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'm joining in!

.

@Magpiecomplex Me too!

That is a magnificent look @Magpiecomplex !

Looking good, Android! Gemini seems to be a bit more restrained in the bosomly arts than your AI. Or maybe it's because I asked for a glamorous pirate rather than a sexy one.
And thank you Swashy! You have inspired me!

I asked the AI for bright blue wings & tail like yours, @Magpiecomplex , but this is what I got. What the heck is that symbol on the blue bucket??

I love the wings! Dragonfly-esque!
I'm assuming the symbol on the bucket is representing non-binary artificial intelligences.

If I used the words 'sexy' or 'glamorous' the AI would tell me it's an unsafe image - then it comes out with stuff like this, all on its own. I see the AI as a dirty-minded vicar telling everyone else how to behave.

Sigh!

😂I'm getting memories of the Blues Brothers. "The soup is f!!!!!!!! ten dollars!"

Pieces of what?!
Anyone else picturing Reacher Gilt's parrot?

Mais ma chérie, looks aren't everything...

<said she somewhat unconvincingly>
Somewhere between this, and that OTT norkage-display look would be grand

It gives me an excuse to quote WB Yeats on the Eve of St Patrick:

WHEN you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;
How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim Soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;
And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

That's a fantastic poem, @MarieDeGournay

Those are fairly accurate 😁 The rest...not so much. Wasn't there a doll...Betty Spaghetti?

If we're all going to be pirates...

With cat like tread 🎶

Glad you liked it, Magpie.
No matter how much eye-roll-y stuff I know about Yeats, I can't help but love his poetry.
Like I'm pretty sure that when his muse Maud Gonne responded to his proposal with the immortal words 'Oh don't be silly, Willy!'
"Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars"
wasn't quite what happened- Love probably went off and quickly found someone else to shag🙄

But who cares,
Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.
is beautiful, and beauty is truth isn't it?

@MarieDeGournay I follow The Gardiner Brothers on FB, but I haven’t seen them in kilts yet. You say “ not any more” but perhaps, if I keep watching?

DH and I are invited to a wedding later this year. There is to be a ceilidh in the evening. The groom is from Inverness so perhaps there will be kiltage.

I think I've lost the will to live. Just spent an hour in the corner being harangue about the Pilgrim Fathers. Another gin I think. Are the gerbils serving or is that too much to hope?

I didn't know you were such a keen student of traditional attire,AsWithGlad, purely for reasons of historical research, I'm sure

Since the cultural lightning-strike that was Riverdance, Irish dancing has split sartorially into the outrageous day-glo embroidered dresses and fake ringlets, and the heyyyy look how cool we are..

It's their evening off, but we have rats standing in for them.

Got to love Yeats despite the weirdly occult stuff.

Aedh Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven

Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

He is very quotable - 'Tread softly for you tread on my dreams' 'No country for old men' 'Things fall apart: the centre cannot hold' 'Come away O human child' 'A terrible beauty is born' 'How can we know the Dancer from the Dance?'

Speaking of The Dance - watch this little child being taken over by the spirit of the dance, unable to resist

Of course, I realise we disapprove of high heels on principle, but @Grammarnut is wearing a particularly fine pair of shoes in that picture.

@Britinme - I used to sing an arrangement of that poem, set to music by Thomas Dunhill - I loved it.

I slightly know a bloke who uses a wheelchair. He is comfortably off, leads a busy life etc etc. One day he was waiting outside a shop for his girlfriend to emerge and an elderly lady toddled over, pressed some money into his hand, patted him on the shoulder, wished him well and went on her way.

He was too astonished to speak.

One of the odder moments in the Star Trek franchise was when Captain Jonathan Archer, pre-Starfleet, brash, somewhat given to torturing people, was revealed as having a lifelong obsession with the Song of Wandering Aengus

I went out to the hazel wood,
Because a fire was in my head,
And cut and peeled a hazel wand,
And hooked a berry to a thread;

And when white moths were on the wing,
And moth-like stars were flickering out,
I dropped the berry in a stream
And caught a little silver trout.

When I had laid it on the floor
I went to blow the fire a-flame,
But something rustled on the floor,
And some one called me by my name:
It had become a glimmering girl
With apple blossom in her hair
Who called me by my name and ran
And faded through the brightening air.

Though I am old with wandering
Through hollow lands and hilly lands,
I will find out where she has gone,
And kiss her lips and take her hands;
And walk among long dappled grass,
And pluck till time and times are done
The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun.

W.B. Yeats

Archer met the beautiful woman, but she was really a giant slug, but he loved her anyway and SPOILER

.

.

.

.

.

.

rescued her from the bad guys..