The One and Only TEA Room: Everyone Welcome (bring champagne and muffins please!)

[Jacksmama]

Wow, we're on our third thread!!!
Previous (second) incarnation of the tea room.

A warm welcome to everyone, whether you have one child, none, or ten. This is a tea-and-muffin or booze-and-sofasorcanapees sanctuary for all. But certain standards of behaviour continue to apply - anyone engaging in fisticuffs will be ejected by George Clooney, ably assisted by Mellors the Gardener.

Cheers all!

Wel, it's quite simple, they tell me. It's a magic tearoom in which anything can change. There's various animals/birds including chickens and a horse, and a man called Mellors who may or may not be wearing clothes and might look like any numbr of well-known actors. Oh, and people are setting up a play of some sort. Me, I'm the cleaner and horse exerciser for the moment, I think...

Cuppa?

Morning, Amber. Are you sure you?re comfortable sleeping on the floor under the table? We have a lovely sofa and even the wing chair would be cosier.

Good to see you again, justa. Trouble is, this thread seems to move so fast that by the time any summary is published, it?s out of date. But I think the key points are

• Opened as safe haven when the battle of the One Child Topic was raging
• The tea room is magic and therefore we can all be as witty/clever/drop dead gorgeous as we wish to be
• Everyone is welcome here (but see next two rules)
• No argy-bargy allowed within the precincts of the tea room
• Mellors the gardener/handyman will eject anyone being deliberately rude or provocative
• Mellors? gardening is sporadic ? he got off to a very good start with the potager, for example, but there has been no digging action for days. (Other types of action, possibly).
• Tea room has an aga ? invaluable for boiling kettles, heating soup, making muffins and drying tights and socks when the children fall in puddles
• Tea room has a menagerie ? racingpig (guinea pig) Dastardly and Muttley (pigeons). Customers may bring well-behaved dogs (we sometimes have racingdog, mistlehound and daisydog in here)
• On the night that My Little Pony/The Tack Room opened, we somehow acquired our own horse, Early Grey.
• As of yesterday, Mellors has shed his clothing and is now (it seems) subscribing to The Naturist Way
• Conversation ranges from the serious (how to react when people evangelise (I chose the word deliberately) about having a second child, especially if you can?t) to the frivolous (fascinators, Mary Jane shoes).
• Drinking is a constant theme ? everything from tea to champagne (and we went through a gin phase a week or so ago)

That?s all I can think of but I?m sure others will contribute more to the list.

Please feel free, everyone, to snuggle down on the sofa and warm your toes by the aga.

I think Mellors was using that page to hide his modesty when the Rev turned up for a cuppa

Yes please for a sit down by the aga and a muffin.

In the magic of the tea room, you and I are not here at all. So it doesn't count

Awwwwwwwwww - justabout!!!

Anyone for a latte? - I am in a latte mood!

Hello! Am coming to see what it's all about then as I was so kindly invited by teafortwo!
It looks like I picked a good time to join in as amber and Bocca have just summarised what it's all about!

oooh, can we get hot chocolate in here by the way? That's my normal tipple.

You can have anything you want Thumb, but I'll leave someone else to serve you as I am currently the resident Plague-Ridden Pariah, hence the isolation tent. You can hear me through it, can't you?

I have provided double chocolate muffins this morning - don't worry, I wore a surgical mask and rubber gloves whilst preparing them.

Ta! I had a lovely lovely hot chocolate yesterday at our local Italian deli - lovely whipped cream on top, really rich thick Italian chocolate...

my DH makes fabulous chocolate muffins - I have wheat ishoos so he makes them with spelt flour and if we have blueberries as well, he makes chocolate and blueberry muffins - YUM!

ThumbB - I have ishoos with chocolate in RL - so, I'll definitely join you for one of those mugs of hc and chocolate muffins. YUM

Hi Justabout - definitely imagination here, and if anyone asks, we haven't seen you. I hope you have recovered from the kisses - although you do still look a little rumpled - mind you, that's fairly normal if Mellors has been anywhere nearby...

I'm just recovering back at work after a morning with MJ, his friend and his older sister - went to soft play to try to tire them out a bit, have abandoned them with Mrmistle at home now and retreated to work!

Lovely to see you, ThumbBurns! Due to the magic of the tea room, none of the ingredients have ever been known to cause any kind of ishoo or allergy, so help yourself to anything. Sadly the same cannot be said for the interesting food combining in the recipes, vis banana and pichard Victoria sponge.

Justabout, due to the magic of the tea room, if you shouldn't be here, you are not here, so sit down and relax. Mellors is just about (!) to put on his leather leggings and boots at the very least and get another basket of logs for the tea room fire and I have studied the Mrs Croptley cookbook and found a recipe for marmite --and raspberry quiche decided not to cook today, so anything can be eaten in perfect safety.

Welcome Thumb!

Daisy knockes her over in inelegant rush to grab one of those spelt and choccy muffins that have magically arrive!

we certainly do chocolate of all sorts in the Tea Room and one of the magic things is that allergies don't work here, giving MistleThrush (for example) unusual culinary freedom!

Right, I am adding Northern Exposure to the DVD shelf because all the talk about morris men reminds me of the great episode about Christmas which is really all about the Black Raven -capisco? (of you don't understand ask your 2 year old to explain! )

By the way JM you will look lovely in blue plaid and the thing about JackBaby is that he would have been having a cranky day if you were at home, but you just wouldn't have noticed it as much and/or would have known you were with him...

happened to me a lot when I first started work and DaisyBoy was still little- I would have to remind myself after a ruddy awful weekend holding a whinging baby that the reason he was whinging on Monday morning was not because I was going to work and was the worst mummy in the world IYSWIM?

((((hugs)))) cos I know you like them!

by the way, welcome Justabout I never know what is happening in the rest of MN so if your story of woe is well known, sorry for not knowing it but welcome anyway

oooh, Northern Exposure - loved that series! especially the moose.

Racingsnake - are you the bringer of Racingpig? What type of guineapig is he/she?

Another NE fan here too. Isn't it interesting how many likes we have in common!

Another wonder of the tea room is that it is possible to eat your meals in reverse order and still not end up feeling queasy.

Potato and apple soup and a lewd roll, anyone?

Yes please, that sounds nice. I didn't realise you had any rolls left - I'll have to get MJ on the case over the weekend to replenish stocks.

why lewd roll? are they of an interesting shape and length?

Thumbburns - Mistlethrush can explain better than I can, but the tea room's rolls are baked for us by her son, Mistlejunior. He likes to make them in the shape of rockets, parsnips and carrots and so the overall effect can be a bit rude. Thanks to the magic of the tea room freezer, we never actually run out of these lewd rolls, but every so often MJ bakes a fresh batch for us.

What's the origin of your name, Thumb? I'm imagining a painful encounter with the aga!

ThumbB - he's not yet 4, so I think that we really should excuse him (and he is mystified at the sniggering on occasions, although happy to join in)

normally Thumbwitch - wearing my Burns Night name at the mo!