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!

Hello Daisy. nice to meet you, I'm new here, I found teh lake at teh bottom of teh garden.

My Boy has been at nursery today as well. hes still in tears every monday ( nursery day) when dropped off but apparently has a nice enough time while hes there & gets tear full again at home time as other parents come and collect. I on teh other hand had an Ok day at work, didn;t quite manage to do all I hoped to and had major distraction from a very talkative fellow contractor working on a different project in teh same room. Oh, and all teh worthless hippy types who kept wondering in to ask if we had seen teh carrier bag full of joss sticks they left behind on saturday... short answer- NO. long answer, no it will have been thown away with all the other rubish.

CAn I please have a choc cake passed this way. would one one like some marzipan, my brother has just sent me a block in teh post as a late christmas present, perfect, I love marzipan.

DVD for the shelf - Spirited Away- from studio Ghibli. A rather odd and very beautifull Japanese animated tale. I've got another free dvd rental offer from tescos, any one successfully used two of those? my previous usage was also on a free trial.

Daisy!! Where have you been?

times 100
Sorry Bocca, I did see your peace lily but forgot to mention it.

Tentatively offers bubbly?

oh Daisy - we have missed you lots I am glad you are back!!! Nursery is cool bananas this end BUT to begin with it was also a bit rocky... don't panic it is normal!!!!!!!

I have been on a thread about an mn book about toddlers that is hitting a Waterstones near you soon - I think we should think about not only bringing out 'Tearoom the movie' but also 'tearoom the book' but which author should write it?

I'm not staying cos I feel poorly (hm, could I have a hot toddy to go, do'you think) but popped in to say hello.

Erm, hello.

Daisy, we had some rough patches with nursery, DD was great there until she moved to the preschool room, for a range of reasons that was REALLY unsettling, her first full day in that room she cried so much she had two black eyes by the end of the day. Fast forward a year and a half, she left to go to school and I had to take her back to visit nursery every other day for three weeks!

I don't work Mondays so am popping in whilst cleaning my pigsty tip of a house. I work Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturday mornings.

oh yes, Howls moving castle, did you know there are a couple of follow up books to Howls.. I rather Like Diane Wyne Jones books.

I think the Tea room may be just a little like the moving castle actully, We can all use teh same door to come in from where ever we live and things appear as if by magic - tho I know its really Mellors.

CMot - Rome - the only place I have found where, if you are on a pedestrian crossing, coaches speed up as if they would score a bonus if they hit you when you were on one. I found the only way to cross the road was to have a Roman on either side....

Magic doors - abit like the CS wadrobe....

Am liking all the literary analogies here. This is such a smart thread, as well as a cool one, I think.

Cmot - I at the notion that anyone gave me a moment's thought. Roman traffic is, I think, sui generis. The first time I went to Rome, my friend picked me up from the station in his Morris Minor, of which there were then (and now) very few in Italy. We then proceeded to hurtle around the Vittorio Emanuele monument at high speed while the Romans (or so it seemed) vied for the privilege of writing off the quaint English car.

The idea of the Tea Room Guide to Parenting was first broached some time ago, possibly even BTR (Before Tea Room) in other words, in the dark ages. Shall we each write a chapter? I think I might start with Style Tips For The Mother Of One (unless squeaver wants to cover that one). Fascinators, fancy hats and Mary Jane shoes will be mentioned.

There are also moveable doors in HP books aren't there... Unfortunately, HP still a bit too advanced (and frightening in places) for ds... He's getting quite good at spelling words out now and putting them together. Just need to make the jump to him seeing the pattern and reading it as a single entity (It took 7 pages starting with 'Dig dig dig' the other night before he guessed that the 2nd and 3rd words were dig, dig rather than having to spell them all out!!!)

MJ has offered us the money in his piggy bank. I've said he can save it and we will use it if we need it to buy food... I hope it doesn't come to that. Dh really needs to pull his finger out.

MT - is that the ORT Songbird book ? Ds loves the Bob Bug one, but the bugs in the tin in Dig, Dig,Dig seem to amuse him highly.

Your DS might like to be read some William Mayne or EE Nesbit - very unscary magic.

Bless him with the money.

I haven't been to Italy for ages, and not since the smoking ban, so am looking forward to that.
The whole country is forever coloured to me by my biggest travel nightmare ever, which was a combination of Italian truthbending (why we were late for the plane), inefficiency (taxi driver got lost on the motorway), and 9/11 - this was the 14th.

Yes, it is. We got a pack before DS started school, before being told not to get any of the 'reading schemes'. However, as he hasn't started on anything like that at school, not worrying too much - just doing lots of encouraging with the reading. He's doing quite well with the purple and green, but the blue ones are still a little advanced for him to be able to do most of the words himself.

Not sure how to get him to get d and b the right way round though I do hope that it's not early evidence of a bit of my dyslexia rubbing off (mine only really came out in French at school where I was incapable of writing a sentence without a spelling mistake so always got bad marks).

William Mayne??? I have the EE Nesbit's somewhere in a box from my childhood. Oohh - and I've got a pack of Harry and the dinosaur books for ds that I've not given him yet - I think he will like those at the moment....

