The One and Only Tea Room: Tea, muffins and champagne served at all hours

[BoccaDellaNativita]

Well folks, here we are!

We were on the brink of filling the old thread so I thought we'd better start a new one now. There was a rumour that we were going to be evicted from our old premises, but we managed right at the last minute to get an extension on the lease. So it's business as usual. We're still in our charming old tea room, overlooking our beautiful garden complete with ha-ha and duck pond. And Mellors the gardener.

Please come and join us for a celebratory drink.

ds - WHOOPS!!!! You can see how I was really telling you my story - forgetting it is actually you we are talking about, MT!!!!

Now, you see, I think some of my friends used to think my (not very) laissez-faire approach was incredibly daring. I remember when my ante-natal group had convened at a friend's house when the children were all at the just-toddling stage. One friend commented on what a relaxed parent I am, because I wasn't standing with my hand over the corner of the coffee table, just in case BabyBocca fell over and just in case, if she did, she hit her head on the coffee table. It had never occurred to me that I was supposed to drape myself over the furrniture, so that she could be sure of a soft landing! Some risks, I think, are so remote that you can't protect against them without doing more harm than good.

Parenting isn't about protecting children it is firstly by a long way purely about love and then through that love it is about being sometimes a catalyst but more often a supporter to their development.

When my daughter first picked up a pair of scissors I had left somewhere daft I showed her how to cut paper and let her have a go herself. I carefully pushed her hand onto the end, obviously not so it hurt but so she got an idea they are sharp, and explained they can be dangerous if you don't use them properly and next shopping trip I bought her some baby scissors that cut nothing but paper so she didn't need me standing over her all the time to have a go at cutting. I was delighted to find exactly the same process explained in the book I told you about earlier! So much so dh got a quite unwanted reading with visual stimuli - her and my scissors!!! Ha ha ha!!!

AW AW AW - MTs friend so needs to read that book, and my friend and the drapping Mothers and and and the scary choir Mummy. I think the problem with that book is, because of the title, it is the converted who read it and those who should read it don't!

Well, I found you, here I am!

...

Quality Street woman's not in here is she...?

Gunnerbean! How lovely to see you. Welcome.

I'll leave it to everyone to introduce themselves in their own words, but you'll find a lively bunch in here most days. Some of us have one child through a free choice, some of us have had the choice made for us by fertility problems or other issues. This tea room is open to anyone, but it was opened as a safe haven away from some of the 'why would anyone have an only child? all only children are dysfunctional egomaniacs' stuff which first surfaced when the campaign for an onlies topic was underway and when the topic was new. Anyway, as far as I'm concerned, everyone is welcome in here but anyone who is deliberately offensive or looking to start a fight will be ejected by Mellors, our gardener/bouncer. Many of our customers old and new take (ahem) a great interest in Mellors.

As you came in, you might also have noticed the cardboard cut-out of George Clooney we keep in the window as he also helps us lure in new customers. I just found this pleasing image on another thread and felt I should share. So, please make yourself comfortable. Is there anything you want to chat about? Or perhaps you would just prefer to settle down on our well-worn sofa, kick off your shoes and relax?

It is past two o clock by my watch - but I am refusing to go to bed until I find out if Mellors liked his hot chocolate I made him. It had Lindt 70 percent chocolate in it and the milk was from Waitrose. The milk was in a bottle made from recycled bikes and had goldy brown swirly writing in Italian and underneath said "Lovingly milked by the hands of beautiful virginal women in a meadow filled with poppies and butterflies at the foothill of a nature reserve." It cost £5.98 per 1/4 pint.

Oh - hello Gunnerbean - I was hoping on having time to set up a little joke for you - a bucket filled with quality streets balanced on the door to christen your entrance into the tea room... but you beat me to it!!!!

So instead - Here is your champagne!

Thank you very much for the welcome

Well...

As you've probably read on the other thread I have one DS aged 8 through choice. My DH is the youngest of 8 children ad loathed the whole experience and has few happy memories of childhood due to lack of most things. I actually always imagined having two but I knew my DH didn't and then it never became an issue because I was waiting and waiting for the broody feelings to come over me again (which everyone assured me they would) and they never came. Instead, all that came were feelings of I'm not ready yet, I don't think I'll ever be ready. Then, when my DS was almost 4, I had a pregnancy scare with a failed coil and I was filled with dread and fear. Luckily it turned out to be a false alarm but it confirmed to me what I'd known all along that I was never going to want another one. DH went and had a vasectomy and that was that.

We find having a small family very rewarding. We aren't rolling in money by any stretch but having one child means that we don't have to watch our money as much as we would if we had more and can do stuff which makes life more fun which we might not otherwise be able to.

My DS has lots of friends and also two cousins who live just up the road who are 20 months older and 4 months younger than him. They all go to the same school and are very close and always around each other another, having sleepovers etc. He's very active and plays football and has a wide circle of friends. He doesn't want for company or rewarding and fulfilling relationships with sibling substitutes.

He's able to share and relate to other human beings in a reasonable and rational way, he doesn't go to public school (and we have no plans to send him), he doesn't own a pony, he doesn't have private pianoforte lessons, we couldn't care a jot if he never steps foot inside an institution of higher education as long as he is happy, healthy, loved and loving that's enough for us.

