Tea Room the Ninth: I love rock and roll, put another dime in the juke box baby

[MadBadandDangerousToKnow]

Welome to the ninth incarnation of the tea room. It's been a long and eventful road, from a tea room overlooking a cathedral garden to a beachside cafe, with a diversion via a yurt. Now - voila - we are in a music lounge. We cater for all tastes and, as this is a tea room of requirement, it manages simultaneously to be many things at once. For some, it is a 70s glam rock disco with a cool boho edge - glitter balls, smoke machine and much wearing of platform shoes and eyeliner. For others, a jazz bar where mellow music is played as cocktails are served. For still others, it's a concert performance of Spem In Allium. We still have a garden, with shady parasols for the summer, and a menagerie of pets. Our membership is international.

The tea room has few rules. Everyone is welcome. But anyone visiting with the sole intention of causing hurt or shouting abuse will be ejected by Mellors, the multi-talented gardener-handyman who (it turns out) is also a guitar wizard and rock god.

Please come in.

Or banoffee pie, Mary?

I'm sorry to hear that your son is having problems with his best friend. Is today his first day back at school? There's a thread running in this topic at the moment, where someone is struggling with her own and her son's social isolation. Is there anything from your experience that you could share with her?

And you know we're always available to chat.

He's 8 at the end of the month. He is more over-exuberant rather than rough. He hurts by being over bouncy and "in your face"

His latest interests are club penguin, ben 10 and pokemon. Am not entirely sure about Warhammer, though have heard of it.

He is supposed to be going to football tonight, he wants to go, but won't join in when he gets there, just sits on the sidelines . The footie mums are so cliquey as well, I hate going!

(eats lots of cakes)

Haven't seen that other thread no...

Am also anxious because I've applied for a job, I'm really really really hoping to get an interview, but haven't heard. Closing date was last Friday. ARGH!

thanks

fingers crossed for you Mary.
I have the perfect comfort food - cheesecake. A really thick, creamy lovely one with some sort of fruity jus. Yum - have a large slice.

Sounds good - offers a tub of rocky road chocolate clusters round...

Hello all,
Mary Nice to see you again. I've go tmy fingers crossed for you for your job application. I also hope football went better than expected.

Tea I sympathise greatly for your dilemma. I also think a solo visit (money permitting) in the early days, followed by a more substantial trip with Milk later on might be a way round it for you. Faced with the prospect of haing both my mum and MIL as guests for the first couple of weeks (and my mum for nearly two months) after DD is born, I can also sympathise with your sister. I feel a little overwhelmed by it all; because it feels like control of the whole thing is being taken from me and put in the hands of said female relations. (Who are lovely, but are of the interfering, I know best brigade). I will grin and bear it, because neither mum nor MIL will not get to see gd much because of the distance, and because my mum has been so ill in the last couple of years that it's hard to begrudge her staying for a long time (although I know by the end of a fortnight I will be wishing her at home; I mean I left home asap as an adolescent because I couldn't live with her anymore). I think I shall cope mainly because this is the second one and I don't feel quite as clueless as I did last time. Being clueless tends to make you anxious and unsure about yourself and very sensitive to advice (which you can only hear as criticism). Perhaps your sis is trying to protect herself from that too...? After all you are the one with the experience?

MaryBS - rocky road chocolate clusters are very welcome here... I went on your profile to see a picture of your son I find situations easier to imagine with a photo... but I got a picture of some fish... which really confused my thought process!!! Ha ha ha!!!

My first thought is be careful wih 'best friends'. I would widden his social group - invite several people one at a time at several diferent times to do some super cool thing with him - go-carting, cinema, seeing any sports event you can think of all seem to go down well with eight year olds and give the organiser (your son) real status amongst his peers! Give him the line "I was thinking of trying .................. at the weekend. Do you fancy coming along too?" to use. At eight it is good coming from him rather than the Mums sorting it.

By the way going to fooball is a good idea - boys who are good at footy are mini heros at school!!! - which is a good thing to be when you are eight!

THANK YOU EVERYONE for your comments re my problem xxxx...

I am going to call my sister tonight and suggest a first visit sans Milk and if she still says no I am teaching myself to feel less personal about it since hearing some of your stories. Perhaps I am just one body too many with potentially conflicting ideas and living the furthest away the easiest to ask to kindly stay away!

