Tea room the 5th - welcome to the yurt

[UniS]

Welcome to 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.

You have found us- did you like teh slide/ bridge over teh HaHa. Teh priest hole is still available, its just over there.

Mellors and I have erected the yurt, strewn rugs around and good a good fire going in the wood burner. The place is feeling toasty and warm with not a draft to be felt.The kettle is now singing away on the hob. selection of teas for all taste on the shelf along with the hand made by potters mugs. Mellors very ably fitted teh yurt window with a window sill onto which can be placed a selection of pot plants and george.

Can someone sort out RP ( who I think came over with the sofa) and plump up the hay pile for donk.

A Previous incarnation of Tea room may be found here

gosh, what a lot to catch up on!

Catita - congratulations! (a bit delayed since I neglected to read previous pages last time I caught up ) Your DH's extended family is HUGE - I hope you don't have to buy Christmas/birthday presents for them all?

Donk - how is your Dad doing? Any more news? Sorry to hear you are plagued with the D&V chez Donk - no fun

RS - I hope WS starts to feel more the thing soon. (I can feel myself descending into Heyer-speak, often happens after I've read about 4 on the trot, panic not, it recedes again after a while)
No tips on hydrating her, sadly - does she have a sore throat as well, is that why she is loath to drink?

I had a fractious DS this evening as well - his molars have started, bless him, and he was super-clingy, even Daddy was useless to him.

MadBad - congrats on the bookshelf - have we started stocking it yet?

I never really got into Anne McCaffery books. Are they really good then? I do quite like Laurell K Hamilton though...

daisy, at least it wasn't Wilbur the Tamworth - I saw him scurrying off when Mellors started muttering about bacon...

hello Thumb

Glad Wibur has been spared. Pinky and Perky are ok too. Bit cross and tired after a day on their trotters marching, but you do what you can

must have been a random wild pig that went into the bacon sangers then - that's a relief!

Talking of P&P, have you seen the new travesty P&P show on CBBC? Am deeply unimpressed by it (shows age) - I thought the updated Rupert was bad enough, but this is pretty grim!

Thought I'd give the tearoom-yurt a bit of a mop and a tidy.

I see you had a good night ladies.

Looks like we could start a lending library in here. Perhps this way we could convince peple that we actually quite normal

Well, perhaps. If it wasn't for the nmbs slumbering gently on the top of the bookshelves with their carrots liberally strewn on the shelves...

There are some carrot flavoured ones in there for you Donk.

Thumb: no, thankfully we limit Christmas and birthday to the junior members of the family. At the mo that's 8 gc;so not that bad.

Got all the way to the school yesterday to find that ds needed picking up two hours later than that but had forgotten to tell me . I'll be glad when they've done this Play for his drama GCSE and life can return to normal, instead of him wandering the corridors quoting bits from it and getting me to read out his lines. Now they want to borrow half the household contents here to create an atmosphere of ancient times. Not sure what that says about my furnishings .

Hello ... flying visit to let you know DH and I have eaten the egg yolks (in carbonara no less) with no ill effects so far. DD didn't have them, not cos I was worried but because Sainsburys hadn't turned up with the pancetta and cream and I thought I'd better get her tea on and do ours later. I think she was happier with fish fingers anyway.

Thumb- Anne McCaffery books are far from great- they are pulp fiction but rather fun reads if you can ignore some of teh worst of teh writing and continuity errors and convenient co-incidences that always save teh day.
Ditto Cadfael books.

ah thanks UniS - I will continue to give them a miss then - it sounds like they are a little like that Labyrinth book by Kate Mosse - far too contrived in places and bl00dy irritating! I got cross when the heroine did something mind-blowingly stupid just for a twist and nearly didn't finish the book, but had to just to get it out the way!
(I don't recommend it for anything other than fire-starting )

catita - that's better, 8 presents is bearable!

Chocolate, anyone?

UniS busys herself quickly tidying up and moving a few things out of sight, opps no, its at home I need to do that. ARRRGH.

Havn't wrapped boys birthday present up either. OH no.

Ooh, hot chocolate, yes please!
At home today (losing pay of course) looking after DS.
I will also lose a day (prebooked too) of work tomorrow. Such is life.

Dad seems much better - he cooked tea (he says) yesterday. A triumph after recent events!

It's just the uncertaint that is getting to everyone now I think. I now that one never nows what tomorrow will bring, and that we are all infected with that terminal disease known as life, and never can know when we might be hit by the proverbial bus, but it's the change in probabilities - and time scales - that is difficult to come to terms with.

By the way, the shelf is a marvel of woodwork!
(Notes that a complete set of Lois Bujold books have appeared magically)

Donk, that is indeed a triumph! You are right - things like this affect your outlook permanently but it will recede from the forefront of your thoughts as time goes on, until the next thing. Long may it be until the next thing!

that you are losing paid work - that is a PITA.

