The Bluestocking: All You Need to Know About Risk Assessments, Jazz Hands, Battenberg and Sourdough (But Were Afraid to Ask) - and gerbils. Lots and lots of gerbils.

[MyrtleLion]

Welcome to The Bluestocking, the perfectly overblown, gloriously chaotic all-women’s pub where you can have a bit of a lie down if you need it.

Expect serious debates on musicals, cake and knitting, and whimsical musings on women’s rights and why the world’s on fire (again), all under the calm supervision of our support staff: gerbils, capybaras, and the occasional quokka on secondment.

The alcohol won’t get you drunk, the pastries won’t make you fat, but the conversation will digress, and that’s the point.

Remember to namechange before posting if you’re sometimes someone else.

Fairy 'nuff. I remember visiting a place in East Anglia on one of our holidays called Great Hill. It was about 10 metres higher than the surrounding countryside. Not as alarming as when DF parked up on a road in the middle of East Anglia and told us that we were 10 metres below sea level. How does that actually work? I mean that it must be real 'cos I work with someone who comes from March in Cambridgeshire and she swears blind that not only is March below sea level but it has a river that flows to the sea.

When I was a sprog, I think I was in my first year at secondary school, we...well the whole country had heavy snow that seemed to stick around for weeks. One evening we went to a local hillside and spent hours sledging. The moon was due to go into eclipse, which gradually happened while we were out. It was absolutely magical.

I remember, when it started, being out in a gentle snow fall. There were individual snowflakes tumbling down. It was the first time I'd seen the beautiful six sided pixie doilies of a snowflake in real life. The ponds in a nearby park froze solid enough for us to walk on them. Kids are daft.

Most of Cambridgeshire is the Fens. Marshy land reclaimed by draining the Fens centuries ago.

From Wikipedia:
"The Fens are very low-lying compared with the chalk and limestone uplands that surround them – in most places no more than 10 metres (33 ft) above sea level. As a result of drainage and the subsequent shrinkage of the peat fens, many parts of the Fens now lie below mean sea level. Although one writer in the 17th century described the Fenland as entirely above sea level (in contrast to the Netherlands),[8] the area now includes the lowest land in the United Kingdom. Holme Fen in Cambridgeshire, is around 2.75 metres (9 ft 0 in) below sea level.[9] Within the Fens are a few hills, which have historically been called "islands", as they remained dry when the low-lying fens around them were flooded. The largest of the fen-islands was the 23-square-mile (60 km2) Kimmeridge Clay island, on which the cathedral city of Ely was built: its highest point is 39 metres (128 ft) above mean sea level.[10]

The rivers do drain to the sea and many of the roads are on dikes above the fenland. So it is possible to be below sea level and drain to the sea.

I think the high grounds, the fen islands, were formed by ancient rivers. Assuming that's correct, it's strange to think that the current high ground might have been the lowest in some ancient prehistoric landscape.

I am reminded of this cartoon.

@lcakethereforeIam what year was that, can you remember?

I remember a particularly heavy snow when I was a child where it was so deep we tested out the theory that if you buried yourself in snow you would actually keep warm. I've never seen snow like it since in England.

1977/78 was a very snowy winter. I was at secondary school and getting to and fro on the bus...

A large local pond froze hard enough for skating. I was loaned some very old skates and given direction by DM. Amazing fun.

A lot of fenland rivers are above the fields, held by enormous dykes. I live in a much less flat and less floodable area. We have valleys rather than hills, but there are plenty of places to go sledging, if it ever snows properly again.

Ely used to be an island, Eel Island. Ely Cathedral is wonderful.
That's as much as I can contribute to the discussion about the Fens
No, wait - I've just remembered something else: that the draining of the Fens was opposed by the locals because it destroyed the environment and their way of life and livelihood. Plus ça change, eh?

@ChristmasStars I think it was the late 70s. Probably early in the year as I don't recall a proper white Christmas (one or two soggy flakes on the roof of the Met. Office don't count in my book). I remember reading a newspaper story about someone who got buried in their car for several days. They'd made ventilation holes with a coat hanger. For some reason the paper felt the need to illustrate this with a drawing. Which, even as a child, struck me as unnecessary and hilarious. Helicopters were delivering food to cut off villages. Probably cost the country billions. I thought it was brilliant. We still had to go to school and do cross country in our pe kit (big knickers and artex t-shirts) although we were allowed to wear our coats.

@EdithStourton I read a book and learned in the fens they called ice skates 'pattens'. I thought it must be a dialect word from a lost ancient language. Was a little disappointed to learn the French for 'to skate' is 'patiner', des moments trist.

That winter we were walked to school by one of the dads, which was really unusual. The snow came up to our knees and maybe higher. I was 9. The school heating could not cope sonwe were supposed to go in for one day a week by year. First years on Monday then second years on Tuesday (middle school so the year pupils turned 9, 10, 11, 12, then they would enter high school/secondary school in the second year).

