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!

TW - use butter instead. We always have butter in our CPs. Suet shouldn't have wheatflour added - if you look up what it really is is fat from round the liver etc - no wheatflour there. Its probably just something added so that it stays in blocks/can be shreaded etc.

TW- those DS hot cross buns are really nice toasted. In fact I had them for breakfast this morning. AFAIK all the gf/wf hot cross buns are actually made by the same company.

For reasons best known to itself the vegetarian suet is always gf

DS has his first ever taste of rugby playing tomorrow as he is going to Rugby Tots as part of a school open day. DH can't wait

yes I just had a look at the Wiki entry for suet - it was originally shredded fat from around the kidneys but pre-packed suet has wheat flour added to stabilise it.
oddly, the vegetarian version uses rice flour instead!

will look out for those, ta!

You can try vegetable suet also. I don't think there's wheat flour in it?
Or just buy a ready made pudding from MnS??? I don't eat beef and a very little gourmet one did us nicely.

Did you know that in Buddhist theory of the Bardo - the transition from one state to another - that sneezing, sleep, death and orgasm are Bardo states? you have an altered consciousness in each state.
I'm not sure about transition in labour, but I'm sure it's an altered state also. From what I read here folks don't half swear through it also: TW !

Come out amber - we'll put the piccy of becks etc away!

I'm not in Yorkshire - but I might as well be latitudinally...
Oi, did no-one get my pun about Purley's Gated Community

well would you look at the time? .. back in a jig, school run, life etc.... as you were.

Ready made from M&S???????
my pud is faaaaaar superior to that, I can asshewer you!!

I didn't swear through my labour - I really thought I would as it is generally a large part of my daily vocal output, but nary a word of unseemliness passed my lips, although there was a lot of praying...

oh, just got Purley gates, sorry!

LOL at Thumbwitch and God/orgasm!!! we need Justa to resolve that one!

I am not liking the changed look one little bit, no siree, took me ages to find you all again

Right, would you look at the time!!

Come in DaisyBoy time to stop helping Mellors with the rockery and come and have some supper!

Actually I need to finish up at work and get on home to see the little darling.

This morning he said "Mummy I really like your ears. What shop do they come from?"
bless

I once gave vegger friend very superior pudding made with gelatine... well I didn't know it was made from boiled up pig's trotters....
she was nearly sick on the floor and DH fell over laughing

Phew! Made it here through the new layout. I'm trying to be a modern, forward-looking girl but have to say I don't much like it. It isn't (I think) so easy to find things. But am I just an old Luddite? Do I need to embrace change, push the envelope, feel the fear and do it anyway and ...

Anyway, when I got home last night from my friend's gig

I was going to post my witty riposte to the Purley Gates but couldn't as the site was being vandalised remodelled at the time. Is it because of the revamp, do you think, that we've had naked vicars cavorting about with tea cosies on their head and other bizarre occurrences today? For anyone (by the way) interested in the spiritual dimension to sex, there was recently a reluctant worshippers' thread which was advertised as being about sex although it was more specifically about adultery.

Daisy, I recently admitted to giving a veggie friend a pudding made with gelatine. It was years ago, and I actually realised before I served it, but it was home made panna cotta, and I was SO proud of it, I couldn't bear to tell her and risk her not eating it. Just before Christmas she told me that as far as she was concerned, all wine, cheese and puddings are vegetarian. So I 'fessed up about the panna cotta.

If only she had a child, she'd fit right in in the tea room, where every food you could ever desire fulfils your every dietary requirement and preference!

Not sure I like the changes either, but hey.

Did they give any reason for changing something which seemed fine?

Has Tea made it in here recently?

I am v busy in RL and have a number of presentations I need to make which are taking hours and hours each night.

DH is ill and feeling very sorry for himself which is making him absolutly determined to pick a fight with someone or something. WS manged to be sick while he was watching her for 5 minutes. Spoke to her very severely, like the queen in Alice. She retaliated by falling asleep on my shoulder while I cleaned my teeth and I am now having to type with one hand.

Justa - how has the cleaner search gone ? Our cleaner isn't working at the moment as her husband is terminally ill, so we are cleanerless as I promised she'd have a job to come back to. We are a total mess without her, and she would be shamed by the house

Racing - sorry to hear of the troubles in your household. Is WS's sickness an ongoing thing ?

In the absence of Bocca, I have opened a bottle of something cheeky - pink bubbly anyone ?

