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!

Quite a few of here with an East Anglian connection 😁

I moved away and then came back...
Yew all aroight s'mornen, then?

Interesting thought that the Canaries' jerseys are yellow because of mustard. My nearest big team is the Tractor Boys (Google is your friend, Marie) - I have friends who loyally trot along to watch them lose play. I don't bother asking how it went.

Don't have to - I know the Tractor Boys are Ipswich Town😄
I also know that they beat St Etienne in the quarter-finals of the EUFA cup in 1981- I knew someone from St Etienne who was particularly upset that the team that knocked them out of the cup had a name which sounded like a sneeze -
Ips-weech! Ips-weech!😂

I've only been to East Anglia/Norwich a couple of times, but I was struck by the accent - I love accents and my ears are always tuned in to how local people talk - like when a woman in Bristol called me 'My loverrrrr' as she served me a cup of coffee😦
In Norwich I noticed they pronounce 'u' as 'oo', as in 'compooters' for 'computers'... no wait, on reflection, the intervocalic 't' also disappears so it was 'compoo'ers' - can East Anglians confirm that?

When I was growing up in Hull you knew when it was going to rain because you could smell the fish docks. And when I lived in Hayes you could smell the instant coffee that was made in a factory in that vicinity, only it smelled burnt. Chocolate sounds like a preferable alternative to either of those.

A highlight of visiting Carlisle Castle was the heavenly scent drifting from the McVitie's factory just along the road.

I ❤ all these olfactory reminiscences
There's probably a joke in there about olfactory factories, but I can't quite manage to work it out

Marie, the 't' is often still there, you just have to listen out for it. So 'compooter' with a very faint 't'.

A friend of mine was always planting 'let'sez' on his 'lottie'.

I love the lilt of a good East Anglian accent and I really enjoyed Ralph Fiennes's rendition of Basil Brown's accent in The Dig.

The olfactory memory that triggers most memories for me is the smell of Pears soap - my grandmother used it, and I remember washing my hands with it at her house, and loving that scent. In fact, I will be buying myself a bar of it, to use when my current bar runs out. I know how to give myself a good time, don't I!

I agree that Cadbury's chocolate is not as good as it used to be - but up until recently, this has not stopped me from devouring a bar of their chocolate with jelly beans and popping candy in it. Now I eat a couple of small squares of Green and Black's chocolate, which is much better but has no popping candy.

I wrote a poem a few years ago about scents remembered from childhood:

Muguet

They seem so modest: bells white
as innocence hanging shy heads
in the shade of a green shawl,
fresh as spring air, delicate scent
with a citrus edge, hiding
in shady beds, and every year,
reliably as the moon pulls
spring tides, they creep further in,
drowning out daffodil and bluebell.

In my childhood, old ladies
wore lily-of-the-valley perfume,
Coty’s Muguet des Bois,
top notes of leafy green and bergamot,
base notes of musk; they seemed
so modest, with their quietly-voiced
suggestions of how things should be done,
what was acceptable for girls, they
took up all the air inside the room.

Now I look at it again I’d revise some of the punctuation in the second stanza, but too late once published.

In fact some of the punctuation in the first stanza is a bit iffy too. I must have improved in the last thirteen years.

It's still lovely, @Britinme . Particularly the 'green shawl', that is so exactly what the leaves look like.

I wonder do the young think we're modest now that we're old ladies?

Do you need a third stanza about an old feminist finding a half-forgotten bottle of scent and going on the rampage, slowly but relentlessly, one rootlet at a time, through the dappled shaded areas of life?

The repetition of They seem so modest. The comparison with the lily of the valley plant. Their quietly-voiced suggestions of how things should be done, what was acceptable for girls and then the devastating final phrase: they took up all the air inside the room.

Such a beautiful poem, Britinme. I am assuming that you are aware that muguet is also the name for oral thrush as it is so appropriate...

Growing up in Essex, glottal stops were common (wa’wer), and there were a few people with a less London, more east Anglian twang - our church secretary reading out the notices would say Toosday, for instance.

My late DB spoke with a Norfolk accent despite being born in London (as was I). I don't have a Norfolk accent but I can out one on very easily.

The Queen of the World job will not be mine, but I have a call later with a recruiter about another role which I put in with zero effort. Still no feedback from my interview so I've followed up again.

Thank you for sharing your poem, it's beautiful, Britinme❤

It reminded me that in France on the 1st of May people wear a little bunch of Lily-of-the-Valley, an old tradition that was still on the go when I lived there - I hope it still is

I did not in fact know that, but I like it!

And of course lily of the valley is really quite toxic, which also seems appropriate somehow.

Hello!
I've been a bit awol with life stuff but apart from being tired, it's settling.
Hello quokkas, capybara, gerbils, red panda, goats, Spartipus, Colin, seagulls...
And of course all animal and human incarnations of Bluestockingers.

👋🏻👋🏻 Fuzzy!

Somebody left a mahoosive bar of chocolate leaning against the front of the pub. I had the choice of gnawing through it to get in or, the sensible option, use a different door.

Anyway...I think I need a lie down...and a flannel.

Fuzzers! You missed the St Patrick's day parade, you would have been wonderful, you could have represented puffinkind.

Hello Fuzz! Nice to see you.

We recently discovered that a ginormous bar of chocolate placed in front of the door keeps all the difficult aspects of life out, so come on in and leave life's difficulties behind the big bar of chocol.... oh CakeI you've just eaten through it, haven't you...🙄
😄

Many of the best cakes are liberally coated in chocolate, tbf.