Oh, and he's never been known to become even remotely perturbed when there are no purple Quality Street left! [grin}

In short, we don't remotely recognise our son from the ridiculous stereotypical caricatures of only children that some of the rabid wolves on the other thread bang on about.

Any chance of a refill??

Gunnerbean also in a wobbly state is too busy to notice this ramble as she is trying on the huge number of fascinators hanging around in the tea room!!!

!!!

Good night!

Hi MT, I have been mulling your friend over in the back of my mind, and come to a conclusion. It's rubbish, mind. I would like to import the much-used phrase 'not my monkey' from somewhere else I frequent. With someone you saw more frequently, you might be able to have an influence, but with someone you see a couple of times a year? Can't see it, not when she is as defensive as she is. Even in those couple of times a year though, what you can do is set what you see as a good example in your parenting of DS (your description of him with his uncles has given me the jitters, btw, not because I'm over-protective, just terrified of heights, can't bear to see or even imagine people poised over huge drops!).

DCMB

PS I hope any school would be suitably wary of allowing a parent to be a TA in their child's class (not sure about DD's school, although I do know in Reception you are only allowed to be a parent helper in the OTHER R class, not your DC's), especially an SN TA who is supposed to be supporting one particular child. I suspect your friend has managed to make herself known as an over-protective mother by now though.

Eh-up, Pig. Now then.

I know - difficult to do anything really. I don't know whether she has made herself known as an overprotective mum or not. She has effectively taken on the mantle of a single parent without needing to. Its just so sad seeing her adversely affecting her dd, and also ruining her relationship (her dh has taken advice from solicitors to see whether he would get more contact if they split up, but he would almost certainly find himself having to get in contact with father's for justice as I am sure that the dd would be 'ill' whenever it was his contact time.

MT - I agree with what Baby says! I taught a vpc (very protected child) her Mum applied for a TA post in my class much to my HTs amusement.... she read the name on the top of the application form...and drop kicked it into the bin!!! - Well I am exaggerating of course but you see my point!!! Also your friend's behaviour sounds like a challenge for a psycologist let alone someone who only see her a few times a year. I suppose just be there for them all if and when anyone chooses to make any changes??? Sometimes holding out a hand when need be is the best policy!

OK. It's not very imaginative but the home-made tomato soup is always popular. I've taken some more of the tea room's famously suggestive rolls from the freezer, too. Who'd like some lunch?

Has anyone seen Gunnerbean? I'm worried whether she got home safely after her bender with Tea. Hope she isn't slumped in the herbaceous border.

Soup for lunch sounds rather soothing!

milkfortwo woke at 3am and World service said it was 6.30 as I was falling back to sleep with The Golden Treasury balanced on my head??? "No sleeeeeep - read Mummy!!!!" At least she'd been kind enough to choose a book for me! We spent yesterday afternoon in the Tate Modern I wonder if her head was too full of -the scary giant spider thing in the turbine hall artistic ideas to sleep?

Whatever it was seriously - Ouch!!!!

Bocca - Soup sounds just great!!!

One soup and lewd roll coming right up!

Am very impressed that, after an afternoon at Tate Modern, milkfortwo chose the Golden Treasury. What cultured offspring we have in the tea room.

• oh goodness no!

She wanted me to read said book to myself while she read "Everyone hide from wiggly pig"!!!

In order to get some reading in ourselves, what with co-sleeping, we very quickly installed in milk that we can all read our own books together in bed and we don't all have to read "move it farm" for the 1679th time but if she wishes to do so quietly as we read our books - cool bananas!!! - clever, hey?

Oh yes. We were doing that this morning. We never co-slept but we do like that three-in-a-bed parallel reading thing.

When I was a student I had to do a study of the reading skills needed to read a comic book - it really requires nearly all of the aspects of any kind of reading - think about all that is going on on one page in both the text and pictures! They really are so very very stretching and good for children. BUT please don't tell them that!!!!

Note - I think Beanos and Dandy are completely different from bloody BDs for grown men!!!... told you - I am soooo British!!!

Tea - Yes, I agree that reading a comic book requires quite a degree of skill. But, even so, I am a literary snob and can't persuade myself that the Beano is on a par with (for argument's sake) Matilda.

Please come and join my new thread about only children in books. I'm sure there are some out there which I've overlooked!

Yes I'm here...

We have spent most of the day traipsing about in the Forest of Dean. It was very nice, but I may never be warm again. I think I have frostbite in the toes on my left foot - DH looks knowing and reminds me that wellies are not good for heat retention, but I swear this pair actually SUCK the warmth from my poor toes.

On the day of the tea room's opening, we were offering complimentary massages. If I can find the massage table and essential oils, we may be able to offer you a circulation-restoring foot massage, DCMB!

Gunnerbean - hair of the dog or paracetamol?

I thought that we'd better check that ds's school shoes still fitted - tried them this morning - they looked rather small - went in this afternoon - he's gone up a whole size since September. So that's two new pairs of shoes required today - I thought we'd get away with just one but apparently the slightly larger non-school ones needed replacing also. AAAGGGHHH!!!!

So I think I'll have a G&T (strong, large) please.