Tea Room the Tenth: Tea and cake and rock and roll

[MadBadandDangerousToKnow]

Welcome back to the tea room.

In the search for the perfect venue, we have now decamped to a rambling country estate. The once-decaying castle, now restored, is a boutique hotel, popular with rock and roll gentry and visiting bishops, and the tea room (which never closes) is located in a tastefully converted barn. The charming garden contains a duck pond and ends in a haha. We need the haha, of course, to stop the bison trampling the herbaceous borders. Mellors the gardener is, as ever, in charge of the grounds.

Please come and join us for a celebratory drink.

nice new name NQGB. Hi LT welcome in, feet in mouth very welcome , you had the grace to apologise.

Now I may be allowed to type in peace, DH is reading bed time book to boy. A junior non fiction work on Leisure centres! its a boy thing I believe, hes also having read to him a junior "history of cars".

I love having one child, watching friends with more than 1, I'm of the opinion that I am able to do( and enjoy doing) more stuff with him as I don't have to consider another childs needs. We were able to spend a chunk of this afternoon making christmas cards, exploring ink stamping and hole punching and discussing which way up cards "go". No need to clock watch for a school run, or fire fight a littly determined to eat the craft stuff.
I don't want to tow 2 kids behind my bike and I don't want to use a car any more than I do already. I can't earn enough doing the work I like to pay for childcare for 2.
So maybe these are all somewhat ME Me and money related reasons but there we go, I thought I would like to have one child, and I have one child and I'm very happy with that.

This evenings project will be - making Teddy bear headbands for teh toddlers teddy bear picnic, I made a prototype at Toddlers this morning, now to get on and cut out 20 of teh things. Assuming teh card has un curled enough to cut.
Oh, and 3 pack lunches to make, tomorrows a family car share all out teh door at 8am morning, gotta be organised to make it work. We don;t "do" mornings very well in this house.

Yes, male toddlers (Kittenito is 21 mo) seem to be the kings of destruction. He might love his bunny to bits and not go anywhere without him (washing it is nightmare, and boy does it need washed every week), but he has no qualms about using it to bash his other toys, or as a seat/pillow etc etc.
He loves cars too, playing crashing them into one another. Ditto the toy plane his grandma got him. I'm thiking of a trainset for christmas as I have a feeling that train - crashing will be right up his street.

Wow! I've got vertigo and travel sickness just trying to keep up!

A very warm welcome from me to Littletortie. It's always good when our raiding parties on other threads are successful and we bring back a few captives new people. It was once suggested that this thread is like the Hotel California - you can check out any time you want, but you can never leave.

Great new name, gymbunny. I too have some surplus avoirdupois but have just spent an hour watching MadBadBaby exercising - does that count?

Now, where's that Bolly?

Thats another good thing about the tandem, I am finally getting some cycling in at my speed and up hills. so I'm having to put some effort in again. riding with boy on his bike has been V slow and local. Today we did a 6 mile round trip to the butcher. Maybe I'll shift some of the spare tyre I seem to have gained since having boy.

Madbad, I'm not sure if watching Madbadbaby counts, BUT I am pretty convinced that watching Mellors doing exercise, especially if we can get him to adopt the Greek/roman classical athlete approach (ie no clothes but lots of olive oil)

just thinking about it.

littletortie, don't feel bad, it is what it is
ginbunny, now there's an idea.
All this talking about booze is making me fancy a glass of wine later....
We didn't have any cliques thankfully, they are generally all nice enough, and some are even very nice.

Catita! Stop thinking about Mellors Greek wrestling now or we will have to convert the jacuzzi into a birthing pool.

Hope you washed your olive oil off, MadBad, otherwise in your nakedness, you'll get it all over the chintz!

Yes, olive oil in chinz v bad.

Maybe need one of those plastic inflatable sofas for when greek wrestling occurs, in the style of friends dh who bought her one in the £ shop for her home birth so he could 'hose it down'

Gymbunny- I need a bit of that zen. Have had a lot of the 'are you having anymore?' question just lately and my response is actually getting worse. I blush, shake, gibber. An example of a shit answer to this is 'no- I'm going on holiday' to which the response was 'what has that got to do with having more kids?' to which I completely broke down and said 'its a 2 week holiday- you cant take a baby!!' Oh the shame!!!!

