing me or sit in the pushchair when bigger, facing forwards. I was :( when we finally switched to him facing forwards all the time.

Aussies have interesting variations on language that grate as well.
Parsta annoys me
Pro-ject
Yo-gurt
broccol-eye
but I think pro-ject and yo-gurt are as much North England as anything; I went to Uni with a bloke from Manchester and he said pro-ject.
Scout - vayse annoys me rigid too, sorry!

I met a NZ lady at playgroup a couple of weeks ago - she is primary school teacher and she moved to Australia 10+ years ago, initially for a year but then she met her DH and got married and stayed here - anyway, teh point is that her class's spelling averages plummeted in her first semester because of her pronunciation! So she had to learn to "talk Aussie" fast, so that the DC would be able to understand and spell the right words. She told me that there were other amusing things - NZ use "wee" quite a lot to mean small, same as Scots. Aussies don't - wee means pee. But NZ use wizz for wee (as in going for a wizz) and Aussies don't - but they have whizz bins that they put out front (wheelie bins) - you can imagine how this lady felt about those!!

• On the hole (i.e not including the horsed policeman who crazily chased my on foot Dad who had done nuffin wrong but be at a Union rally in the 80s) I do so love an English policeman or lady. I find the English police very comforting and caring.

When I first moved to Paris I used to say 'bonjour' to policemen and women as they passed by because you say hello to Bobbies where I come from... but in Paris I never got a 'bonjour' back. Instead they replied with a shocked and suspicious look. Hense I stopped doing it!

Scout - just heard the news!!! Strange, advice hey? You better pop downstairs to the priest hole and not come out until Obama says so!

Of course I will have to join you because in Paris British, Americans, Australians, New Zealanders and so forth are all the same thing. We are "Anglo-Saxon" and if I try to explain otherwise (i.e he is a Black American, she is celtic or she is actually a New York Italian rather than an 'Anglo-Saxon') I am frowned at because I am wrong and obviously also a raving racist. However, nearly every 'Anglo Saxon' I know hates the term and feels like they have been rudely mis-labelled.

whole

hmmmmmmm. Have just looked it up and seen this news so I can see why Obama has been a bit vague. Scary stuff...

Yes yes yes - It is bleeerdy scary... Paris has been very nervy for a week or more now.

But I wonder if, on Monday, I might be the only teacher who turns up in my department at school... and... I wonder if I will have any children to teach in my first two classes on account of Americans being told to avoid crowded places!

Fuckity fuckity fuck. Sorry.
MrThumb had some blood results back (from tests done a couple of months ago) from the GP when he went last week, to have his knee looked at - and he potentially has an iron storage disorder called haemachromatosis (can store toxic levels of iron, which can affect liver, heart, pancreas and joints). So - we had to ask his relatives whether there was any history of it - his mum thinks a cousin of hers has it, bad enough - but I have just had a message back from DH's cousin - his mum, DH's aunt, has it. Balls, bollocks etc., this means high likelihood of DH having it too.

And then of course it might mean Horace has it too - poor little soul, not only does he run the risk of having a clotting disorder from me, but now the potential for an iron storage disorder from DH. Wah!

Whoops, sorry for the mention of Horace! I mean miniThumb of course, not some random other child.

Thanks for coffee amber - hope things are getting better in amber-land.

Damn lingering migraine!

Poor you, Scout. Do you feel well enough to totter over to the guiders' staff room, where a guide leader is desperate for ideas for this week?

Would anyone like some hot chocolate and buttered crumpets? As it's Sunday night perhaps we'll ask Mellors to light the fire.

I've been functioning, because I have to.

Actually, I was responding to the Guider when our internet went down. I've just responded now that we're up and running again.

Yes please to the hot chocolate -- is there whipped cream and chocolate to go on top?

This is the tea room of requirement, Scout, so there is whipped cream, sprinkles, marshmallows, chocolate flakes, cinnamon, and anything else you might need!

Snuggle down on the sofa and warm your feet by the fire.

In that case, can mine be made with milk and slowly cooked over an open fire, please?

YumYumYum.

By all means .....

YumYumYum.

BabyScout was NOT HAPPY with me earlier. Lots of crying and screaming like he hasn't done in ages. Poor little man.

All whipped, clotted , pouring and ice cream has been returned to teh side board, I just borrowed them breifly for pudding.

All the talk of terror alert seems very far away from us down in the middle of no where. The " pram race" took place today, not a hint of a police presence, just 15+ teams of fancy dressed drinkers at lunchtime lurching between 3 villages ( 5 pubs) pushing wheeled contraptions. All good fun and AFAIK no injures worth mentioning.

Unis passes fancy dress down to teh priest hole, there you go AMber, neighbours will never recognise you in that.

Boy was , thankfully, nice as pie today. And enjoyed putting chickens to bed as a treat with his great friend this evening.

Oh, yay! I have the okay to go ahead with my Senior Section Camping Qualification. Yay! I have the camping qualfication for Guides already. I don't need to do the camping bit, just the program section. YAY!

SCOUT - tbh I have no idea what this means but have found myself jumping up and down and waving my arms chicken stylie because it sounds positive and positive is gooooood!!!