Tea room the Eighth - sun, sea, sangria, and perhaps a sandy Mellors

[DontCallMeBaby]

Greetings, welcome to the eighth incarnation of the tearoom.

The tearoom has been, and will be again, a virtual safe haven for anyone up for rather random chat and a comprehensive range of virtual snacks. Nothing in the tearoom will make you fat, or drunk (unless you want it to) or cause an allergic reaction.

The new tearoom location is a beautiful beachside cafe (no need for factor 50, the virtual sun will just lightly tan you, bring out your freckles or simply warm your skin, as you prefer) with a range of garden swings, hammocks, sunloungers, deckchairs etc (as well as a rather incongruous, but well-loved, chaise longue). For those in need of sanctuary, we have managed to fashion a new priesthole out of woven grasses.

Our fellow residents include Mellors the rugged gardener of few-but-well-chosen words, the naked mohawk babies, a coterie of bishops, various domestic pets, and a selection of others. On the human side, all are welcome - while we live in the One Child topic some regulars have more than one, and we are welcome all (except people who put their heads on one side and tell those of us with one child that it's just not fair to have only one child).

Please help yourself to a glass of Champagne and a canape on the way in ...

just another thought. The internet ain;t where it was a few years back. there are now sooo many places people post all kinds of detail that netiquette (sp??) gets forgotten or never known about.
It used to be said that you should not post anything you would not put on a postcard.

Now I will happily talk about poo in washing machines on a postcard.. so where are my limits? not sure. but its a thought that makes me sit on my hands rather than post on a number of threads.

That's very kind, CurlyWurlyGirly. We can drink Casino Kir Royale. Cheers!

But I don't think there's any need for you to clarify (or apologise for) anything. I think I probably made a muppet of myself too and continue to do so - Ms Piggy has always been my role model - at first because I didn't know what MN etiquette was and then because, once I did know, I decided not to comply with some aspects of it (ie not posting on anything significant until you've served your time).

I wasn't confused by what you said, but UniS's post has given me a lot of food for thought because she obviously sees things differently from me.

Did someone say Kir Royale???? 

And have I told you that I discovered that gin takes off the sweetness of casis extremely well 

kir royale, very upmarket!how lovely.
I'm a bit of an open mouth then engage brain person, not always a good thing.
Anyway, I shall toddle up my stairs in RL and kick back and relax on my wicker chaise lounge with an irish coffee in the lovely tearoom...liqour coffee and after eights anyone? Night night, .

Ooops. Very slow and had missed UniS's last two posts.

Phew. I'm glad you were thinking of trolls, UniS, rather than bona fide customers. Your technique for dealing with them is (I dare to say) spot-on.

And that's an interesting thing about the postcard. I am always very aware that this is going out into the ether and so accessible to anyone, but I've always trusted that it is anonymous. My rule of thumb is not to post anything I'd be ashamed to put my name to.

And as for the movie. Perhaps we could deal with the last week by having a dissolve and then, when things come back into focus, the action has been moved on by a week. Or even more.

Cin, cin!

Marvellous bunting, Mistle!

I must try the gin/cassis combo but, until then, this kir royale that CurlyWurlyGirly brought the ingredients for is delicious.

And I'm glad the chocolate brownies went down well

Hallo you all! I haven't been able to get on line all evening so have had to work instead !

but glad to see you, particularly a vey welcome Curly Wurly!!!

Yes, UniS postcard is a good rule of thumb and yes, MadBad remembering we can all be read by anyone it important, but I hope we can be lost in the internet detritous without too much difficulty

Glad I missed the poo chat. DaisyBoy did a HUGE HONKER in his trousers on his way to bed.... and I wouldn't have wanted to share that with you all

Mwah Mwah to you all and bottoms up - gin at last!

Ermm... but Daisy... you did just sharethat with us all!!

And I have to admit that I don't understand UniS's post about hiding in priest holes and pushing people out the other side at all... [dim emoticon] I'd be grateful if someone enlightened me in plain English as I don't seem capable of understanding analogies right now [feeling really thick emoticon]. Unless you think it's not important, but I would hate to violate any kind of MNetiquette.

On the other hand, that might be attributable to the RL shakes: tonight makes TWICE, in the SAME week, that I've heard Jackbaby's head hit the tile floor as he fell. AAAARRRRGHHHHHH!!! I am the worst mother in my corner of the world!!! He climbed up on an IKEA shoe rack. It's 10" high, and as I was looking, he fell off it backwards. Monday he slipped on my wet kitchen floor and smacked his head on the tile. I am going to hear that sound in my nightmares from now on.

morning all! I had to give up on t'internet last night cos MN was buggering around and I couldn't get on it for a WHOLE HOUR! And then I fell asleep in the middle of a web sudoku so decided to give up.

Re. the welcoming thing - I for one have never had a problem on this thread - sometimes a post doesn't get picked up on by other posters, but mostly they do. Whereas when I went onto the 40+ mums thread I needn't have bothered my arse - I was soundly ignored. Our twilight zone thread is also all-inclusive but again it tends to be a few die-hard regulars who stick to it, whilst newcomers wander in and sometimes wander out again when it all gets too surreal for them.

JM - that baby-head-hitting-something-hard is just the worst noise (so far) isn't it? I remember the first time it happened - ugh! Now it's slightly less traumatic as it happens pretty much weekly - miniThumb has ishoos about throwing himself backwards which frequenly result in a head bang.

