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.

CMOT and Phil the Greek Prince Phillip.... I know nuuurssssing ovv dis!!!!!!! DO TELL...

I feel to balance things up a bit I should mention that my dds birth was really stress free and even nice... it saddens me to read about all the horror stories above.

White Stuff dresses look a bit incy wincy and short to me . Are they in the flesh?

bunny - I have set up a ballot box for us to have a vote on the day off or go to work question...

I vote YES to taking a day off!!!!!!!!!!!!

Gymbunny - I do love clothes shopping but only when I can go on my own, with no whingeing junior style adviser who wants me to buy anything pink and sparkly. White Stuff do go quite large - or so somebody told me . What will you be doing on your wild night out in the smoke?

Very interesting about Carka Bruni, Tea. As I have little idea of what's going on in British pop, I buy weird stuff in France and so have the lovely Ms Bruni on my iPod. And Francoise Hardy.

Madbad - We have some very lovely friends who live in south London so central is best for us to meet. The two men work together in town so us wives just turn up, having inevitably arranged the date. The venue is a mystery to me, having left it to the boys to arrange we are still in the dark. Dinner and drinks somewhere followed by a stagger to the tube in high heels. Can't wait . Proper babysitter booked and everything, a snip at £7 an hour

Am getting more and more likely to take tomorrow off....

Good evening all. Caught up on a couple of pages only, otherwise would never get round to planning lessons for tomorrow.

Fingers crossed for Catita's mum and for all going well in Catita's tum.

By the sound of it Wriggle was one of the few babies who might have survived in other parts of the world, although, since she was fed breast milk by tube for the first four weeks, maybe not. I don't know how they get round that problem in places with fewer hospitals and equipment. But that was her only problem; being too premature to suck (properly - she did try).

I must have the commisteration scooner of bolly for buying the most expensive mattress known to man while under the influence of imbalanced hormones.

It soon became clear that Wriggle was going to have to sleep with us if I was not going to spontaneously implode. At the time we had two single mattresses pushed together and I was terrified that Wriggle (who only weighed 5 pounds) might disappear down the gap. I had also read every scare story about cot death being caused by mattress fumes, so paid nearly £1000 for an organic sheeps' wool mattress from Wales.

I love White Stuff clothes (although I've never been able to afford any) but what I really want is the gnome poster they have in the window for my sitting room wall ... oh look - we've got one in the tea room!

I've just stumbled across a link to your thread Jacksmam has been moonlighting on the multiples threads for "researching" purposes and left a trail to here....

Blimey, it's posh here, innit? I had no idea such havens of rest and sophistication existed in the life of real mums.

oh dear, sorry, I didn't mean to sound like a horror story. it was all pretty calm really. Think teh midwife was a bit surprised at our reaction of " OK, back to plan A" when section was recommended. As I have a wonky pelvis it was always in back of my minds as a possibility...

I'm knackered and I'd love a cake and some bolly. or IKILCB for short.

Place bets now, will I have to drive 3 hours each way for work tomorrow or will teh job be cancelled, as performer has a cold.... Think I'll take early night just in case.

Racing - I heart the idea of an organic wool mattress. I wonder whether Daisy's Mr Mattress stocks them.

You are quite right about the White Stuff gnomes - our local branch, just over the border in yummy mummy territory, has a window full of gnomes, not just posters of gnomes. I covet them. We had an ironic post-modern gnome in the garden, but sadly I trod on him and Norris Gnome was gnome no more. All my White Stuff stuff comes from their sales - at the end of the sale, the prices are very reasonable (I think the yummy mummies must all be very thin as they still have a reasonable selection in my, ahem, ample size).

Tea - On me, White Stuff dresses are demurely below the knee, although not the calf length off which I've only just weaned myself. But I am somewhat short of stature so on a taller person they may be above the knee. However, I remember from a photo of you at a wedding that you have enviable pins, so what's the problem?

Gymbunny - Can you spare a day off work? If so, go for it! The retail sector needs us.

Do we have any gnomes in the tea room garden? Maybe down by the haha? Dressed in clerical garb?

Evening ladies.

I'm sitting having a RL pinot, lovely! I had to Google what a Kindle was (have dropped off planet technology wise since having DD) but it sounds fab!
Am just watching "Micromen" and playing spot the places we know, ooo we live there (Cambridge)
White Stuff is indeed fab. Expensive. But it's lovely stuff and being 5ft 9 with a muffin top, hides said muffin top very well under tops.

Madbad: bought 2 tops, 1 jumper and a dress, but dress going back, it's nice but not £40 nice.