Hot cross buns should, I agree, be compulsory but I tend to agree with Mistlethrush that they should just be sold as spiced buns except around Easater. I think the reason the days immediately after Christmas can be so deflating is that the telly is dominated by adverts for cheap sofas and the shops are full of hot cross buns and cadbury's creme eggs.

Justabout - Hope you find a nice cleaner. I occasionally glance at the good housekeeping threads but find them slightly scary. If none of tonight's candidates are up to snuff, what about an au pair? (Although, personally, I wouldn't want to introduce a lissome twenty-something Swede to the house. Unless his name was Sven, ahem.)

Racingsnake - Commiserations about unwell child and argumentative husband. Can you manage a glass of champagne with your free hand?

Anyone else?

RS - you're doing v. well for one hand... Hope WS feeling better soon.

Justa - where abouts 'in Yorks' I ask as we've just had to stop our dog walker/cleaner/baby sitter as dh ougth to be doing it all as he's not got a job at the moment so we can't afford it anyway. But I know she wouldn't be prepared to go too far... can you be devious in telling me?

Daisy - it was Justa that brought that up in the first place - so, yes, probably she is best placed to sort that one out... Perhaps we need to get a copy of at least that chapter of her PHD when its available!

Amber - I read your bit about a trip to the airport with a lot agreement (that's not the right word but I can't think of the right one and I know that if I wait to try to 'find' the right word I'll never get there). Its why dh and I didn't go abroad on our honeymoon. I must check that I've got my passport and tickets at least 10 times whilst in the car between house and airport - then regularly in the airport. Unlike you, however, taking off and landing scares me! It must be really difficult gearing up to deal with so much in such a short time.

Champagne would be lovely!

Didn't mean to sound sorry for myself. Vommitting child is not ill; just did it to annoy, I'm sure, and argumentative husband is just being silly. So far he has vehemently defended factory farming, economic protectionism, and the banning of any man wearing an earring from television. I'm just waiting for him to come out in support of the slaughter of the firstborn and the compulsory incarceration of anyone who watches Mama Mia.

I would be too embarrassed to let a cleaner see our house! (Also with my income, (s)he would have to pay me for the privilage).

I'd go for the Bulgarian lady. IME, you want someone who takes a personal pride in their work and I feel somehow that although the younger applicants would do as they were told to, an older person will see what needs doing. And be better when it comes to babysitting

I'd go for Bulgarian too. She must have plenty of experience with children and another language and culture is always interesting.

We too are cleaner-less. I was making great strides in smartening up and decluttering the house until I discovered MN.

As for the candidates for the justabouttodosomedusting vacancy, I think that (in the absence of any other information about the candidates) I'd probably go for the older person too, on the grounds that as an old biddy it's my duty to promote the interests of older people she'll have broader experiences on which to draw. If, though, the wannabe police officer or the student turned out to have years of child-wrangling experience, that would be different.

Cin, cin!

I and a friend of mine had a mutually useful agreement whereby she would clean for me, 2 hours a week, and I would obviously pay her. It was good because she needed the money, I wanted to help her and I wanted a cleaner I could trust. She was only young (22) and bless her, she was so lovely but she was an absolute perfectionist about what she did, which meant that she never got more than half done of what I needed to be done!

It was done very well, but I would have settled for it being done less well and the whole lot being finished. Didn't last long anyway as she got a real job!

gosh, have I put the thread to sleep for the night?

Mistle, I'm much better if I'm travelling with someone I trust, er, unless it's dh, who's a worse airline traveller than I am.

Justa, hope you had some luck with the cleaner. We tried two. One was caught with her hand in son's pocket money and the other was ever so nice but couldn't clean anything to save her proverbial life. She would go through the motions, but the dirt was still there. And I so hate having people in the house as it's my 'safe space' and I panic if there's strangers in it.

We had the same disaster with the gardeners who misunderstood the instruction to put a fine layer of sand on the lawn to help with drainage. I returned to find they'd let a job centre labourer do the job, and he'd interpreted it to mean "a layer of sand 3 ins thick". I came home to something closely resembling the Sahara. It just needed a couple of camels and a date palm It took me some hours to recover enough to tell them what they might do with their sand .

Toast, anyone?

Mm, toast, yum. I can't bothered with RL breakfast this morning. DD slept until 9am this morning, so she has special immunity from being annoying today.

This morning I am mostly chuckling at this and you can make your own. This is the one my friend made, snort