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.

It's well after 6pm. I think we should all have a nourishing G&T to accompany those perfect designer cupcakes.

How is dh, Mistle? Did he simply have to leave and not go back in to work? What did he find to do today?

I thought of you while sitting right next to the coffin even closer than the family, where the daft usher had sent me today at the funeral. I thought, MT had a nose bleed as well. I wouldn't have been suprised to look up and see you there. Very embarrassing, sitting in the choir stalls, next to the coffin, especially, due to no brain whatsoever, I had forgotten about the funeral when I dressed for work and was wearing pink and purple (as chosen by WS). I must have looked like a flower arrangement. At the reception afterwards, my friend, whose husband it was, said that there was no-one she would rather have had up there at the front 'looking after my Peter' and it made me cry again.

Oh dear. In my far off student barmaid days, it was well known that gin makes for maudlin drinkers.

Let's tip these down the sink and open some champagne. Let's cheer ourselves up by looking at a happy farmer. Really probably more CMOT's thing, but I love the song and couldn't find a more suitable clip of it. Just try and forget it is a man dancing for a pig. See it as a message of solidarity.

I did have a witty erudite post, welcming takingit to the tea room, all writen and ready to go last night, when.... DH called u from teh office " oh, sorry , I've turned off the modem, forgot about you. DOH. so please believe me, it was a fab post.

MT, if your bloke is an IT whizz who can do communication, handle BIG code and has a scientific bent, the Met office may be worth a punt. Civil service, so not huge money but pretty secure and good T&C.
< IIRC I have bottle of Godiva, chocolate liquor in teh cupboard, any body fancy sampling it. NO not you racing pig, not sure its a good idea for gineua pigs to get drunk. Re savoury muffins, chese ones are good while fresh, normal muffin mix minus teh sugar, lus teh scrag end of paramasan, some grated cheddar or what ever is in fridge, a splodge of mixed dried herbs and a tea spoon of mustard. Have only some rather dodgy choclate fairy cake sto offer tonight, boy and I made them, so they are covered with bright yellow rather runny iceing & choc buttons.

Boy is an only by choice. Have considered changing my mind, but thought better of it. I like being able to do a bit of work and sport and can't see how I'd continue either with 2.Boy is heading for 3 yrs old and quite hard enough work on his own thank you very much.

righto, I'm off to curl u on one of those armchairs with teh a top and do a litte browsing, see yu later.

We had said when agreeing about children that we only wanted one. Three miscarriages, a not great pregnancy, and a premature birth later, thats a definate. If it wasn't for the whole staying pregnant thing, and I we were younger, I suppose we might have considered another, but there's no way I could do it all again.

eeeekkkkk. leaps up from arm chair and does odd sort of happy worried dance around teh tea room. My SiL , BiL and their 6 kids are really really moving to teh UK! they arrive in under a month. Its been in teh pipeline for so long I sort of thought it would not happen.
good grief, boy will meet his cousins. we will have to be a bit less slack about birthdays an christmas presents. I'll have to go and get some argos gift cards for them as presents from christmas just gone. Next christmas is going to be HUGE. Quite unlike our nice quiet 3 of us day last year.
An I have a large glass of wine lease while I absorb this change of family size.

Its OK, they won't be living anywhere near us, about 250 miles away at least. But thats way closer than 2500.

Time for some good news in here.

Where were they living up to now?

USA. its taken a long time for al teh paper work and visa stuff to get sorted.

So are you of American extraction? We have a few regular customers from the US and Canada and they enrich tea room life and tell us tales of snow.

(And they help to explain why the honesty box recently yielded just over $3.)

About the boat, definitely sailing.

nope, I be brit, as is SiL, however her dh and kids are all american as apple pie. So not sure who has been popping quarters in teh box, not I.
Boat- dingy for pottering about a la swallows and amazons? wooden with red sails, gaff rigged I think. We cuould keep it in teh boat house at teh foot of the lawn and amuse ourselfs sailing round teh islands in teh lake.

Unis - What are they coming over for? (apart from spreading children at Christmas of couse!)

I'm feeling overwhelmed by all this sailing talk. Yacht, dinghy and gin palace are terms I'm familiar with, but gaff rigged? I think we need another tutorial, following on from that very interesting and informative talk about unicycling. In fact, it has just occurred to me that, if we had a regular series of talks, we could tell our partners that we were at evening classes and not just loafing about in the tea room quaffing champagne.

However, now that you mention that we have a lake at the bottom of the tea room garden with islands in it - how had we not noticed that before? we really need to get Mellors to hack down those overgrown shrubs that are blocking the view - a Swallows and Amazons dinghy sounds a splendid idea. We can buy some little lifejackets and Mellors could lead the flotilla of boats with all of us and our nearest and dearest following behind. Do you think we could also reserve part of the lake for swimming? My tutor at uni had a swimming pond, of which I was very envious. I gather they're now considered the height of cool.

racingsnake - you're quite right. This is not the night for gin.

