Would anyone like a cup of tea and a muffin?

[MadBadandDangerousToKnow]

I'm tired and in need of refreshment.

The tea room is now officially open, serving hot chocolate, tea, freshly-squeezed orange juice and a range of home-baked muffins. Tablecloths and crockery are charmingly mismatched antiques (no Cath Kidston here). We overlook an attractive although somewhat overgrown garden, with a distant view of rolling countryside.

Everyone is welcome but house rules dictate that anyone indulging in fisticuffs will be ejected.

Please come in.

Daisy finds T42 in the corner muttering "I carried a watermelon... I carried a watermelon"

Don't worry, young 'un, I'm with you there! We can practice lifts in the water soon...Mellors will help us...

Blimey Mistle, hand over those pills, firstly they are not good for you and secondly I want to snog the gardener... umm have the kiss of life

I feel very left out with RacingPig and RacingBirds (please tell me they are called Dastardly and Muttley) and MistleHens...
my poor DS we can only stretch to a DaisyDog, but he does look like a rug

Daisy staggers slightly under a case of Credit Crunch Cava and a large (hessian) bag of crotched loo roll holders (the first having been used to mop up some Bolly)

Rightio girls, let's get stomping...

"Come on Eileen...."

The loo roll dollies are lovely, daisy. We'll put a couple in the loos and then the rest will be the centrepiece of our Christmas craft stall, if that's alright by you?

Now, I think it's about time that we set the glitter balls spinning again and go for glam.

We've also got a mistledog - not much like a rug though... No longer any mistlehens - advantage of growing up in the country.

Bocca - -green- wellies - purlease!

Given the time of year, I thought that these would go well with the crocheted loo roll covers - patchwork tissue box covers. Ds certainly seems to need them at the moment...

Mistlethrush - apologies if I'm not fully up to speed on welly etiquette. Round here, jolly patterned ones are more comme il faut - green ones (like LandRovers) being a little incongruous in the urban wasteland ....

T42 stamps feet at her youtube keep sticking... since having this new printer youtube and radio is a mess!!!

But... it is really really worth it...

T42 goes away to print off more pictures of the gardener and racingpig to put all over her bedroom wall!!!

• oi - dn't tk de mic I'm yung all me m8s fink it iz well coooool!!!

T42 wonders whether to take one of mistlethrushes pills then remembers her form tutor told her to "Just say no"!!!

So instead she sits at a table in the corner and starts doing her homework ensuring she occasionally makes Lolita eyes at the gardener !!!

• It is lovely to be nearing 30 and thought of as 'The baby'!!!!!!!

(psssst... in rl I am not nearly so cool, infact at school, I am the one doing the lesson planning and marking )

Ahh - but that's the joy of this marvellous establishment - feeling cool even if one isn't in RL.

Right ladies, the coffee machine is on, let me take your orders....

bbpants - so glad to see you this morning! I thought you'd gone off to skulk in the groves of academe!

Could I have a hot honey and lemon, please? My throat's a bit tickly this morning (maybe I'm allergic to all the fascinator feathers which racingguineapig has been using to crate a nest?).

Dear Bocca, here's your hot honey and lemon (there's a bottle of whiskey under the counter if you need a slosh later - I know what you academics are like!)

I'll whip out my hand held vacuum and give that sofa a little whizz over - I'm not sure if it's the fascinator feathers or our little racingguineapig himself that's making it a bit dusty round here. Don't worry, I'll not go too close to his nest - I'll give that a good clean out when he's having a run around. Talking of which, I once knew of a hamster that was given the run of a friend's flat, but it suffered a most unsavoury death when a wardrobe got dropped on it.

Morning BBPants, thanks for the coffee, been for a swim this morning so feeling knackered virtuous!

Sad to hear of poor demise via wardrobe. I had a gerbil when a Daisylette and it went into the boiler, no heatng for 2 weeks - can't imagine why, Dad wanted to get rid of Daisybil after that

Mistle LOL that the only bit of your description that Bocca got wrong was the colour of the wellies!

Daisy takes the bentwood rocker with her lovely cup of coffee and pain au chocolate and watches DS as he rushes out into the cafe garden doing that special wriggle of glee that is the true province of toddlerdom

They weren't my pills! they were RS's - Really!

Daisy - yes, description was uncannily accurate, although I very rarely cut a bundle of roses - I tend to leave them on the plant and go and smell them every day! We've got a lovely one near the front door which has just lost its last rose - was weedy and almost scrapped when we first came to the house, but I pruned it hard and it has the most wonderfully scented blooms - a real old-fashioned scent. Not 100% keen on the actual look of the flower, but I'll overlook that for the scent...

There we go, a restorative cup of earl grey for MT.

And I've got a vat of vegetable soup on for anybody who wants it. Nothing special, just a lot of lovely veg that I've swiped bought from MT's garden (money's in the honesty box). Daisy - you'll need some sustenance after your swim, and Bocca, some veg soup will help your recuperation.

