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30 up The tea room afloat

976 replies

UniS · 07/10/2011 20:19

Welcome aboard.

The first rule of the tea room is - No fisticuffs.
The second rule is - Put the kettle on and lets have a Brew or open a bottle of Wine if its that time of day. Pull a sofa and relax. Parents of one, more (or less) children are welcome to hop on board and chat about anything and nothing. Introduce yourself if new and if you name change give us clue please.

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UnSerpentQuiCourt · 12/10/2011 19:36

::In walks a teacher who is Good with Outstanding Features, handing out celebratory Wine::

Amber, do you know me?? I had to name change when my best RL friend addressed me by my tea-room name Shock, but my name is a straight translation of my old name.

::Waves like mad to Secrete and slopes off to find French-English dictionary to work out Secret what.::

CMOTdibbler · 12/10/2011 19:49

Go Serpent ! You are def outstanding to us !

What did you do in the lesson ?

Donki · 12/10/2011 20:09

Have some Wine - definitely well deserved! Well done Serpent (I have to admit to still thinking of you by your old name.....)

LittleDeerandMe · 12/10/2011 20:15

Well done Serpent!! I also think of you using your old name btw!

UnSerpentQuiCourt · 12/10/2011 20:17

CMOT, I used a green grapefruit as a citron and got DH to get me a palm leaf from work and we did lots of experiential learning about sukkot. Messy, untidy and caused lots of chatting Hmm. Could have gone either way but I was lucky. Am at present googling to find someinfo for your idea about food and religion for a unit of work next term - special food in your life, spring, sabbat and challah bread, food rules, fasting, lent, maybe simnel cake or something similar? Still thinking.

beanandspud · 12/10/2011 20:39

::pins 'outstanding' badge onto Serpent and tops up wine for everyone::

Hope everyone is well. I think I have deciphered most of the names. Amber - I don't name change as I confuse myself.

Serpent - I do sometimes wonder though about being recognised in RL and have to try very hard not to refer to DH as Mr Bean!

Scout19075 · 12/10/2011 20:49

YAY Serp!

I think of TS as "Toddler" (affectionately) but I think it's because MrScout calls TS "Boy" in an affectionate way.

Shame I didn't take my camera (in) to Seniors tonight -- Cheese Rolling was a hoot and TS LOVED participating.

CMOTdibbler · 12/10/2011 20:51

Simnel cakes a good one - the marzipan representing the apostles and all. Theres lots of special food for Diwali - def not healthy though !

Funny how food is so evocative - I only have to think of my grandmother, and I'm whisked to thoughts of her suet crust steak pie, and Special K (in the days when it was dead exotic), and extra strong mints make me instantly think of my other grandmother.

beanandspud · 12/10/2011 21:06

CMOT - for me it's sandwiches made with tinned salmon that remind me of my Grandma. They were always followed by a frozen sponge cake that had never quite defrosted in the middle.

UniS · 12/10/2011 21:23

for years I thought those cakes were a kind of ice cream cake.Them and black forest gateux.

I have achieved. Bath room and loo, masking tape applied and edges painted. Tomorrow I apply 2 coats with roller. Then friday I put things back on the walls ( mirrors, hooks,etc) Friday evening MiL arrives... its a plan and it had better work.

Well done outstanding teacher serpent. Wine cheers , fancy some Bear or [biscuits] to nibble?

Food and religious observances! what a huge field to explore. from communion wafers to Easter eggs via simnel cake. and that's just western Christianity. My SiL has a Christian explanation for candy canes and I've seen a "5 symbols of the hot cross bun" somewhere. Advent.

Boy has harvest festival assembly at school tomorrow. Thankfully he does not have to dress as an amino acid or one of the major food groups. He does have one sentence to say, which he is happy to parrot to me so I can hope he remembers it tomorrow. Apparently his friend gets to say "beans" and hand someone a can of beans. Collection of non perishables is for a local food bank, so I expect there will be a lot of "beans".

I name changed once a lonnng time ago, kinda use dto this name, and yes Maud, I pronounce it Eunice too. Others may pronounce it how they like.

