The Bluestocking - where Spring has sprung and the grass is riz.

[SDTGisAnEvilWolefGenius]

Welcome all. Can the gerbils please ensure that all the Tunnocks products are safely stowed in the capacious larder, and perhaps the quokkas could be responsible for counting everyone onto the bus and back off at the new thread - many thanks!

I need a pocket somewhere on my nightwear for the morning when I’m making tea and pottering for a tissue and my phone. DH hasn’t been too well and sleeps badly, wakes rather groggy so (with my full approval!) is wont to phone me when he’s trying to come to and request a coffee.

I think Herrick's housekeeper was called Prue. I must re-read the book I have, but I think it was a long-lasting, affectionate-but-that's-all relationship.

Like William Cowper and Mrs Unwin - I don't think there was even a hint of funny stuff going on there. And Montaigne and Marie de Gournay. I like that there are examples in lit. hist. of men and women being fond of each other, platonically

Well done for having so much of Donne off by heart! I wish I had. I love his early poems - those thunderclap first lines:
'Love, any devil else but you'
'For God's sake, hold your tongue and let me love'
'Tis true, 'tis day, what though that be?'
'When by thy scorn, O Murderer, I am dead' etc

That's all I remember of most of the above, but I couldn't forget the rest of:
'Tis true, 'tis day, what though that be?
O wilt thou therefore rise from me?
Why should we rise? because 'tis light?
Did we lie down because 'twas night?'

I learned so much poetry by heart as a child and student (ah the old fashioned O and A level and university days when you always had to quote from text to support your argument and you weren’t allowed to take books into the exam room) and it continues to furnish my brain even now, though these days I can’t seem to memorise stuff the way I used to. DH finds it deeply impressive but frankly it’s like putting a needle on a track on a vinyl record. I think the longest pieces I learned by heart were Keats’ Ode to Autumn and Coleridge’s Kubla Khan, but that was purely because I liked them.

It's such a wonderful resource to have, isn't it? Waiting for delayed trains, having an MRI, unable to fall asleep - it's all there, just put the needle in the groove
My longest poems are Yeats and Shelley, and a few in Irish. All from school, and all, as in your case, remembered because I liked them.

Like you, I can't commit things to memory so well any more, it's really frustrating. That's one of the things I love Google for - all I need is a half-remembered line, and Google does what my memory can't.

Yes I can’t figure out if this is a blessing (it can pick up the half-remembered line) or a curse (makes me lazy), though I guess many people my age might struggle with memorising.

For some reason we didn’t do much poetry in secondary school - other than my O level set texts - Under Milkwood, The merchant of Venice and the sodding Nun’s Priest’s Tale - no novel though at least we were spared Hardy. But in primary we learned a few poems by heart to be dramatically recited with various solo and group lines - some of those more or less stuck and re-emerged when I had DD along with nursery songs. I keep meaning to read more poetry but probably listening to it well-read would be better.

I used to memorise A A Milne.

I can recite this by heart, including voices:

The King asked
The Queen, and
The Queen asked
The Dairymaid:
"Could we have some butter for
The Royal slice of bread?"
The Queen asked the Dairymaid,
The Dairymaid
Said, "Certainly,
I'll go and tell the cow
Now
Before she goes to bed."

The Dairymaid
She curtsied,
And went and told
The Alderney:
"Don't forget the butter for
The Royal slice of bread."
The Alderney
Said sleepily:
"You'd better tell
His Majesty
That many people nowadays
Like marmalade
Instead."

The Dairymaid
Said, "Fancy!"
And went to
Her Majesty.
She curtsied to the Queen, and
She turned a little red:
"Excuse me,
Your Majesty,
For taking of
The liberty,
But marmalade is tasty, if
It's very
Thickly
Spread."

The Queen said
"Oh!:
And went to
His Majesty:
"Talking of the butter for
The royal slice of bread,
Many people
Think that
Marmalade
Is nicer.
Would you like to try a little
Marmalade
Instead?"

The King said,
"Bother!"
And then he said,
"Oh, deary me!"
The King sobbed, "Oh, deary me!"
And went back to bed.
"Nobody,"
He whimpered,
"Could call me
A fussy man;
I only want
A little bit
Of butter for
My bread!"

The Queen said,
"There, there!"
And went to
The Dairymaid.
The Dairymaid
Said, "There, there!"
And went to the shed.
The cow said,
"There, there!
I didn't really
Mean it;
Here's milk for his porringer,
And butter for his bread."

The Queen took
The butter
And brought it to
His Majesty;
The King said,
"Butter, eh?"
And bounced out of bed.
"Nobody," he said,
As he kissed her
Tenderly,
"Nobody," he said,
As he slid down the banisters,
"Nobody,
My darling,
Could call me
A fussy man -
BUT
I do like a little bit of butter on my bread!"

My DM used to sing that one, Myrtle. She could also recite various of the Stanley Holloway monologues - Albert and the Lion, Sam and his musket etc.
Milnes Little Foxes is one that reassembled itself in my mind and became one of DDs (or maybe my) favourite bedtime songs.

Someone on LinkedIn recommended I get AI to give me a pep talk about my job search. It did a great talk and offered me a mantra. Then it suggested it create a phone wallpaper.

You know what's coming next...