Awwwwwwww - at offering of piggybank money mt!!! It reminds me of when I was a little girl but my sister was a very very little girl and my parents took us for a walk in the local woods.

My Dad stopped to look at the map and realised we were a little lost. My sister, at that news, immediately began to collect berries for us to eat for supper that night - thinking there was a strong possibility we would be sleeping in the woods at least for that night if not more!

Of course within five minutes we were back on the right road and she is reminded of the story more often than she can stand!!!

William mayne- swarm in may- that william mayne? very gentle magic hardly magic at all in swarm, just an odd occurrence for a small boy who learns to tackle a responsibility he didn't want at first. Must look out for a copy for my nephew.

MT- LOL at your dyslexia in french, My french teacher was so resigned to my failure to spell in french that she started underlining the words IO had right, I had about the same number of underlinings as the rest of the class that way and she saved a lot of ink.

Nice to see mellors out there in teh winter sunshine digging away at teh pottager again, shall I take him a mug of tea in a bit. Kettles on if any one wants a a brew.

Oooh yes please, I very rarely turn down the offer of a cuppa...

I really enjoyed the Alan Garner Books - not sure if they count as magic, but sort of, but rather frightening too - certainly not suitable for MJ at the moment.

There are loads of William Maynes - my mum collects them. Some are very simple, and not fantastical (I remember No More School, where their tiny rural school has to be shut as the teacher is ill and the children keep going) and some a little more. Totally gorgeous and well written, but overlooked these days. Also Margaret Mahy (fab for all ages as she goes from toddler to adult) is good - The Man Whose Mother was a Pirate is a beautiful picture book for a start.

We love Harry and the Dinosaurs here, and my claim to fame (remote) is that in H+D go to School, the teacher is named for a friend of my mums who was a TA at my infants school (and who mum taught with for years)

Alan Garner fab but more a teen book - the Owl Service scared me for years.

Tip on b and d - write down bed, and draw a bed round it - then it's easy to remember which is which

I've made some almond/honey/apple muffins to go with the tea

Mmmm lovely muffins CMot. Will try the bed this evening!

Have you read any Jasper Ffordde ? It's my standard question to anyone that likes TP as its the same kind of humour. My brother came home with 'The Light Fantastic' when he went to his university open day. As he was 39 this month, that shows you how long I have been reading them

Morning all!

Thank you for your kind support and hello UniS! When I got back from work yesterday I said we could do whatever he wanted most, so we made muffins
= sorry they are a bit mis-shapen DaisyBoy likes to cook by upending himself in the bowl and eating as much mixture as possible. I try to worry about salmonella but just can't be bothered...

DaisyBoy woke up this morning and said "No Nursery" but actually seemed much happier - showed me where he had his nappy changed and the train set and the garage etc...

RacingSnake - I now have a slightly bruised arm because I was running towards you for that hug, and then you ducked off at the last minute! not very Brief Encounter? Or perhaps very so ...

Mistle so sorry about work woes (catching up slowly) but bless baby MJ for offers of piggy bank

I love the hidden doors of Narnia and Hogwarts but am still terrified by Owl Service - all those plates going blank, no no no! Never heard of William Maynes (hangs head in shame) but will look for him!

I used to love Willard Price - all sorts of Adventures - two boys and a zoo to fill, not magic but great

Writing - I was plagued for years, being left handed and writing totally backwards by the whole D and B thing, what I did was learn that D is for Daddy and he looks at you when you write and B is for Blanket (my conforter) and he looks away ... only works if you're lefthanded but of course you could reverse it for right IYWIM

Anyway, I managed. My Mum had one of her Bless You Mum moments when my teacher was giving me a hard time at school by saying "if mirror writing was good enough for Leonardo Da Vinci - it is good enough for Daisy" and positively flouncing. My Mum can be very scary but when its on-side its fab

Sorry, can't stop chatting - can you tell I have missed you all!

Ahhh, that's better....

Ooh yes, Willard Price - DH has the whole lot waiting for DS to be old enough.

Glad I'm not the only one scared by the Owl Service !

Yes, I also read Willard Price... I read my way through the mobile library, then the large relatively local library, and my mother had to start on the main town library at that point. Which means that I don't have quite a lot of these books, although I have read them.

Yes, Alan Garner - very scary - although I think I read them relatively early on due to running out of 'standard' children's books quite early on... I read Bleak House in 3 days when on holiday when 11... I had already read all of 'my' books that we'd taken...

CMot - Will see if I can find any... I also like Tom Holt - wonderful mixing of the 'real' world and other realms...

Daisy - glad nursery seems to be a bit more positive. Ds was always keen to go in (and is keen to go into his classroom now too). I often didn't (and don't) get a second glance unless I call him back for a hug.

Ds has told dh that dh has a very important job - playing with ds and doing baking with him at least someone other than me values him !

I still remember Roger trying to burp his elephant by making a little hoist for it....

and the giant clam that caught the nasty man....
and the man eating lions...

maybe they are a bit scary

DCMB didn't mean to ignore you, still worried about you poor DCMBBaby's eyes ... black eyes from crying? I think I would still be sitting on the sofa wringing out a hanky!

glad she was so transformed later

Wasn't there one where there was a giant manta ray that jumped the boat and toppled it over....