Hello all

snnnnnnoooooooooooooore snnnnnoooooooooooooooore snnnnnoooooooore....!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Looks like I might be staying here the night - too tired to move!!!

Thanks for the lively conversation in the Tearoom today - it was great night time reading... I leant a couple of new words - what wonderful idiolects you all have!!!! And it has set me up for a lovely, delicious dream about messing about in boats....

Idiolects, indeed!

Sorry - idiolect means the specific words you use and how you use them - like you Bocca - I found this sentence -

"...unless you are content to have a little wizened tentacually Medusa head about the size of a gold ball."

priceless!!!! I sense a nobel prize, at least, heading towards the tearoom on these words alone!!!

I loved the Swallows and Amazons books when I was little. I think I've got them somewhere for ds to enjoy when he's a bit older. Along with Mary Plain of course - a female version of Paddington which I think can be enjoyed at a slightly earlier age.
(I've seen those recently - must dig them out!)

Mellors seems to be having a bit of a split personality problem at the moment... I saw him in the garden with a bag hook, hacking down some of the undergrowth, dressed in jodpurs and riding boots, a romantic (although slightly muddy) velouminous white shirt and a captains hat... I did hear some giggling from the potting shed though, so not sure that he'll be doing too much in the garden. Its probably more for show really.

Bocca - on holiday down in Devon last summer, I was taking the dog for a walk whilst dh stayed on the beach below with MJ when I saw what was clearly a sailing school going up the river/sea inlet - I think that there were 7 mirrors (?) (The ones that you can have 2 people on but can handle with a single person if you're a bit better) - and about 3 motor boats with a couple of loud hailers - the motor boats were dashing between the boats and swapping crew from one boat to another, keeping the group together etc etc. I thought how I would have to investigate further so that ds could go off and learn to sail when we were there sometime when he's older

I'm not quite sure what gaff rigged is exactly, but it sounded good didn't it :-)
As did idiolect, I suspect I may have one of those knocking about somewhere.

I was big Swallows and Amazons fan as a youth, hwne I finally got in a dinghy at age 13 I sort of knew what to do just from reading and re reading the books, Ransome was very clear and descriptive about teh technicalities of sailing. I belonged to a sailing youth club for a little while, but it was a long way from home and I relyed on dad to get me there and back so it only lasted one summer till he got bored.

You will be pleased to hear you are spared the fairy cakes, I took them to my adult ed class at surestart instead. Chocolate with yellow iceing and choc buttons, bots choice of flavors and colours. We surestart parents as a group seem to have a vast desire for cake.

Mellors is looking a bit peaky if you ask me, we may be expecting to much of him, ( he is only a bloke) gardening, mucking out Earl grey, butlering, amusing teh shed crew AND teaching sailing. Perhaps he needs a clone? Don;t want to come in one day and find Mellors passed out on the sofa needing TLC do we....

UniS - if you ask me he's more likely to be passed out behind the sofa and not as a result of exhaustion due to too many jobs. Over exertion, perhaps - but I think that I've also noticed a distinct run on the gin whenever he's around in the evening...

MT-Dare i ask hows bloke?

Dh has spent another day in limbo... was expecting 'an announcement' at 4pm but it wasn't forthcoming - so he's in again tomorrow. But he's not counting on having a job at the end of the week or being paid for this month, let alone any redundancy pay. At least I've got a job, and they are happy for me to increase my hours - probably go up to 90% (from 80%) from next week - but they're OK to increase up to 100%.

Well, that's something I guess.

What kind of day has everybody had? Would a glass of champagne be inappropriate at this point?

Bocca, as The Management of the tea room, it is quite within your role to offer the drinks and nobody would dream of passing comment.

I'll have a small champange, thank you, unless the tea room cellar runs to a nice glass of red. I feel like something fortifying.

Had a very pleasant day, meeting friend who has 3-week old baby in Salisbury, which is a hour's drive for each of us. WS fascinated by the baby and wanted to hold her and examine her fingers and toes, but we were both very happy to give her back! WS slept in the car on the way home and so has been wide awake until now.

How about everyone else?

What exactly do you do, MT?

Oh, do I really have to manage this place? I do a bit of ineffective posturing from time to time, but I'm not actually in charge, am I? I was hoping we could be a collective or an anarcho-syndicalist commune or something. Thought it was fab yesterday when everyone rushed to welcome the new customer.

I've had quite a jolly day. Went out after work to see Slumdog Milionaire, just to prove that I am at the cutting edge of popular culture.

A glass of red wine now would be very nice.

That would be Millionaire, wouldn't it?

Do you mean that you and Signore Bocca went out a deux??

Glass of red very nice thank you.

Bocca - I thought that we were largely a collective - with you overseeing all of us, and occasionally shaking the honesty box....

Did you have fun out? What was it like?

I'm a town planner (not with the Council, so its not my fault!). Very interesting. Currently lots to do. Thankfully.