The heating broke on day one so the school was closed for at least a week.

The Fen Tigers tried to sabotage the drainage - a bit like the Luddites breaking looms to protect their jobs. They didn't know that better paid, less physical jobs would emerge.

@lcakethereforeIam yes I reckon @EdithStourton has it - early 78 probably.

@MarieDeGournay we went on a boat trip once at Wicken Fen National Trust and they told us about the fenlanders what collected reeds and sailed down to Cambridge to sell them at the market. One of the jobs at risk at the time I guess.

That reminds me that I bought Francis Pryor's book on the Fens during the summer and haven't read it yet - a treat to come. Once I locate it.

I remember seeing, by one of the fen rivers, at least three generations of buildings for pumping the water. As the technology improved the building became defunct. Iirc the oldest (and highest) was probably a wind-pump, then steam and, finally, electric.

I think Ranworth broad is full of the sunken remains of the wherries that used to be used for transport on the Broads. They were scuttled by their owners. They were uneconomic. Although I wonder if they were taxed so it was also a sort of up yours.

It's almost unbelievable to me visiting there, that the Broads were dug by hand. When I think about peat cutting I have this bucolic vision of modest sized peat stacks, cut to burn on the home fires. In East Anglia it must, at times, have been industrial.

Thinking of Ely Cathedral standing out in the middle of the flat flat surroundings reminds me of Jacques Brel's song about his native Belguim, Le Plat Pays:

Avec des cathédrales pour uniques montagnes
'with cathedrals as its only mountains'

I've found it in youtube with words -the meaning is not always clear cos it's poetry innit?
but there are English translations, of varying quality🙄available online

And here's a live version - charismatic or wha'?

I hear mutterings from Pedantry Corner that the Ardennes aren't flat, but Brel wasn't from that part of Belgium, and as I said before, it's poetry innit? 😏

Denmark is flatter than Belgium or the Netherlands but does have the towering and culturally significant Himmelbjerget Sky Mountain, 147 m high.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Himmelbjerget

Pattens, so I was taught at school, were like wooden shoe soles with block front and back, that you tied on over your ordinary shoes to lift them (and you, and your sweeping skirts) above the muck and mud of Medieval roads.

Ely Cathedral is indeed an absolute belter. Visible for miles, and really stunning, especially the Chapter House. It's a lovely town for a day out, too.

Ely Cathedral is indeed an absolute belter. Visible for miles, and really stunning, especially the Chapter House. It's a lovely town for a day out, too.

It's a city and has been since cathedrals made places cities. In think it's the second or third smallest city by population in England, though its acreage is vast and may still incorporate Cambridge. The See at Ely is still administratively important for Cambridge (now a city in its own right). There was a judgment by the diocese of Ely to.refuse Jesus College's application to remove a slave trader's plaque from their chapel.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/mar/23/church-court-rejects-cambridge-college-bid-to-move-tobias-rustat-slave-trader-memorial

I've been to East Anglia loads of times, usually to visit the reserves on or near the coast. I've never visited Ely. I really must rectify that. Perhaps next year.

I wanted to let you know what happened when we told DSD about the Christmas stockings.

We showed her on Friday because we're instigating it as a new tradition and wanted her to know that her usual small gifts to us (the Walrus gets a multipack each of Twirl and Wispa, and I get two of Lindt's dark sea salt chocolate) would go in our stockings and we would also get small gifts for her and each other and she can supplement us with small gifts if she wants. We always get her peppermint aero which ISNA tradition going back.to her childhood. (She's 32 and has SEN and lives with us full time.)

... and she immediately wanted to take it upstairs and keep it in her room. She really loves it. I'm blown away by just how much. I said it would be packed away with the Christmas stuff in January until next Christmas and she said no, she wants to keep it all year.

I think she really likes that I knitted her something. I might knit her a hat that matches as a Christmas gift...

I was just googling to try to find out more about the sunken boats at Ranworth Broad. What little I thought I knew was told to me by a man who piloted a boat trip. Any way I got distracted, Bluestockingers, meet Maud

Maud’s Story – Wherry Maud Trust https://share.google/IttN4rJfVFYZpjSbh

You can’t get better appreciation than that for your knitting, @MyrtleLion !
Well done💐

Aww what a lovely reaction.

On this side of the Atlantic, a 2003 study by researchers found that Kansas is indeed flatter than a pancake. Using laser microscopes to analyze the topography of a pancake from IHOP (International House Of Pancakes, a restaurant chain here) and comparing it to geological data for Kansas, they calculated Kansas's flatness at approximately 0.9997 compared to the pancake's 0.957.

💙Oh, that brought a lump to my throat, Myrtle. How lovely that your small kind gesture has brought your DSD so much pleasure. A home-knitted hat would make her Christmas utterly memorable.

Thank you. I was just offered a super easy free hat pattern on my Google home page, which was a surprise. So my apologies, there is unlikely to be a turquoise Christmas stocking available for the Woolly Hugs auction 2025.