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].

He’s probably delighted he can have it all!

Here's a little puzzle for you:

I was tidying some books [= put two back on shelf, then spend hours reading the third one🙄] and found this newspaper cutting.
I hope it's legible.

10 marks for guessing the year it appeared.
20 marks for guessing who wrote it!!

All will be revealed tomorrow, to give everybody who wants to a chance to have a go.

Definitely a keeper!

Mr Me, that is.

Early 90's & no idea.

🤔not bad......

Wednesday!

Julie bindel

@MarieDeGournay , I couldn’t guess who, but going by what I was doing at the time I’d say 1990?

Very funny Cake, and no, Banned.

I'm signing off now, good night, Puzzlers!

1990 seems about right.
i cheated and looked for female evening standard columnists of that era. The double exclamation mark suggests to me someone surprising and together with the style could be Melanie Philips before her right turn?

The one I remember from when the boys were at primary school was Cauliflowers fluffy.

I was a church chorister as a teenager, so I am a huge fan of Hymns Ancient and Modern - The day thou gavest is a favourite, but Guide me Oh thou Great Jehovah - preferably sung full voice by a Welsh male voice choir - is the best in my book.

90s feels right - maybe Suzanne Moore?

I went to a Methodist church with a friend in my early teens - on Sunday evening they had a youth group after the service, so that was the main reason. Guide me Oh thou great Jehovah was one of my favourites, especially joining in with the harmony on the repeated lines.

Jerusalem is an obvious one, and DH1 and I had it at our wedding in 1971, along with another favourite of mine "Dear Lord and Father of mankind", which given that the second line is "forgive our foolish ways" doesn't seem an obvious choice for a wedding, but we were young (me 21, him 24) and still at university so there was some suggestion that maybe we should have waited. But we didn't and we were very happy together for almost 30 years.

I have great taste (or maybe just a lot of luck) in husbands, I have to say. Diamonds, both of them.

I can't do your quiz Marie, I haven't woken.up yet. But a random guess is Jilly Cooper.

The ongoing hymn chat keeps taking me back to a time in the 90s when I drove round the midlands in a Ford van with my best pal V and J, looking for interesting botany and places with peatlands suitable for coring to get sources for research.

V (RIP) was a Belfast Methodist, J, English and atheist. V & I had two CDs - Faith of Our Fathers - Traditional Catholic hymns - and Maddy Prior and the Carnival Band, Sing Lustily and With Good Courage - proper traditional 18th & early 19th C hymns.

So we proceeded around the back boreens with V singing along, J looking pained by our superstitious ways, side references to Amos Starkadder's toasting fork and occasional pauses to yomp through helleborines and fly orchids.

Happy days.

I love that story Deano. 😁

I'd also say early 90s. No idea who wrote it though.

Cauliflowers Fluffy was another one I loathed at the DCs' assemblies. At the age they were then, we were belting out Jerusalem and We plough the fields and scatter.

It was assumed that we were intelligent enough to understand the explanations about e.g. broadcast sowing given by our teachers.

Although I had a teacher who didn't understand broadcast sowing, Edith. She thought potatoes were sown broadcast.

I would have said Julie Bindel or Suzanne Moore. I don't think it's Germaine Greer. Zoe Williams is too young as she'd have been about 20 in the early 1990s.

On the subject of hymns -
Woley Guide me Oh thou Great Jehovah - preferably sung full voice by a Welsh male voice choir - is the best in my book.
I agree, Woley, but anything sung 'full voice by a Welsh male voice choir' would sound wonderful!
What an amazing musical tradition - I wonder can it survive?

What a great road trip story, Deano - what a soundtrack!

I don't know We plough the fields and scatter Edith, and I'm wondering if you kids had a a bit of a laugh about ploughing the fields and then everybody going their separate ways?

There was a line in Hail Queen of Heaven that I got wrong all my hymnsinging life, until I saw it written down - we normally learnt the hymns and liturgy by ear.
Hail, queen of heaven, the ocean star,
Guide of the wanderer here below,
so far so good, then:
Thrown on life’s surge, we claim thy care

'Thrown on life's surge' just sounded like a collection of sounds when I was little; when I got older I sang it as 'Though on life surge..' which wasn't a bad attempt and had an interesting verb in the subjunctive mood. Wrong, though.

The quiz:
Points to everybody who said early 1990s - there were a couple of hints in the article, hence only dix points.

I really don't expect anybody to guess the writer, which is why it gets 20.
Good guesses so far, but none right.

Apart from the quiz aspect I thought it was an interesting article because it could be written today, with contemporary tweaks. It goes to show how progress is not linear, and we keep circling back to having to fight for the most basic, and to us obvious, of rights.

So whoever the writer is I like what she's saying, a nice undercurrent of fury in her writing, and would like it if it was written today.

Home soon, I hope, Myrtle! Don't get over-excited, though😄

I love that!

Another IV antibiotics push very soon. Just waiting for the oral antibiotics to be delivered to the ward. Then I can go home. Though I may have to wait for a taxi.

Antibiotics not yet dispensed. That's all I'm waiting on. I've had my last IV antibiotics and waiting 15 minutes to remove the PICC line.

ANSWER TO QUIZ:
That article was written in 1991 by....
NIGELLA LAWSON!
There's a surprise!

Nigella 'Be Still My Beating Heart' Lawson, as I think of her.

Being a proper card-carrying feminist, I would never objectify a woman because of her looks. Obviously. Never.😇
But I could easily make an exception for Nigella😏
And when she slips in a casual quotation from somebody like... John Dryden, showing how widely read she is...💕.
So discovering this article she wrote about feminism....💕💕

I hear she's OK at cooking too😁

Wow!

That was not on my bingo card!