Oh and who the hell is Mellors????

why oh why do people ask such daft and nosy questions?

I have a range of rehearsed answers, ranging from 'maybe one day' to 'yes we'd love another' to 'no we're happy with our family as it is'.

Most close friends and a few newer friends know about our mc so have usually a bit more sensitivity.

Wanted to say, too, that I haven't yet pinpointed whether the pushiest/angstiest mums at school are the mums of one or not. Come to think of it, the only one with whom I've had a conversation about whether the children are being sufficiently stretched has more than one child. But, of course, that may have nothing to do with it.

I am ridiculously obsessed with academic achievement but also with not appearing to be the archetypal pushy parent so run a mile from any such discussion.

He was the gardener (I think) in Lady Chatterly's Lover, in fact he was the lover. Haven't read it though so I'm maybe wrong. Got put off by Sons and Lovers for A levels.

MBAD I am similar in that I am especially conscious to not seem like pushy parent and wonder if mums of Onlies are conscious of people thinking 'God she's so precious about her child, well she would be as she's only got the one'

When in fact we know our kids are better than everyone elses but don't feel the need to publicise it

Littletortie - Mellors is the gardener. We have a vast garden here with lawns and a ha-ha, so have to employ a gardener.

Part of the magic of the tea room is that Mellors looks different, according to who is looking at him. When I look at Mellors, especially when he has dressed up for one of our cocktail evenings, this is what I see. Because some of us (OK, well, just me) are hormonal old biddies, there is always a certain frisson when Mellors is in the tea room.

I never tried it, but some people have reported success with embarrassing people into stopping their intrusive questions: "Another child? What? With my fallopian tubes/shredded fanjo/etc?" A risky strategy but it might work, especially if you look as if you might show them a photo.

Aargh! Slow poster again and missed several threads.

MaryBS - It's not me who's naked. Perish the thought. It's Mellors, and even then only in Catita's fevered imagination!

Gymbunny - Yes, Mellors came to us from an employer somewhere in the Midlands. He has always been rather vague and non-committal about why he left that job, but I understood that his main duties were as a gamekeeper.

It's good to meet a kindred spirit! I suppose part of the picture is that our children spend more of their time (proportionately) with adults and so are likely to have a large vocabulary. And we have more time to read them stories than if there were a sibling on the scene. And in any event I am secure in the knowledge that my child is a genius and will one day win a Nobel Prize.

glad I missed the oiled up wrestling bout earlier! It would explain why teh decking is all greasy tho. nearly slipped on my way in. I'll just gio and put some sawdust down. else Amber will be skidding in here with another elf and safty notice.

I can;'t decide quite how mellors looks, some days he has curly hair ( like a young Alan Davies) some days short and straight ( bit like Seth Lakeman).

My I just have proud mummy moment about Boys christmas cards, they actually look quite reasonable this year*. which is more than I can say for his "Thomas" iced cakes , blue iceing, red goo and train shaped sprinkles! Grim tasting cakes too, Greens packet cakes are truely bad.

• my strategy of giving him christmasy stickers and a plain card to decorate may have something to do with that of course. Not for nothing did I buy up a load of Christmas sticker in the sales last spring.

I must reiterate that there was no nude wrestling and no olive oil. Catita was (ahem) sharing her fantasy with us. So, no need for sawdust or one of Amber's legendary elf and safety notices. And Mary's alb is quite safe.

so whose footprints WERE they on teh decking?? My money is still on Mellors size 12s, but whose were the smaller ones???

And before you ask, no it wasn;t me, no body saw me and its not true about the noodles.

Have regretfully decided to leave out the chicken now residing in the hedge. I suppose ex-guinea pig should also not be included?

Uni, why are you making Christmas cards in October????????

hello! can i come in? I'm new here and the one that left the stream of consciousness ramble last night... so the tea becomes bolly in the evenings? I like that! been reading over the last lot on here. Like your new name gymbunny! i too need to name change but can't think of an alternative right now, hello to other new one tortie and everyone else!

Greetings, Linserella! Would you like a glass of Bolly? We also have wine, scotch (a rather good single malt) and gin. And soft drinks for anyone who's on the wagon.

I liked your stream of consciousness. Some might say that this whole thread is an exercise in creative writing!