It still can't spell even if it offers!

I craft space me! 😉

You are quite right about the difficulty of sharp edges and interrupted sleep.
An ultra safe engine search setting is hindering the hunt for a suitable soft pouch.

On reflection, I'll abandon the unsuccessful attempt to be a pyjama wearing sirene, and pocket a well wrapped emergency soft wholemeal barm cake instead.

That's hilarious, Myrtle!
I hear the line 'I craft space me' in a Yawkshire accent, with a comma after 'space':
'I craft space, me.' 😄

Myrtle I'd posted before I saw your I craft space, me.
That's a winner for sure!

That's exactly how I read it.

It's so funny I have actually saved it as my lock screen. It even replaces the image of DH!

It cheers me up and empowers me.

That is a truly inspiring mantra to have on your phone!

My dad could also recite Albert and the Lion (and he was a Yorkshireman too so he even had the right accent). I can also recite it - learned it from dad at a very young age! My accent is only Yorkshire if I put it on though, even though I grew up there from 5 until I went to university and never really went home for long afterwards. I was born in India, where my dad was managing a paint factory, so when the company moved him back to Hull I had the kind of Anglo-Indian accent that sounds a bit Welsh on a small white girl. My mum was a Londoner so I grew up with a kind of nondescript not-quite-RP accent, but people over here tend to describe it as 'cute', which makes me cringe a bit.

I loved your fishy betrayal @Boiledbeetle ; I was hooked! 😊

I’m a pyjama woman (obviously, being a swashbuckling pirate). The traditional kind, that always have a pocket on the left breast. I find this aesthetically pleasing, and how pyjamas should be, so wouldn’t be without the single pocket but don’t ever fill it.

I was good at remembering poems and Shakespearean soliloquies off by heart. Can still recite many prayers in Latin. Haven’t tried to learn anything for many years but haven’t forgotten the ones I did.

I walked the hound this morning and have spent the rest of the day painting. Day two of painting tomorrow. But have now eaten (I’m actually stuffed) and have wine.

AA Milne is one of my favourites, @MyrtleLion. I used to recite The Dormouse to my children when they were little!

I can still recite King John’s Christmas (only to myself). That was one I learned just because; it was possibly a rainy day.

A big, red, India rubber ball!

How wonderful Swash - we can sit in our pyjamas seeing how many Latin prayers we can remember...
oh wait, that's not quite in keeping with our Bluestocking images, is it?

You're supposed to be looking gorgeous and being a pirate, and I'm supposed to be looking cool and edgy in black with wings..
Oh well, we need a break from being so gorgeous and edgy, don't we?
Do 'Latin prayers' include the Latin mass? How far into Credo in unum Deum patrem omnipotentem factorem caeli et terrae can you remember?

Are you painting DIY, or painting art?

I presume the wine was from a barrel you plundered from a stately Spanish galleon, dipping through the Tropics by the palm-green shores? ☠

I could bang out a Dies Irae @MarieDeGournay if I’ve had a few. But it’s more the everyday Hail Mary stuff. In English, Hail Holy Queen and The Memorare still strike me as very poetic. At least the versions I used to recite. They’re all different now; the language seems to have become more everyday.

I was good friends with a convent girl at uni. When we got pissed, we’d end up trying to recite the whole creed, but only in English, as we drunkenly walked home from our nights out. We’d sometimes try to go on. Think passers by might have presumed we were religious but it was totally tribal. (Trauma bonding, possibly 🤣.)

DIY is the only painting I do. Did some filling, sanding and painted some woodwork; skirting boards mostly and a fairly complicated door. Nothing too challenging, but leftovers from an earlier job that I didn’t finish.

You are correct about the wine. 🤣

I'm not sure about WHAT BELONG ME IS ALREADY COMING.

It seems to have a slightly menacing BE SURE YOUR SINS WILL FIND YOU OUT tone.

I suppose if I'm acknowledging that it BELONG ME there's a hope that a nice man with a spade and some manure might be along to give me another chance.

Looked at another way, and read in a terribly portentous tone, that's the sort of thing that features in the Dune books.

I’m stressing about render.

Have been having a wall re-rendered; last coat was done about lunchtime today. He covered it up before leaving due to the forecast. But the heavens fully opened! Still raining heavily now. There’s a small section at the end that’s not covered. This rendering has been a long saga so I am very invested in it working out this time.

I am obsessively googling render coat drying time. I need to relax and let it go. He is coming back in the morning anyway and is a good renderer. I wish it was sunny all day. (Do we have magic weather gerbils?)

Swashy, what are you doing rendering a galleon?

Or is this the little place ashore, purchased with you piratical gains, for when you give up life on the ocean wave to settle down with Marie?

Swashbuckled Hail Holy Queen and The Memorare still strike me as very poetic.
They are both beautiful. They were the favourite prayers of my grandmother and my mother, and even though I'm now a Born Again Atheist, I still love them, I love the idea of having a Most Gracious Advocate, and I love the absolute confidence of
never was it known that any one who fled to thy protection, implored thy help or sought thy intercession was left unaided. Inspired with this confidence, I fly unto thee, O Virgin of virgins my Mother.

I'm sorry about the render. Maybe we could send around a troop of gerbils with a whole lot of small umbrellas?