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!

o clement o loving o sweet

Aren't pyjamas the clothes that you keep under the pillow in case of fire?

@EdithStourton

I do have a little place ashore. I mean, I love galleon life, but sometimes I need to be on my own and enjoy the solitude. I come here in between voyages. Read, light a fire, chop wood, enjoy a little bit of terra firma. I like to have a glass of wine that’s just for me rather than passing round the barrel to swig from.

Yes, I did buy it with my gotten gains, but chests of treasure are so burdensome to keep carting about. And not all of my shipmates are honest so I needed to invest before my treasures mysteriously disappeared. To be honest, some of them have no scruples whatsoever.

chests of treasure are so burdensome to keep carting about. And not all of my shipmates are honest so I needed to invest before my treasures mysteriously disappeared. To be honest, some of them have no scruples whatsoever.

This is why I work alone when I'm in the mood for collecting sparkly things. Magpies don't share!

@MarieDeGournay

We said “forsaken” rather than unaided.

God, forsaken is such a wonderful word. (Not God-forsaken, just forsaken 🤣).

I’m going to try to bring it back in.

With you on the atheism, but it’s cultural innit 😊.

🤣

Love the picture.

That is a good approach. You are, in some sense, a solitary pirate!

Hmmm…. that is a seriously good retirement plan.

Dishonest pirates!
😱

School assemblies turned me and most of my friends into atheists, but they did give us an excellent working knowledge of the English hymnal and many Bible stories and verses, which came in very handy for literature studies later. I can still sing a lot of hymns without the book, not that I go to church except for weddings and funerals. When I did go to meeting it was a Quaker meeting anyway, so rather quiet.

A magpirate 😃

I was very disappointed with modern 'hymns' my sprogs had at their school. All completely forgettable.

I know @EdithStourton
They are mostly men, although there is some honour among thieves.

However, if it weren’t for the fact that I’m the finest swordsman among them, and also the brains behind our little “missions”, I do think they would try to steal parts of me too. Luckily, they know I would kill anyone who tried and, as a crew, they could not manage without me. Also luckily, as I age and my physical strength and swordsmanship skills decrease, my attractiveness as a woman will also decrease. But I will age. And I fear mutiny, or worse, at some point. All of this is behind my purchase of the shore cottage.

I am honest though. Well, it’s true I’m a pirate, but the raids I plan are more Robin Hood style. And I always make sure the innocent aren’t harmed. But I have taken treasure that isn’t strictly mine.

I often think that it’s a funny old world. Im
more reflective about my life at sea when I’m here in the cottage. Well, that and render.

Render ideology!

@Britinme I put your user name into a thing, it suggested Britni or Ermin.

Did they not sing ‘ Cauliflowers Fluffy’?

Who could forget
‘The apples are ripe, the plums are red,
The broad beans are sleeping in their blankety bed’?

Ooh, an award from the esteemed @MarieDeGournay even if only for half a day.

I am overcome. ☺️

@Britinme wrote, “My dad could also recite Albert and the Lion (and he was a Yorkshireman too so he even had the right accent). …..
…My accent is only Yorkshire if I put it on though’

Snap!

I bet even now your accent is far more authentic than Stanley Holloway’s. According to Wikipedia he was Southern.

But, Blackpool’s on t’other side of the Pennines, as was Ramsbottom.

Which makes me wonder, where are all those people whose surname ends in *bottom? There were lots when I grew up, in the North, but I don’t think I’ve ever met one here in the South - and I’ve certainly never taught one.

I went to primary school in Hull with a Joanna Ramsbottom so I think we did have them on our side of the Pennines too.

My DM was Lancastrian, DF from Yorkshire but they raised me in Essex. I live in Lancashire and my neighbours include a ‘-bottom’ ‘Bottom’ in placenames is geographical meaning ‘valley’, not anatomical of course - we’ve had a couple of nice walks this week in a place that I refer to in jest as ‘badger’s arse’.

I came remember wincing, probably audibly, at a harvest 'hymn' that included the line, 'and corn for our flakes'.

When I was at primary school, we sang proper hymns (and learned the 23rd Psalm by heart, the King James version) and the teacher would explain the complicated bits (so we all knew the meaning of words like 'sheaves' and 'firmament').

I really felt that my DC were being short changed by being obliged to sing such codswallop.

Anyone else had to suffer through their children singing Big, Red, Combine Harvester? We're SE, so the local accent just adds insult to injury when you hear them all singing about "freshing" (threshing). I probably visibly winced at that point.

We don't really do hymns much, so I rely on memories from childhood in England, though the new improved choir set up last year belted out chunks of Sean O Riada's Mass on Monday, and sang Hail Glorious St Patrick. Some of us actually joined in with that one.

The priest we had last night is a bit sing-y and it struck me that his favourite 'Bind us together Lord' with its opening There is only one God might have been a strong assertion back home in Kerala.

Ugh! Big red combine harvester. I'd forgotten that one.

The thing about the traditional hymns is we could join in. Made things much more entertaining.

It is branded on my brain, @AsWithGlad!

I never heard that one. The blankety beds broad beans sleep in is a cure for warts. Just in case anyone has warts in need of a cure.

Some of the newer hymns could be good, although if I was singing them as a child they're, sadly, not that new. Or the tune would be changed to give it a bit of gusto.

One of my favourites was 'O Jesus I have promised'. The words are relatively old but we sang it in primary school to a banging tune and the line about 'following Julie(duly)' always made me smile. Imagine my disappointment when getting to secondary school and having to sing it as a real dirge.

Same here, Cake. That was one of my favourites at primary, sung to a cheerful and upbeat tune!

There was a CD in 1996 of the kind of hymns sung in Ireland by Catholics in 40s/50s/60s/70s Ireland until things got 'modernised' - Hail Glorious St Patrick, Hail Redeemer King Divine, Holy God We Praise Thy Name, Hail Queen of Heaven..
that kind of thing.
It was a huge success. No 1 in the album charts for two months and multiple platinum awards - that kind of success!

It's not that people suddenly Found Religion Again in 1996, it was nostalgia for large numbers of ordinary people singing in unison in large buildings with impressive acoustics - a big echo-y parish church is very flattering .

It was also, as somebody pointed out at the time, that these were the only songs that the majority of people of a certain age knew all the words to - except for Abba songs of course

They were also great to sing - hymns like that were cracking tunes to belt out enthusiastically in public with no concern about whether you had a good singing voice or not.
It was a very therapeutic experience, which was never replaced, and a lot of us miss it. Not the religious aspect, but the communal singing experience.
I can understand a similar nostalgia for the great English hymn tradition.