The Bluestocking Women’s Pub - Where Everybody Knows Your Username

[MarieDeGournay]

Welcome to the Bluestocking Arms, the home of good company, excellent drinks and delicious cakes which magically have no irksome contents like gluten or sugar or calories or the kind of alcohol that causes problems - but you wouldn't know

Food and drink are served by a keen staff of gerbils, and other animals such as capybaras, quokkas, etc., also fulfil vital roles, while looking cute AF.

New Bluestockingers always welcome.

Jays! There were 2 jays picking at the almost ripe cherries when I got home this evening. I can't remember the last time I saw a jay.

I don't think I've ever actually seen a woodpecker ErroltheDragon

Here are the aforementioned blackbird chicks. They've flown the nest since this picture

We have peacocks in the village and my word, they are LOUD. They are close to a rookery, so there is clearly a serious competition underway for who can make the most noise.

We get a decent variety in the garden - blue tits, great tits, blackbirds, wrens, robins, pigeons, jackdaws, goldfinches etc. My regular dog walking route has yellowhammers (which I sometimes see) and cuckoos (which I don't).

Deano, if the mystery noise sounded like a nail gun, it was probably a woodpecker. They are bloody noisy when they get going.

I've seen woodpeckers (green and greater spotted) in passing. What I would really like to see is a kingfisher. I know we have at least one locally but I've never seen it. Seen the occasional tawny owl too, that was very cool, and the local heron gets spotted quite a bit.

We sometimes see kingfishers on the local canal, and also from one of the hides at the WWT. I’ve only ever managed to photo one once, when we were on a boat on the Norfolk Broads last year. Just a basic iPhone camera, so not great but the colour is unmistakable! while looking for that I also found a shot of a Norfolk Hawker dragonfly which I was very pleased with because I didn’t know it was till later when a ranger was telling us about local wildlife.

Well... I saw the magnificent, if not incredibly rare, Bluestocking Booby Bird earlier. I had to go full camouflage in order to get up close.

Oh well done, Beetle.👏

by the way, there’s a brand new board some of you may like if you’ve not yet found it

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/wildlife-nature-conservation

Good spot, Boily! Truly a magnificent bird.

Too close! I got too close!

😱😱😱

From the look on its face, it’s not keen on your taste. I anticipate it’ll soon drop you in the paddock or possibly the capybara pool.

You should have placed a bet!

Here's the action shot of me falling through the air.

It was a remarkably soft landing on poor unsuspecting Clara!

Boiled Beetle Boiled Beetle

Fly away home

To the Bluestocking

Where you are welcome

not grate poytry, but just to remind you about the your WINGS

I do?

<Rumages around under carapace>

Oh!

I do!

(And humanish looking hands as well it appears!!)

<flies off to nearby mountain range>

I was about to post something about how we'd gone all ornithological [+dragonfly] and how much I was loving your photos and reported spots of birds, and then it all got funny with the booby bird abducting Boily, and Deano reminding her about her wings and Boily getting not just wings but jazz hands and then flying up the Alps for a singsong... And it's only 11.am.
In other words, The Bluestocking at its finest😃

I sometimes think about our very welcome newcomers - do they know what they have let themselves in for?

Speaking of newcomers, didn't we once have an Orca, a passing American occupying one of our luxurious rooms upstairs, and a sparkly fish of some kind? I wonder are they still lurking, in which case 👋.

I think my problem today is I've accidentally inhaled cat nip.

I was sorting out a draw of assorted cat crap, next thing I know the cat is in the drawer with the bag of cat nip in his mouth!

I've currently got two cats off their tits!

And despite the back door being wide open the cat nip nicker is currently banging his head against the cat flap so that I will go and let him in. I've shown him that the back door is indeed wide open, but to no avail.

I am was whatever ploughing through the Bluestocking threads before my arrival in November, and seeing usernames I hadn't seen before.
I was thinking about listing them or @'ing them, to see if they would return, but you can't @ people not on the current thread. Maybe they're busy, or lurking, and we do chat a lot, so it can be difficult to keep up. But there is no need to "keep up", just jump in. Don't want the Bluestocking to be seen as cliquey...

I'm just back from Lidl, second day running. I was so overexcited yesterday after all the plant purchases, and seeing the new dumbbells (heavy but fun) that I had forgotten a few essentials.

So - heading out after paying for my onions and natural yoghurt and butter and nut-and-raisin chocolate I spot someone putting out 'waste not' boxes, and can't resist investigating.

I got one with:
A red pepper
A tray of cherry tomatoes on the vine
3 pears
5 limes
A big head of broccoli
3 lemons
A ripe mango
7 bananas
2 onions
1 apple
6 peaches
2 parsnips
11 apricots

Not bad for €3!

I'd better freeze the broccoli and the limes, and start planning next weeks menu.

And then I have to forage some micro-greens.

Yes, lurkers welcome!

Come out come out wherever you are

We're all quite sane and stable

Honest we are

There are no rules beyond basic civility, if there are any secret codes I don't know what they are.

Could we please have a few stout capybara to take delivery of the Tunnocks, please?
If anyone's interested,he's French, his name is Jean-Philippe, he likes long walks on the beach at sunset, cooking for loved ones, and the films of Claud Lelouch

Not exactly a lurker although I don't often post tbh I can't keep up with this thread most of the time. It does make me laugh out loud. That pic of Boily with wings and jazz hands is wild 😆I have started experimenting with AI to try and get some pictures worth posting on here. Any tips gratefully received!

I think that makes you a surfer rather than a lurker, Scoffsy!

The important thing is the laughing out loud, and everybody is welcome to that, whether they feel up to posting or not.

I don't do AI - partly a matter of principle, partly laziness - I recycle old Bluestocking images - every old thread has a 'thread gallery' at the top, which is hilarious to look at in and of itself - what in god's name were were talking about that made THAT image relevant???? - but also a useful source of existing pikkies of cute rodents doing hospitality-industry-related tasks, and beetles doing really really weird things!

I also find that the internet is already full of unlikely images that I've used - somebody else came up with an image of a shocked gerbil for instance [though it may be a hamster] for some arcane reason, so I snaffled it for the Bluestocking.

And because I like making little things, Jean Philippe and the bulk delivery of Tunnocks was inspired by the red lorry which was a Xmas deco, and some little figures of roadworkers which are from a past project. And an awful lot of little pieces of alu foil rolled up into balls and a red dot painted on them - I Suffer for my Art, you know

You mean - Jean Philippe is REAL!

wowsers.

Well, quite. I always imagine Marie with a dictionary in one hand, typing away correcting people with the other (& holding a book of Yeats's poetry open with her feet). And now we learn that she rivals Magpie in the model-making department - though inclining more towards Surrealism than booknooks.

The world is weirder than I thought, & that's saying something.