The One and Only Tea Room - Now Hanging in Babylon

[ComeIntoTheGardenMaud]

Well folks, here we are, transported through time and space to the Hanging Gardens of Babylon.

Golden couches and the distressed chintz sofa are arranged on a terrace overlooking the Euphrates and, as we recline on the exquisitely-soft cushions eating peeled grapes, we can enjoy the warm fragrance of the gardens' many exotic blooms. The garden is tended by the indefatigable Mellors, with occasional help from the bishops, rabbis and any passing world leaders. Somewhere behind the terrace there is an aga and a priest's hole, with optional massage table.

Please come and join us for a celebratory drink and conversation ranging from the profound to the profoundly silly.

Sympathy to Scout; don't doubt yourself and your reactions (but do go along with family advice on attending service. It will be harrowing enough without feeling that you should/shouldn't be there).

Happy birthday to CMOTiddler! Best wishes for you hand. How brave to have two sleepover candidates at once. Wriggle had her first ever friend to sleep over last night. She was incandescent with joy. Where do you find the only children??? We don't know any.

Oxeye, do you ever think about another Hound?

Donki, thank you for the info re viruses and margarine. She now wants to know, if we had a magnifying glass as big as the moon, could we see what they look like?

Scout and Tee, children are even more fun at four than two, but the sleeoing doesn't necessarily improve.

Serpent
You would need a very powerful microscope to see a virus.
I'll just see if I can find a link which helps to show how small they are....

(Boggles slightly at the image of Wriggle holding a magnifyng glass the size of the moon)

here you go Wriggle!

(Fingers crossed TS has FINALLY gone to sleep -- he hasn't been loud/crying, just the occassional whinge, but 10 o'clock?! )

Hurrah, it's Friday!

I come bearing wine, pizza and chocolate ice-cream...

Scout - what an awful end to the week, I'm so sorry, I hope you're ok. I'm not good at writing these things but thinking of you.

Happy Birthday CMOTiddler - hope it's been a lovely day.

I scared myself this afternoon by going to look around a school for Small Bean. It was wierd trying to picture my baby at school in a blazer.... Kind of all at once.

Oh, as for storage I remember Mr Bean suggesting (completely seriously) that we I should look for a box with foam inserts to stop Small Bean's trains and cars getting damaged. Needless to say all of our toys are chucked in plastic boxes and baskets.

Thank you for the link, Donki. She will insist on asking questions to which she cannot begin to comprehend the answers. The other day we were in the museum looking at some rather holey iron age skulls and she was apparently looking for their spirits. ("The invisible thing that's in my head that is me.")

Bean, not quite sure how old Small Bean is, but I feel the same (although with a bit less probably).

aaawww - the gremlins ate my post - it said something like:

"Scout, in my experience, when it comes to life, it never rains but pours. Many thoughts for you at this very difficult time."

Serpent - I think the was because in a very strange way I could actually picture him there and absolutely loving it (it would just be me crying in the car park)

I am loving some of these bizarre toddler coversations though - tonight we went from condensation to Polish to Lightening McQueen and back again. How old is Wriggle?

Scout - I am so sorry. Have a Girl Scout/Guide hug.

Who posed the question about toy storage? For the little fiddly stuff like Polly Pocket (just wait, mothers of little girls ...) I have found some fab plastic boxes in Poundland which are transparent and have the lids on hinges. I love them.

How old is SmallBean? The boy next door goes to school in blazer, cap and grey shorts and looks exactly like Just William.

yes, poundland transparent hindey boxes are great for many many things, not just polly pocket which we don't have

UnSerp - Oxboy and I think and talk about a new Hound ALL the time. There is something approaching a Campaign. But OxBloke is (for him) unusually reticient. I think he remains scarred by OxHound's traumas, and knows he has to do the bulk of the walks. OxKitty is a stop gap. I reckon the Pup will arrive in about 3 years

Tea, I may curse you for the Skidding Squirrel. I am meant to be working. I cannot get off level one. Hats off to Milk....

I have bought Poundland plastic hingey boxes for all the Christmas lights - no more trying to wind them back round the plastic framey thing and cramming them back into their tatty cardboard boxes.

::domestic goddess, the Nigella of Sarf London::

Oh, and I forgot

::clasps Oxeye to her ample bosom::

oxeye - tell me about it!!!

www.bbc.co.uk/cbbc/games/vet-set-go-game

This is my favourite one. I can get to level three before my animals get "too sad". Milk is yet to pass level two

Maud - See that is the kind of mumsnet shopping I do so like! Last time I went shopping with the Paris MNers we ended up in Hermes... I have frankly never recovered!!!!

Hermes? Vraiment? Are they really that BCBG or are they just showing off?

Ah, Maud, my fave ample bosom

How are you DAAARRRling

Well, certainly the amplest. I am fat tired and old, but feeling good because I did a good thing today.

How goes it in Oxeye Towers?

milk you must stop this
level 4 vet
boggling eye goldfish strangely compelling
but work work work
must be done....

how is your good thing, Maud, can you tell?

Oxtowers are fine, but full and a bit crazy
Oxbloke is absent again, but there

Will PM you about the good thing, as must remain incognito.

Oxbloke is absent yet OxTowers are full. How so? Do you have guests? A new OxPoppins?

Guests. No poppins. Just Cat

Weird

Morning.

? LCT woke up at 450. ::Dies:: MrTee got up with him and let me get some sleep but I really need to figure out what's waking him so early. Room is pitch black, middle of city so no dawn chorus. Just can't figure it out.

At what age can they understand a Grow Clock, I wonder.

I think it's a full fry morning again. Who wants what?

Scout, heck re latest news - do have a large as offered by the exhausted Tee (thanks Tee). You've had a horrible week.

Good morning all.

I have no experience of rhubarb wine, but right now half a glass of it would be just the thing after a morning spent retrieving FineLad from his wild overnight party, dropping his female friend at the station, and noting that he'd gotten out of the car to assist her with her luggage whilst wearing his pyjamas - in front of an aghast elderly couple and some passing police. No-one was arrested - hurrah!

::retires to the distressed chintz sofa in some disarray::

What's the problem with pyjamas? They cover everything. Latest fashion.

Err. not always, DutchOma. Or perhaps Bloke's jammies were just particularly ill-fitting. [averts gaze] Anyway, going out in your pyjamas is apparently all the rage. There have been some, err, lively MN threads about people being seen in Tescos in their jammies.