OP posts:
UniS · 12/10/2011 21:23

Biscuit I meant.

OP posts:
UnSerpentQuiCourt · 12/10/2011 21:25

Yes, simnel cake. Diwali is good but the wrong time of the year. And of course pancake day!

My German grandmother used to serve raw bacon sandwiches in secret when my parents were out.

Scout19075 · 12/10/2011 21:31

Candy cane: White symbolizes purity/Jesus birth and the red symbolizes the blood Jesus shed. (At least that's what I was always told.)

ComeIntoTheGardenMaud · 12/10/2011 21:47

::Totters in::

I have been out for the day - didn't take my mobile phone with me so was totally beyond reach and was responsible for nothing and no-one apart from myself - and had a fabulous time. I wondered how Serpent was faring with the government inspectors, so yipppeeeeee!

UnSerpentQuiCourt · 12/10/2011 21:59

How lovely - a day out of life!

Candy cane ::makes note::

ComeIntoTheGardenMaud · 12/10/2011 22:09

Yes, it was utterly lovely. I went here.

::hands round the organic fudge::

UniS · 12/10/2011 22:18

yum, fudge. and organic too. How nice.

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beanandspud · 12/10/2011 22:21

Yum, fudge!

Maud - that sounds lovely (did you leave with a bagful of secret cuttings?)

ComeIntoTheGardenMaud · 12/10/2011 22:29

Sadly not, Bean, because I am a law-abiding and responsible citizen and besides we were under the very watchful eye of a guide.

Scout19075 · 12/10/2011 22:33

That looks very posh, Maud. Glad you had a nice, relaxing, Maud-only sort of day.

ComeIntoTheGardenMaud · 12/10/2011 22:39

It was wonderful. Having a day off has really cheered me up, but I'm pooped so am off to bed now.

Good night all!

Jacksmania · 13/10/2011 05:35

Amber, do you know me? I name-changed a couple of times but always come back to JM. Either Jacksmama or Jacksmania. I'm the TeaRoom's Canadian resident.

Scout19075 · 13/10/2011 08:06

I need Brew -- would anyone else like some?

amberlight · 13/10/2011 08:22

Aha, yes re others. See, this is the difficulty..brain doesn't work in a straightforward way re names and who's who.

May have explained this before but I'll have another go anyway in case it stops being wondering what the heck's going on with me.

Generalising wildly here: Imagine you've got photos of all the friends and relatives and colleagues you know. Let's say it's 100 people. You could lay out photos of them on a table and recall pretty much instantly who each one is, what you know about them, and what they think of you and the others they connect to. Their hobbies, their interests. If one person gets cross or feels you've disappointed them, you can imagine that all the rest are still ok, so it's only (say) a hundredth of all the people, and the rest are okish.

My brain (autism and faceblindness combination) would have 100 blank photos. No faces on them. It can manage their hairstyles or glasses or general build or way of walking or their clothing taste, and guess who they might be, but it can't 'see' them. Neither does it know anything about them at all as a group. It can look at just one photo, with all the rest in a pile behind it. Only one at a time, never a group. Then it has to think and think about who it is, what it knows about them etc.

Suppose the name at the bottom of that photo keeps changing. Or has more than one name in different places. What results is total bafflement.

Suppose that one person gets angry. Because my brain can only see one person at a time and can't recall stuff fast, it feels the same as 100% of my friends and colleagues being angry all at once. There's no room for it to think "hey, the others aren't angry at all!".

Takes a lot of work to overcome the limitations. But it's always worth it for me because that's how I find new friends and share life with people.

mistlethrush · 13/10/2011 11:19

Don't worry about explaining things to us Amber - its always interesting and useful to know! I'm always amazed at how well you seem to cope with your frenetic lifestyle and the huge numbers of different people you appear to meet. Do name badges help? (working out whether that would be helpful if we did come to meet the horse at some stage).

What I find really difficult is that I am very bad at names. So I will go into a room and see lots of people I know. And then I start panicing as I know that I know them but can't work out a) what their name is or b) where I've met them. Its particularly bad when people cross-over from one 'box' to a different one - for instance, someone that I know from 'home' popping up in a 'work' context etc.