Gymbunny: oooo I'm jealous, I remember the days of staggering to the tube in heels. Actually, no I don't I was usually too drunk to remember that

Hi estar .. G&T crowd? is that as in gin and tonic, if so well observed on your fleeting vist. Mums of onelies and not so onelies are all welcome so long as they like cake and don;t upset teh neighbours.

Oh , and can read my typing.

Maybe I should pay a vist to white stuff when I'm in teh city and childless. They have gnomes in teh window.
Next but one village has had a bunch of gnomes turn up. they appeared in a boggy bit of the "village green" , have been taken to a foster home and advertised in local press in the hope that some one will claim them.

Ooh, Estar. Welcome. I think you win the certificate for most sprogged-up person ever to visit the tea room. Would you like a glass of (virtual and therefore harmless and in fact positively beneficial) Bolly to take with you? Or would you like to rest a while on our distressed chintz sofa? We have cashmere blankets and patchwork cushions. And a footstool in case of swollen ankles.

Unis - Three hours each way? Puts my commuting gripes into perspective.

Orangehaze - You live in Cambridge? In my fantasy life I live in Cambridge. I sooooo want to move there.

Madbad, do explain your fantasy life! Would you be a Don and live in a large Victorian Villa and punt to work?? (no, I still don't know what a Don is and I've lived here 10 years) It is lovely, so lovely that we live about 10 miles out of Cambridge as we aren't a)minted b)royalty c)mortgaged up to the eyeballs.

Estar, will you REALLY have 5 kids!!!?? Wow, I'm impressed indeed! How do you do it!!? I hardly have time to go to the loo on my own with 1!!

orangehaze, I live about 15 miles north of Cambridge!

Mary BS, no way!? I'm in Swavesey (half way between Cams and Huntingdon)
((please anyone out there who is a troll/stalker, don't hunt me down, I'm a good girl I am))
Where are you?

Ooo, thankyou

I didn't go to the loo between the hours of nine and five for about eighteen months. Luckily, DH worked nearby so as soon as he was home I would go and relieve myself. Yes, I had one (can't remember what that was like now, seems like another universe) then twins 20 months later so any kind of order or sane-ness went out of the window anyway - the addition of two more isn't really that bad

Seems amazing to me that you manage to talk about anything other than children on here. As we, on the multiples thread by very definition all have more than one, the rest of life seems like a distant memory now.

Orangehaze - I'm in Sutton (I'm not a stalker, are you? )

Hi Estar, Ooooo, as I'm a sad git, I've just checked out your profile

OMG, you are amazing! How do you do it!? Your photos look so happy and fun and relaxed. I'm sure if I had 4 I'd be a gibbering wreck. (also liked your interest in womens' low self esteem/image, a subject I'm also very interested in)

anyway, welcome. I'm a newbie myself and have found the tearoom gals quite lovely.

x

Its not 3 hours each way every day. The job I have accepted for tomorrow IS to drive a load of kit to a venue, set it up, wait till end of gig, take it down and drive it back to base.

I have fond menmories of Morcombe. and heysham ( bizarrly) used to walk out there with friends from Lancaster on summer sunday afternoons. One summer we did the walk across teh bay, that was muddy.

sniff sniff... I smell the second tearoom meet up taking place in Cambridge...
yipppppeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!!!!

estar - I am glad you stayed a bit. Please do stay some more. You are nice!!!

Can I ask you a question about having 5 children please....

My dd sort of skips, daydreams, lays down in the road, demands a shoulder carry and then suddenly swings round my head to get down and runs at one hundred miles an hour down the street often in the direction we were coming from not going to. Do any/some/all of your children do this? If so how do you get from A to B in time...??? Or if no - what did you do to stop them...

[awe and wonder emotion]

I'm a blimmin' eejit and have been thread-starting on AIBU. I don't know what possessed me. I think I panicked about a situtation! But I feel all grown-up now. This is just to warn you all of this, so that you realise that I really am mad, bad and dangerous to know, regardless of whether the same traits may be reflected in anyone else's nickname.

But this is probably a better place to be. For here, there is bolly!

Yay for return of lost kitties!

Sleepy and off to mat in corner now... toodle-pip!

Ooops.

And I wanted to say Respect to the Cambridgeshire massive. In my fantasy life, I would still be young enough to do a PhD in Cambridge and then devote myself to The Life Of The Mind. Plan B is that I force encourage MadBadBaby to go there and then follow her around on my retro bicycle. I hadn't really thought about housing, but if we can't live in college then I suppose a Victorian villa might just do!

Bolly please. I am still braindead. Apologies for not engaging fully