I've bought some homemade bread to go with the soup. I know its in peculiar shapes, and some of them look rather suggestive, but ds enjoys makeing rockets...

at the suggestive bread

Am glad that I was not the only child to have pet chickens - I had bantams with an assortment of silly names, plus a drake called Sir Francis. We also had goats, chickens, ducks, calves, pigs, lambs and geese. The last 4 had a short and seasonal life and constituted my christmas money (plus dinner).

I have green wellies, and still remember the joy of my first pair of Hunter wellies as compared to the cheap ones from the feed merchants.

Any chance of a hot chocolate ? Its beautifully sunny today, but nipping out to put the sheets on the line risked frostbite

Yup - hot chocolate we can do. Marshmallows and whipped cream?

I went through a phase of wanting chickens a couple of years ago, but my DH wouldn't hear of it. So I had a baby instead....

I'll have one of those bread rolls please MT - no, not that one, the really big one.. (snigger!)

That soup was delicious! As were the rolls - very reminiscent of the work of Antony Gormley, too, so all adding to the artistic ton of the cafe. Thank you so much.

Now I must choose between some overdue housework (specifically the EU Ironing Mountain and sundry other tasks) or doodling about on t'interweb. What do you think? Shall we conduct a poll?

web web web web....

The ironing will be there later.

Marshmallows and whipped cream are a must. Particularly without DS being here to scrape all my cream off and pinch the marshmallows.

Bocca- t'interweb wins over ironing everytime. DH ironed his shirt this morning and pointedly left the board up 'in case you want it'. I fear he got too used to our cleaner doing all the ironing (she isn't coming at the mo due to her husbands illness). Do you think I can stop him watching football this evening and watch Hairspray instead whilst I iron my stuff ?

bbpants - yes, that's the trouble!

cmot - talk me through the benefits of having a cleaner. I am ridiculously hung up about it (and fear I would spend half a day a week on pre-cleaner tidying up). I agree, though, about the joys of simultaneous ironing and TV watching. If I don't post anything for the next couple of hours, it's because I'm watching Casino Royale and drooling working hard at the ironing.

I held out against a cleaner for years. And then got one and realised what it was like to have a really clean house. For 40 quid a week, mine turns the house from its state of pigsty into spotless and shiny, and the ironing mountain into things on hangers (actually she likes to iron things, so insists on ironing rugby shirts etc). And because she cleans properly the house never has a chance to need a deep clean.

She puts the dishwasher on, tidies toys, and puts clean sheets on the bed. I am merely shamed into putting washing away - which is a good thing

Oooo BBpants, lovely soup, just what is needed and Mistle thanks for the roll (fnar fnar) and I don't just mean you Mr Gardener!

Bocca - get a cleaner. I spend £40 per week, don't get ironing or clean sheets for that but I am in the big smoke. What I can say is the Daisy family would eat nothing but water and bread before I did without my lovely cleaner

I cannot tell you the difference. And doing an occasional flick/ wipe/ loo as oppose to the grind of knowing they are all there all the time always needing doing - worth all the tea in china

at legions of animals in your lives - can we have a small array of animals by way of petting zoo so DS doesn't grow up all deprived and urban?

My first hen was Belle - she came with a clutch of eggs - hatched out into Maisy, Marble, Maud and Marmaduke (Maud favourite, lovely little shiny black hen). Marmaduke nasty cockerell - my mother had to sing or whistle patriotic songs when she hung out the washing to keep him at bay - she would forget when nearing the house and he would charge up the garden to peck her ankles. He met an appropriate end...). I then got 3 Buff Rock Bantams - Amethyst, Amber and Ambrose - all not tame to start with, but Ambrose got tame enough to go to sleep on your hand in time - lovely cockerell, adopted some chicks one year when Marble was taken unwell). Got some additions from my ex headmistress of mixtures - Blackberry, Apple and Nutmeg, then Ginger and Spice another time. One brood of chicks hatched my best hen ever - Sweet Cicely (Sweetie) - she was wonderfully tame. Ginger once managed to sit on a clutch of 24 - we found this early enough - then a clutch of 12 which we were too late finding, she hatched 12 out of 12 - but clearly had been visiting the black cockerell next door as 7 of the 12 were black with feathery legs rather than golden with clean yellow legs... And all this was over 20 years ago now

Also a supporter of the cleaner in the MT household - although not great, helps out and keeps more or less on top of things...

As for ironing, if Mr MT wants his shirts ironed, he knows where to find the iron and the ironing board!

Interesting discussion regarding a cleaner - that has been a topic that's gone backwards and forwards in Pants Towers. The compromise situation has been that I compress my work hours slightly so that I have one day off every fortnight to rush round the house like a mad thing with a hoover whilst DD is at nursery. It has stopped the decline to squalor, but we are still not squeaky clean.

Yes, we've always had similar discussions in Bocca Gardens. Am now weighing up squalor ... tidiness ... wish to be a domestic goddess ... filth ... cleanliness of the squeaky type ... domestic order ... feeling that I am not the 'type' to employ people ... have more time for more stimulating activities ... reality ... £40 a week ...

Our major issue is trying to tidy up. We've just got too much stuff and end up shifting it from one place to another depending upon where we want to look fairly under control. The cleaning definitely helps.

BB - typical that its you that has to compress your hours and rush around like a mad thing... presumably its MrBB saying no to the cleaner?