Yes please for the hot choc.

Donk, re the work. You're right about the uncertainties etc. Easier in a way when something's known, even if it's not the thing we're hoping for...?

Hello all - mmmm - great hot choc!!!!

I am so excited about Jacqueline Wilson being on mn tonight - I posted my question already!

We (milk and I) have just made a massive picture of the night sky - I am very proud!

While I was given the job of painting the moon DD 'wrote' lots of little c like shapes on a small piece of paper. She read it to me and I discovered it in-fact is the words of "derwinkle derwinkle leeetle tar" to stick on the picture! Awwwww - happy days!

I seem to be missing so much of the tearoom action lately, my skim reading is not what it used to be, so I will just sit here, nod and look like I know what is going on!!!!

Would love some hot chocolate please.

Hope you have got the birthday present and tidying sorted now, Unis. At the risk of my self up for not paying attention, is it DS's bd today? If so, many happy returns.

I've just gone and got some party bag fillers (so feeling a bit well organised really) on the way back from a trip to a public library at some distance to look at the history of a site - lots of musty photos and old books, most of which were not that useful... However, on the way past (reading minutes of Council Meetings believe it or not) I did see some interesting facts about how many women and men (and children) were using the different types of baths available in both 1945 and 1946 in a certain town - and how much people were getting paid (£500 OK salaray - £800 got you a 'Senior ENgineer' for the year...) quite amazing - but I had to drag myself back to the not so interesting Sub Comittee minutes I was following through.... Ds's birthday is at the beginning of next month - we were going to hire the local village hall and make it the earlier weekend - but instead we're going to hold it on the weekend nearest his birthday and hope that fewer people come (Easter Hols) and have it at home due to the costs involved....

Am intriged about bath use... any more details there Mistle?

it was public baths - from my skim reading it would appear that more men used them than women and there were at least 2 different types of bath available. Later on I saw a comment about a company offering to fit 'hair cream' dispensers so that you could put money in and get an application of hair cream!!!! This is a northern town that had a mine at the time which might explain this somewhat...

Public baths were quite common in towns - I am now wracking my brain for the autobiography were the bloke talks about having a penny for the bath, and how the woman running it had the key for the taps and the temperature she did the bath was how you got it - boiling or freezing. They were often part of a swimming pool or turkish baths complex, like Victoria Baths in Manchester.

Am catching up from todays posts - have been out and about and am knackered

CMot re bath temp... that reminds me of our honeymoon - we stayed in UK to avoid me having to panic about tickets and passports etc - I left all the arrangements to dh. He found was was, effectively, a tiny stately home for the two of us - self catering () - it was a hunting lodge. Downstairs there was a bedroom and the bathroom. Upstairs there was a lovely large living room (with silk wall hangings instead of wallpaper), with an alcove off it with a double bed, and a small galley kitchen through the only other doorway. The plumbing was rather though, and we discovered that, if you wanted a bath, the best thing to do was to put the plug in and run both hot and cold as fast as possible - otherwise it got too hot (in fact, even with that it was almost too hot for me and if I am having baths I like them to be hot) - and we had to get used to doing our teeth using hot water as the cold was coming out hot. However, it was also connected to the toilet. At one stage in the holiday, the toilet decided that it wasn't going to stop filling up very gently - the peculiar thing about this was that, as the cold water was actually hot, you got a sauna if you sat there too long! And I also managed to pin point where they needed to do some more death watch beetle treatment!!!

Public baths were one of the great victorian public health initiatives. Often but not always found with an attached swimming pool. I have memory of seeing some once I did go to Victorian or Edwardian pool for school swimming lessons so I guess it was there. A row of small brown tiled rooms each containing a bath tub. Maybe 6 rooms.
AFAIK one paid a small sum and was assigned a room/ tub and a bath worth of water was supplied. Towel and soap you provided yourself tho no doubt at some establishments you could hire them or buy. They were well used in London right through to the 1940s/ 50s as many houses had no bath room.
Just had a quick google and www.20thcenturylondon.org.uk/server.php?show=conInformationRecord.179 confirms what I recalled.

This is teh baths I had lessons at
www.westlondonfilmoffice.co.uk/index.php?siid=2671 Its been tarted up and modernised since my school days

I have tried to visit the Turkish Baths in Harrogate 3 times now - and never managed it. It's always too busy when I try to go with my friend who lives there (I only get up there once or twice a year at most now)

I think it would be quite fun though!

we know all about shared and public baths in the tea room don't we. If memory serves, Tea spent some days in the bath with Mellors - perhaps not the sharing the Victorians had in mind

I have had a Turkish bath which was the most surreal experience of my life and a bath in the public baths in Budapest. There was a Terrifying Comedy Communist Lady manning the doors who wouldn't let me wear my swimsuit