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!

zazen were they cinema sweets? I remember having some of those with a mate a couple of years ago and I came out BUZZING and twitching - so much for all the suckers people who don't believe in sugar highs - I was having palpitations for ages after!

justa - sorry about your boy but it could have been worse - at my bf's DS's christening, her sis's older DD managed to poo her pants in the bouncy-castle-with-soft-balls - so she took her pants off in there. I am not really sure what happened in the bouncy castle arena but I took the poor child for a walk outside, with another mum and child and we could still smell poo - she had it all inside her skirt and on her bare bum and legs! Other mum (and self!) was well impressed that I asked for tissues and used my wine spritzer to clean her off. Poor little thing, she was very upset - she was only about 3.

at Zazen's poo anecdote, although to Zazen for dealing with it so heroically.

Bocca's tip for domestic parsimony - take your own sweets, healthy snacks and juice into the cinema. Cinema sweets cost about £50 a kilo.

Bocca, lovely, you need to check who is saying what....

Oh b@gger. Was distracted because the first word of the post was zazen. I blame it on the new layout. I knew no good would come of it.

Am geriatric and befuddled by scotch. Shall go to bed before I embarrass myself again.

• don't worry, am feeling slightly precious about it today as someone else accused called me hedgewitch on a different thread, so am feeling unrecognised

That's OK. We old biddies are used to being the victims of ageist discrimination. Nobody makes allowances.

Can I have a glass of Oban whiskey instead - or Islay? Ta muchly.

Back into work tomorrow by the look of it, although still lots of snow and ice here.

Cakes - ds had a dinosaur last year. and a teddybear sunbathing (with sunglasses) on a beach towel last year. This year I think he might have a monster cake made by bunching up lots of individual small monsters - easy for the party bags, bad in terms of the amount of sugar paste Have found a great book in the 'Book club' that comes to work.

Pampered chef batter bowl makes a great barbie cake tin - and is useful as a mixing bowl etc as well!!! . And the prep bowls are also good for Delia's chocolate cakes, or making a 'bra' cake (2 required!)

ACHOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!
Anyone have a Kleenex? Paracetamol? Hot toddy?

Pulls blankie onto jacksmama and jackbaby.
It's a cold night!

I was all hurray there for a minute Bocca!!
How exciting I posted an anecdote about a poo - and then realised that I hadn't indeed after all!!

I find all the "XXX"withces are so lovely I get a bit confused also and I see there are about 4 Zen-ites posting also now! only one of them is OTT the others are pretty chilled. OTTZen has buggered off MN retired for a while I hope.
I know I shouldn't be, but I'm "attached" to my name!!! How funny is that silly me.

My Dh loves Oban - I liken it to Oolong tea which I can drink if I know that's what's in the pot, and it's not a BIG surprise IYKWIM.

Humm.. pulls another blankie out of the box and pops it over Jacksmama and Jackbaby.
Do you think they'll be OK on this cold night on the sofa?

Personally, I love Islay whiskies best (hence the Laphroaig) Its the peaty flavour that does it for me. Shame I can't spell any of the buggers properly Thats years of a fine Scottish education for you.

Zazen: Unfortunately am now where near Yucatán . In fact am probably as far away as you can get and still be in Mexico. I live in the north on near the Texas border.

To those who expressed an interest in my lectures.... DVDs are currently available,, very reasonably priced too. I offer Masters and PhD in the finer points of the boigraphies of whathisface and thingymajig. Although the history of Mexico is my Mastermind subject. I am still awaiting the call to go on that... it'd be great fun. has anyway actually passed all their answers yet?

DS is 16. I asked him whether his parties involved glitter and he said "How did I know about what happened at K's party last month?! " and went off to make some furtive phone calls to his Hareem of young lady admirers . It's all very different when they're older teenagers, I note

He's been wandering the house speaking Latin in dramatic tones, which he assures me is for his latest drama production for GCSE. Amazing memory for his lines - I can barely remember my own address, let alone a whole play!

Very sweet - some of the younger ones at his school have arrived from tropical countries and this is the first time they've seen snow

Since this is the first real snow for 18 years, no-one at my school has ever seen snow. Not that they have been able to see it at school, since it has been closed for two days.

Seems very sad that there is a vast amount of fuss and no doubt a Government Enquiry about the fact that a lot of children have been allowed a day at home with their families having fun. Surely we invented schools to prevent that kind of thing??

RS - you're quite right, I just read something with someone from some organisation saying 'this is teaching children that when things go wrong you should stay at home and have fun'! While I do think some schools might have been a little quick to shut, that is such a dreadful way of putting it, you can imagine the reporter standing there saying "And ...?"