Daisy & MT - I wasn't ignoring your requests for more info on the baby sunscreen/window sunning, I just need some time to check into it a bit more - there I was happily blathering on about melanin and realised I wasn't sure of my ground so had to delete the post before I sent it and meant to go off and check, then got heavily sidetracked by RL and then last night's ishoos with the internet intervened. So if I get the chance today, I will check my info and post it for you both.

I think MJ's teacher probably has the same nightmare - but with whole storage unit coming down on top of MJ from about 3' (so you just wait... )

I'm very glad we seem to be back on a fairly even keel.

If you wrote much of what is here down on a postcard I think there would be a lot of [puzzlement] the other end.

And MJ thinks farting in the bath is hysterically funny - which just encourages the whole thing to happen again

Talking about keel - has anyone seen that nice sailing boat that Mellors has swum out to - anyone fancy a trip around the shore?

oooh, saaaaiiilling! Lovely - rather like the short cut-offs that Mellors has donned, and that rather tight sailing shirt....

I have to say, I think this is the most raunchy tearoom so far!

Does that mean Justa and I will have to go to confession for thinking lustful thoughts? Maybe one of those bishops can help out?

MaryBS - only you and your conscience know whether or not you need to confess your lust... but by all means ask the bishops (you never know, they might be having the same problem!)

Seems I shared teh trouble with accesing MN lastnight. sorry for wondering off like that Jacks mama. Don;t worry about my analogies, I don;t feel like explaining them as I'm not sure they will hold all that well. Just put them down to too much time on my hands for introspection.

And not enough mellors to watch at the time.
good to see its sunny here at the beach cafe.
Is that donk giving rides on teh beach or just another seaside donkey. wonder if scarborough still has beach donkeys.

Boy is sitll asleep... hes been pretty good all weeek, waking up or being woken at 8-8.30ish, but he was cream crackered last evening so I'm leaving him to sleep today. nearly 11am so far ... have writenb off going to toodler group with him, we "should" make our 2pm play date :-) maybe having been into town to collect his shoes ( being stretched again) first.

justa, if God didn't want you to, He wouldn't have provided either the nice young men or the facility to see them, so I think you must be right!

no probs, justa

Must be hot choc o'clock, I reckon...

breakfast time here. Boy has woken up. 11.55 am just a 16.5 hour night for him.

Good day, all (no longer morning in school terms). Would like to share broad bean and parsely soup with any takers, which I will be having, especially if a lewd roll could be procured.

I know I frequently come in here and moan about real life, but I get so impotently furious that I have to tell someone or explode. Today I came in to find that, in the run up to our next inspection in two weeks, my Head Teacher has left me a written memo to say that she is shocked about how poor is the pre-inspection form which I e-mailed her, how badly filled in and generally inadequate. She wrote it with me!!!!!!!!!!! I was basically taking dictation (I thought). Now all failures will be down to me.

In my DH's college, the Driector attempted the same tactic, e-mailing all his staff the week before to say that he was shocked at low standards, poor displays, shoddy paperwork, etc. As leader, shouldn't he have spotted this a bit earlier? I don't think this 'passing the buck' technique worked for him - early retirement ensued and the college was taken over by a more successful one, but my HT is cunning and sneaky very good at PR and will probably get away with it.

Could we maybe arrange for the NMB's to redesign her office? Could Mellors redesign her ?

RS - that is one of the reasons for having a tearoom. That's what friends (in a tearoom) are for - listening to rants and trying to either offer a shoulder (for support or wailing) or helpful suggestions

It sounds to me as though you should be 'covering your back' more - I have been in a similar situation before. This means that, when you email her with something, the accompanying email says something like 'thank you so much for discussing the form with me, I found our meeting/talk about it and your suggestions very helpful - I have finished typing it up in the form and with the content that we discussed.'

So a bit of licking - but also with an edge behind it (ie you'd better not blame me for any of this as its what you suggested...)

Its also quite good sending email confirmations of what you have just had a meeting about, setting the main agreed points. (We agreed that I would do x by y, but that this task would be carried out by someone else.... etc). Yes, it means that you spend an extra few minutes doing this, but, if there is trouble later on, you'll be able to go back to that email and show them that this was what was agreed - and that they haven't responded to that email so therefore you must have got your end of the stick right.

Its also a form of bullying of course...

MJ was meant to be on a sponsored walk today - but I am assuming that it has been postponed - whilst it was just drizzling when we left this morning, its been pouring for ages. Won't have to water the garden though....

Soup sounds wonderful - and MJ has been baking again. I think that these were boats, but I'm not sure you would notice much difference between them and the rockets

Don't have time for a properly thought-out or worded post right now but, Racing, I think Mistle's suggestion is excellent.

Even at this late stage, I might be tempted to send back a note on similar lines, saying that you found your brainstorming session very helpful and had thought that your pre-inspection form encapsulated what you had agreed then and are surprised and disappointed now, x days/weeks after you first gave it to her, to learn that she thinks differently. Even more deviously, you could perhaps say that the pre-inspection form encapsulated what you had agreed at your meeting on [date], but she has clearly changed her mind since then so would she be kind enough to set out for you what her new priorities/objectives/strategies are, as clearly they're different from the ones you discussed and have not been communicated in any memo/staff meeting/whatever method of communication she (mis)uses.

And, yes, keep a log of all this sort of stuff. If you are being bullied you need to keep evidence, if only for your peace of mind.

Yes, confirm everything in writing, that way there is no doubt about what has been said/done and you've got an electronic/paper trail. I've often used emails like "Following our recent telephone conversation, I just want to record what was said and agreed...etc". I'm a great believer in making sure that everyone sings from the same hymn sheet (Bishops take note!!!)