The Bluestocking - Raiders of the Lost Sparp

[lcakethereforeIam]

Welcome everyone. Wipe your feet, it's been wet out.

Don't forget to namechange before posting if necessary.

I hope I live a very long way from Myrtle

I love a good pipe band, but where are the drummers?

And the maids a-dancing?

I wouldn't mind some lords a-leaping this morning.

They would probably be outraged by the not-quite-a-saltire that AI came up with in that image.

😂😂

There’s 2 in the front row and at least one in the row behind, so I infer more further back.

With the greatest of respect, Gerbil Pipe Band, can you bugger off now?
We're all awake.
Very awake.

Sometimes, as in this case, it’s like a bright strand in the fabric which others may pick up again.
My birds still seem to be sulking after me being away recently but I’m getting some coal tits at the moment who were finding it hard to get a place on the feeder when it was swarming with goldfinches a couple of weeks ago.

Brit, I love your view from the other side of the pond. We are enriched by your presence. And different birdlife.

Myrtle, I hope you point out very firmly to the engineer that there is a obviously a serious technical fault because Miss Cocker Spaniel was totally out of scale in Colin's basket, and what does he propose to do about it?😂
Seriously though - I hope the massed bands of gerbils and some cardamon tea work, and the engineer sorts out your internet problems.

Android, your huge gerbil pipe band made me laugh out loud! Wonderful!
One of them at the front seems to have abandoned her bagpipes for a recorder, which is funny cos the other ones seems to be properly playing proper bagpipes.
Maybe she just marches to the beat of her own drum, so to speak.😄
I'm glad the band doesn't have any of those twirly flourishy tenor drummers which I have a bit of an aversion to - sorry, I know it's not my culture, I know it's none of my business, I know it's highly skilful, but it irritates me - just play the bloody drum, OK?!
but it could do with a couple of big bass drums to really wake Myrtle up!

Yes indeed. I’ve just been looking at the wiki page about American robins - really just looking at the pictures - and then European robins. But the pictures there include a diagram of an experiment demonstrating the effect of radio waves on their ability to orient to the earth’s magnetic field. Turns out they don’t use tiny magnets, their sensing mechanism relies on quantum entanglement of electron spins in induced radical pairs in a particular protein molecule….wow….I need coffee. Makes GPS and google maps seem a bit clunky.

They need to do something cross cultural and have some big kettledrums on whatever would be the gerbil equivalent of an enormous shire horse.

Re discrepancies of scale - surely everyone has noticed that’s a feature of the bluestocking? It must have some sort of spatial distortion field which allows the gerbils to cook bacon and eggs congruent with their size but manage to serve up healthy human sized portions. Colin has got used to being everything from a tiny Kaninchen through mini to standard sized and beyond.

Oooh yes! that would be spectacular!
'The gerbil equiv of a shire horse' is such a tantalizing idea - a shire horse about the size of a large kitten, I think?

Ahem, may I introduce Phoberomys pattersoni, an extinct rodent genus of the infraorder Caviomorpha that also includes the living species guinea pigs, capybaras, and chinchillas. About the size of a large cow.

Extinct in the real world that is. In Bluestocking land, available, nay, eager, to carry kettle drums.

Well! That certainly got me out of bed, though the repetition of When the Saints Come Marching Home is now an ear worm.

I was in a very deep sleep and now feel a bit rubbish. A mixture of tiredness, menopause and antibiotics.

I slept about five hours, so it's getting better.

The VM engineer replaced our hub. T'internet is now up and working and should be fine. Apparently the old one was prone to failure so we have had an upgrade.

The sleep gerbils have been generous to me lately, but the dream gerbils sent a 'Someone is Wrong on the Internet' episode that meant I woke from the frustration of trying to prevent people from engaging with an obvious provocateur, probably Russian but purporting to be from somewhere in Oceania, accusing all Irish people of colluding with Ireland the state in its appalling ongoing crime of

.

.

.

stealing water from neighbouring countries.

I NEVER

You were right @EdithStourton 🙂.

I sent an email on the Sunday morning; as much to contain my anxiety as anything else, explaining what had happened. I also telephoned this morning to see if the owner was in. She’s on leave all week. I explained everything to the young woman on the phone and she remembered discussion of my situation from last time.

Anyway, she was lovely and invited me in. She took me into the back room, offered the sofa and a cup of coffee. She said she’d prioritise the repair with the jeweller and he would do it while I waited. She gave me a choice of new clasp. She checked the owner’s notes from last time and a safety chain wasn’t written down, which is why it wasn’t fitted. Anyway, she also offered me a choice of fitted safety chain at no cost. She was so nice and I couldn’t be happier with the outcome. I’m just back, and hadn’t realised how much its absence was weighing me down until I had it round my neck again 🙂

So glad it's not just me that still has exam semi-nightmares nearly half a century since I last had to sit one. I must be heading for my second childhood as the last one I remember was about having to sit an A-Level I hadn't studied for. 😱

On a happier note the Sleep Gerbils are doing a grand job. After a longish period of poor sleep, I've had a series of much better nights this past week. for which much thanks.

How does The Staunch Ally cope with men who are suffering the agonies of a bad cold? Will dh get the proper level of sympathy from the staff there - currently the poor dear is only getting sympathy from me - and I am not responding sufficiently sympathetically to the hourly updates on his condition.

I teach examined units, both external and internal (where I write the exam). I have exam dreams from the other side, where no one turns up, or I haven't written it etc! Although the most recent one was trying to put on a musical performance based on a health and safety exam, which was a bit different.

I'm sure Mr Nibbles has a whole room full of Dressing Gowns of Doom for the patrons of the Staunch Ally.

Sitting on the Darlington thread nowt happening other than discussions on food with the chip butty being the star so i had one.

Yum!!!

So glad you've had your chain repaired and secured, @Swashbuckled. What nice people at the jeweller:s.