It's snowed a bit again overnight, which is at best going to have done nothing, at worst will have made the roads lethal. Will find out shortly.

I've got ds to school and am in to work today - no problem apart from a little tentative on the drive that slopes up towards the road - dh was on stand by in case I needed a push.

Zazen/TW - did you see that post recently about various witches that got really quite heated - the different factions should really have all gone out in the snow and have a good old snowball fight to sort it all out!

Ds has grown 1/2" in a month, and the snow suit that I'd put away, thinking it would do next year, is just the right size!

Yegads, the Land Rover, even with its ice-handling computer program, barely coped with the sheet ice on the roads.

Drat that I've missed whiskey and gossip but DH birthday yesterday so no posting for me!

Thumbwitch I know that not being recognised feeling - I often find I post not quite in a conversation and my words of wisdom are missed altogher - it is hard to be out of step/ mis-named! But at least you know in the lovely tea room it was mistake not mischief

JM hope you are all feeling a bit better soon

Catita it will be pistols at dawn for the affections of George, you mark my words and Bocca you stick to Daniel Craig!

DCMB awed by cakes. My mum still does all oours (well my DS only 2 but cousins rising 14) it's getting competitive!

I accompanied godson to cinema birthday outing - we had 4 adults (me, two parents one sucker) and 12 children. quite enough. best bit was watching my mate chasing 2 boys up and down the aisles at the end - hysterical. Kids allowed 3 pick and mix sweets each in big box, kept them happy. frankly it was exhausting, but pizza first (kids)and gin afterwards (adults) kept the boat afloat! - they we all boys and were 7

Good respite from boorish snow articles - fab article in G2 bit of Guardian yesterday about the wonder of snow - read it going Yes Yes Yes!

Justa sorry about sicking up DC - was it just the overexcitement or are you also sick in RevTowers?

Thumb can't believe poo in pants story. once saw small child at Geneva airport wearing a man's pullover and nothing else, crying and stinking of sick - no guesses what their flight was like but they had no competition at the luggage carousel

ha ha at fighting withces

Amber have you got chains or snow tyres? make all the difference - if the tyres are slipping 4 wheel drive no help at all!

SatNav - ours (christmas present) got very cross when we asked her to take us to Dover.. kept trying to make us turn round. Eventually we realised she was sending us to Dover Street in Kingston - blooddy unhelpful!

daisy, you have reminded me of one of my more unpleasant US internal flights where I met a lady with a vomiting toddler - who had waited till she had cleared security to start the vom fest. I forget the details, but turning round wasn't an option, so the staff provided her with a huge roll of blue towel, a bin and plastic sacks and varying other passengers just kept taking them away for her. Poor woman was in tears

rs - I have a book to tell you about - but am in a rush to get to work - so will jot it down tonight!

I forgot, meant to mention cakes - my mother made my wedding cake - the actual cake bit, with a modified version of the ancestral christmas cake recipe. (modified to make it slice more easily and wasn't drenched in alcohol for weeks). My father iced the cake (apparently its a bit like plastering - although I'm not sure I'd like a room with lots of little iced gems all over the walls ). It was decorated with crystalised violets - they were in flower when dh proposed, we all picked them locally and crystalised them. My favourite grandmother had had a simlar decoration on her 80th birthday cake, so gave a link to her even though she had died a long time ago.

My mother and I made my dress (mainly in one weekend - it was really interesting that the dogs (my parents' dogs, although I had been at home when they first got them) were terribly good and picked their way around the silk laid out on the ground - luckily we didn't have our dog at that stage as she'd have just walked over the whole thing with muddy paws and then laid down on it. I made silk roses for my dress (bouquet of real roses was in colours that matched in) - and was sewing them on the back the night before!

Who is going to move the tearoom then?

Crikey Mistle, my Mum made my wedding cake but we got it iced elsewhere. That was it, except we tied little bows round all the napkins on the day, except my hands were shaking so I didn't and I walked off with last lot of bows in my pocket

love ideas of witches at dawn on MN - were you involved Thumb?

Have the snowmen come back from the North Pole yet, narrator? I love that!

DaisyBoy and I went to see Snowman at the Peacock Theatre this Christmas, it wsa totally magic and he still sings the song all the time - our first theatrical experience

Right, coffee anyone?

ok, Mistle, I will have a go at moving thread...

Yes please Daisy - how about some ginger and orange muffins (? but I might try to work out recipe!!!) to go with it. Are you doing the honours with the move then!?

All change ! Someone grab Racingpig and the other animals, and we'll decamp to Tearoom the Fourth