Spoons and forks

We have a 'drawing room', otherwise called the den. It's a lean-to built onto the side of the house where DH and DD go to draw and paint. It also houses the bikes, a motley collection of chairs, our archery equipment, and my shredder. It has a built-in bunk high in the roof that is big enough for three people (four if they're small), and a small wood-burning stove in one corner.

Dh likes to call it the studio! [haha]

Thanks for that information about the difference between pudding and dessert, absent, I didn't know that!

Helooo as the orginal poster of this thread have to say I love the way things wander off at a tangent , it"s great !!

Ah! I could call one of our rooms the morning room as it is light & sunny(?) and is lovely to sit an read in in the day. The other room is darker, has the TV and we use it in the evening. Maybe a day /morning room and the TV room would sort us out!

I've always wanted to live somewhere with a boot room.Anagram The morning room is the room where the lady of the house (not Hyacinth Bucket) sat in the morning to write letters and invitations and to discuss the days meals with the cook.

In the house where I spent my very early childhood, we had a 'morning room'. What was that?

We get very confused with front room/back room so maybe ought to give the rooms specific names e.g sitting room & drawing room !! When we moved here the front door opened onto the back garden and the back door onto the entrance drive. We have subsequently moved the front door & porch to where the entrance drive is and put an extension where it used to be & so turned the house back to front! When referring to the rooms OH still calls the rooms front/back according to original organisation..I am using current organisation..we waste time looking for things in the wrong rooms all the time!Very

I don't have a front room,or a back room, I have a through room! Both rooms were knocked through with an open staircase.

We need a little light-hearted banter to balance out the seriousness of what's going on in our personal lives, our country and the rest of the world. I love Greatnan's thread which provides a rich source of jokes (ok, I know it's everyone's thread, but credit where credit's due).

I remember my grandmother's small terraced house, which had a coal cellar, scullery, kitchen, main family room where everyone ate, cooked in the large black grate and bread oven and sat by the fire, and the parlour, which held the piano and was used for any member of the large family who was courting, or to receive the priest. It was the biggest room in the house and could have been used for so many things.

My front room is the sitting room - my mum would have liked a drawing room, but never managed it!

I serve pudding and lay my table with napkins and a pudding spoon and fork. Strictly speaking pudding and dessert are different, the latter being fruit and nuts served after the table has been cleared. However, as Americans don't talk about pudding, but desert, cookbooks (which need to sell in the US as well as in the UK because of the production costs) always talk about desserts – even if the desert in question is bread and butter pudding, brigade pudding, queen of puddings Christmas pudding, Eve's pudding, halfpay pudding, summer pudding, Queen Mab's pudding, rice pudding…

I hope that didn't sound pompous

I see your point about trivial versus serious matters Greatnan but I also think this is one of life's great dilemmas.

Should one worry about which fork to use at a posh dinner, getting exactly the right shade of Farrow and Ball for the living room or whether or not leggings are suitable for the over 50s when children are starving in Africa?

Is it okay to give to an animal charity or campaign to save the badger when money is desperately needed for cancer research?

I don't know the answer but I'm sure I shall enjoy seeing my friends for coffee later this morning in spite of all the suffering in the world.

I have a front room (for best) and a back room where I live most of the time when I'm not in bed - in the back bedroom! My granny had a drawing room, only used when the minister came round, and a parlour where we all gathered.

When my auntie moved to a brand-new 'bought house' from rented property, the front room (as she used to call it, as do I still) changed into the lounge. Auntie M was an absolute star and could always be relied upon to use the wrong words for all sorts of things eg "What a perfect vintage point it is here!" I hasten to add, that because I use 'front room' instead of lounge/sitting room/drawing room, I don't think any of the latter are wrong...oh dear, I'm getting into a tangle now! Anyway, my front room is also my bedroom when the other 'arf's snoring becomes too much!

Exactly, bags - everyone is entitled to their opinion. I suppose I just feel there are so many serious problems in the world that I have lost patience with trivial matters! Sorry if I upset you, Ariadne.

So was everyone else, ariadne. I don't think you're being got at. x

At granny's house we were convinced that there was a pudding called 'waitandsee'.

Oh dear. I was just expressing an opinion!

petallus oh yes, I remember my mother desperately trying to get us to say "toilet" and not "lav", and the more my poor old dad persisted, the more she nagged. He had a barber's shop, and she kept trying to make him call it "the salon" too.

Our favourite pud in those years of austerity was mum's chocolate pudding: Bird's custard with cocoa added with some raisins or sultanas.

I am happy to say that there were no daft rules about mentioning pudding in my childhood - mainly because there usually wasn't any! We got rice pudding after Sunday dinner (not lunch, it was the main meal of the day), and tinned peaches and Carnation milk at Sunday tea.
For several years after the war we had very little cutlery or crockery - I remember drinking tea out of a jam jar.
I have no patience with nit-picking about what to call everyday things - who cares, as long as people understand you?

If we had the temerity to ask what was for pudding at our paternal grandmother's house the answer would always be: "Wait and see," or "Never you mind." The anticipation nearly killed us - especially as the puddings were sometimes what we would secretly describe as "disgusting".

I do however find myself behaving in a similarly outrageous fashion when the grandchildren ask what's for pudding. But I temper the surprise by saying "it is definitely something you both like" which seems to satisfy their curiosity.

Incidentally, one would never ever ask a hostess at a dinner party "what's for pudding?". So early training on this little slice of etiquette probably does not go amiss.

Love that story, yoga

My sister had a similar rule when she was eating at my mum's house with her kids. So her clever eldest child took to sweetly asking grandma if there would be "sumpin' else" when she'd emptied her plate

At meal times with my DGC we are not allowed to mention pudding until everyone has finished their first course. If anyone mentions that word too early they get shouted down and told that they can't have any. Usually Grandad winds everyone up by asking what's for pudding then pretending to be horrified and upset that he can't have any So now it's always known as the "P word"

Way to go, grannylin!