The Bluestocking, where the short days shorten and the oaks are brown

[MarieDeGournay]

Welcome all, regulars and newcomers, to the Bluestocking Women's Pub, a place of refuge and inspiration and camaraderie and silliness, where all alcoholic drinks are non-intoxicating, cakes contain no gluten, sugar or calories, but still taste yummy, and the attentive staff are small but very professional rodents wearing snazzy little outfits.

Other roles - such as acting as foot stools, looking decorative in the garden, or just being impossibly cute when you need something impossibly cute to go awwww at - are filled by a team of miniature pigs, quokkas, wombats, etc etc.

If real life is difficult, you can bring your troubles to the Bluestocking and a comfy chair will be found for you at a roaring fire, a miniature pig will settle down happily to support your tired feet, and a gerbil will serve you promptly with a comforting drink - very large G&Ts or massive mugs of hot chocolate with extra cream and marshmallows are popular choices [don't forget: no calories in the Bluestocking].

Hurrah for Myrtle! So glad it went well.

@JoyintheMorning my DM used to wang on about liberty bodices, but she was a kid in the 1930s.

I have had a tiresome day of necessary admin.

That is really good news, @MyrtleLion - I’m so glad you don’t have to miss out on Stratford.

Sorry you had a close encounter with the ground NotAtMyAge😟 and I'm glad you're being made take it easy. I hope an entire Bluestocking cake, all to yourself, is therapeutic

Myrtle, it's lovely to get positive news at last, though I know you have a long way to go before you'll be doing this again, but you're on the right track

Aw, @NotAtMyAge , & I bet the cat isn't even grateful for your efforts!

Rest up & enjoy your cake. Hope you heal quickly & feel better soon.

Just the job, Magpie and thank you all for your kind wishes. 💕

As a sickly child in the early 1950s I was definitely encased in a liberty bodice every winter by my mother. I even had one with suspenders so I could wear woollen stockings instead of socks in cold weather, trousers for girls being unheard of in our Lancashire village.

I put a thread on Chat, but am feeling sad- it's the 59th anniversary of the Aberfan disaster today.

I'm from a mining village and am the same age as many of those children. I remember my headteacher ( who was from Aberfan) weeping through assembly.

I don't want those children and families to be forgotten. Or people to forget how shit the NCB was.

Fuzzy, I remember it every year. I was 20 and in my second year at university and had never even been to Wales at that point. But there was a Welsh first-year on my corridor and she was utterly devastated. I was at an all-girls college and my memory is of the junior common room full of shocked and silent students, many weeping as they watched.the TV coverage of what for all of us was an unimaginable tragedy. We moved to rural Wales over 50 years ago now and the fact of Aberfan is indelibly engraved on my mind.

I remember Aberfan clearly and how shocked and horrified we all were. Those poor children! And teachers!

Yes i remember it and I was only 4 years old.

When I was a student (in Cardiff), some 12 years after the disaster, I went to the Aberfan graveyard. Oh those rows of white graves. So quiet except for birdsong.

On a lighter note, not worthy of its own thread picked up the story from MrMenno.

Big brother has a resident TIM, who is really a lesbian, has a girlfriend.

They had some kind of game a question was asked by one of the inmates to all the others which went summit like if you had to pick a partner to save the human race who would you choose.

A female declared she would take the TIM. Someone else pointed out TIM was a woman and that would not work.

She was given a warning by BB, for unacceptable behaviour.

they have a trans person on every year now.

got me thinking FWR readers should apply en masse next year and maybe one of us would get on, and assert our right to sex realist views.

Maybe when she gets out we should all e mail her to sue the production company etc.

I remember Aberfan, but the news was so different before 24/7 TV news. It was of course reported on the radio in Ireland, there were tragic photos in the newspapers, but they didn't convey the full extent of the horror.
I knew it was shocking and disturbing, but I didn't grasp the full horror until I saw documentaries about it on TV many years later. I wonder if perhaps we were being protected from the details by our parents.

I still can't get my head around the horror of it.

There are plenty of historic photos showing NCB slag heaps lying on roadways and right outside peoples houses

Aberfan is the second news story I remember hearing about (the first was the death of Churchill). In both cases it was the reactions on adults that made me realise something memorable had happened, and in the case of Aberfan, the distress of my teachers, all the way over in the east of England but doing the same job, looking at us and touching the school desks and not being able to complete their sentences.

That's the really disturbing aspect: it was a disaster waiting to happen.
Corporate manslaughter, surely.

That law did twist then, and as of today has not to my knowledge been used

I remember being at junior school & giving my sixpence to the collection for Aberfan. I imagined it was sent there to help the families, which is what I wanted. When I was an adult I discovered that the government took donated money to pay for dealing with the heaps. According to AI:

'In 1968, the government of Harold Wilson's Labour Party took £150,000 from the Aberfan Disaster Fund to pay for the removal of the remaining coal tips. This use of charitable donations was highly controversial and considered unlawful, as the National Coal Board (NCB) was responsible for the disaster and should have paid for the clearance itself. The money was eventually repaid by a later government, but it was not until 2007 that the equivalent of the original amount was returned with interest and inflation accounted for.'

Barstewards before & after the event.

Sending love to people & families remembering & grieving on the anniversary.

my goodness you lot have got me started on some of my rage memories.

The Miners Pension fund was a reserved fund held in Trust. It was massive because many, many miners barely made it to 50 due to cold dust diseases (amongst others).

The government of the day pretty much nicked the surpluses, which amounted to 24 billion.

Labour returned it 2024

a piddly amount was put in to a regeneration trust, no miners on the trust board bla bla bla

no compensation paid for all the loss of life and early deaths.

I remember it as well. I was at junior school in Kent but my mother who had been brought up in the South Wales valleys in the shadow of the slag heaps was hugely affected by this and I remember her crying 😥

Ah @FuzzyPuffling 💔

Aberfan was before I was born but my mum was from the next village so I grew up with the stories of it, and childhood visits to the cemetery. Terrible terrible tragedy.

Aberfan is indeed a terrible tragedy. It’s something I can’t turn away from whenever it’s mentioned.

Both my grandfathers were miners - one went down the pit at 13, not his choice, he hated it - and I went to primary school in a pit village although we’d moved away when Aberfan happened.

As Wikipedia says, “Neither the NCB nor any of its employees were prosecuted and the organisation was not fined.”

There’s a very moving work, Cantata Memoria: For the Children, by Karl Jenkins. I recorded it when Channel 4 broadcast the first performance and rewatch it from time to time. They mention the name of everyone who died, while the names are projected on the screens behind the performers. You can imagine how poignant it is when Bryn Terfel sings the words of a bereaved father at one of the inquests:

Buried Alive by the National Coal Board. Buried, buried, buried.

It would be good to see that cantata performed next year for the 60th anniversary. It was before my time, but I remember reading about it and struggling to understand how it could have been allowed to happen.

I don't think anyone even thought it could happen. My great grandma had a view of the slag heap from her kitchen window and was convinced it was moving but nobody believed her.

Myrtle I hope you're feeling rested and recovering well.

Does anyone happen to know (or can come up with a feasible suggestion for) the collective noun for wagtails? I can see loads from my office window, including what I think is a juvenile yellow wagtail!