T42 - is your sisters DP going to be on parental leave for the first few weeks? If so, I kinda see why waiting till 3 wks for the next dollop of family company. gives them a little while to get it as a new 3 person family, then DP goes back to work, she has a week of " I'm doing this on my own" and then , volia , you arrive to be a grown up chat partner and bring lovley neice to giggle over while road testing pushchair to park etc.
Try not to stress and "read to much " into her 3 week request. that is still pretty new born and teeny tiny.

Mary- sympathy for your pain on your sons behalf. here hoping he gets back into the school groove. Is Pokemon card trading STILL popular, or maybe it one of those things that comes around again. Comfort food offering - fresh baked bread, still warm and nicely crusty, with butter and jam.

righto- off to kiss by night night. then off to collect freecyclings.

Ooh, what freecyclings? Our freecycle moves so fast that you have to respond within a nanosecond to grab anything.

Mary - Good luck with the job application. Feel free to come and offload here, if ever you need to. There's always tea and cake (and usually booze too) on offer, especially now that term is starting and everyone's coming back from their holidays.

I don't know whether anyone here has strong views (or any views at all) about the MN column in the Daily Mail, but MNHQ is running a poll and I think we should all exercise our hard-won democratic right and vote.

I'm enjoying a glass of prosecco. Would anyone else like one?

I have been at the whole DM thing...

Yes, but have you voted, jacksmama? It's an international mandate, you know.

madbad - may I be so brash as to ask you to twirl? - That new name suits you so very very well!!!

I bring you, my freecylings. to whit, one bookcase, and a cast iron base for a garden sun shade thing.
I was tad suprised to get both as they are teh only things I've tried for recently. teh base was local to here, and I think that why I got it. book case was local to the friend we were visiting this morning, so not much extra petrol used either.

Oh sorry MadBad, yes I did vote.

Well, I definitely just voted in that DM poll, but I'm not entirely sure what for - the kitten pressed a button.

This is my new name, designed to make me and my posts unattractive to the Daily Mail as I don't want to see my witless ramblings insightful comments reprinted in any newspaper. I've been contemplating changing ever since the furore over the column started but, now that I've voted, I think I'll change back pretty soon. (And besides, I don't want to upset anyone who does read tabloids. Free country, free press, after all).

Excellent freecyclings, UniS.

that universal suffrage now includes kittens.

now if only someone wants to get rid of some 2x4 timber on freecycle... I could sort out storage in the garage for very little too. Think I will have to buy teh rawlbolts tho. not much on tonight, just lots of wants boringly.
I do have another possible sourse of timber coming up tho, as November gets near, I shall be keeping an eye on teh wood pile for teh bonfire.

It made a change from the kittens hitting F1 and bringing up eleven million Firefox help windows. Or just cutting to the chase and switching the laptop off.

Am laughing at the interactive kittens!

Have done the poll and added my mite to the conversation; not sure any of it will do any good though as the DM is a scurrilous rag that cares nothing for anyone. I keep wanting to change my name as well but won't because I like mine too much! Someone else suggested I could now change it to Aussiewitch but I prefer what I have, tbh

Catita, I'd love to do all that for him, but finances at the moment are such that it isn't possible. My socials skills in asking aren't the best, neither are Robbie's in inviting people. Plus his interests aren't that wide. And we have a daughter too to consider, and she needs to be given equal attention. Sorry, it sounds like all I am doing is making excuses , but it IS stuff I've thought about, just found it hard to put it into practice.

This weekend we are going to a "picnic in the park", which is a local event with local bands, culminating in fireworks. If the weather holds off, it should be good...

UniS - I think pokemon cards are still popular, DS likes the Club Penguin cards at the moment, as does DD.

Thumb, that's nothing, about a week okay (so when he was considerably younger) Sausage opened a new Firefox tab, navigated to Google, executed a search, and opened a pdf document about white dwarves.

So when the news flash pops up telling us all that the world has been taken over by a small tuxedo cat who has announced he is no longer to be known as 'Sausage', but something more dignified ... well, sorry about that. But I'm sure he'll do a good job.

That's nothing! We had a cat, long deceased now, who wrote us messages on the keyboard. The first time was to tell us his new name change, a la MadBad; he wrote kldkljgkljfFREDdflkj, then the next message was obviously just too much; he wrote oh shi and then never communicated again.

very funny, RS!

Anyone for soup and some more of that crusty bread?

Oops.