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.

On a completely different subject, I've been doing my Tesco online delivery order for tomorrow and have discovered that our local branch now stocks Tunnocks dark chocolate wafers at a much lower price than I could find on Amazon. My day is made...😊

Oops.
Soz.
<smacks wrist>

@lcakethereforeIam Bury St Ed's is also worth a visit. As is Norwich.

Aw @MyrtleLion that's so lovely!

I believe Rochester is a town with a cathedral. Used to be a city, but local rumour says the LA forgot to do some important paperwork and lost their "city-ness". Rochester also has a historically significant castle too, which is rather cool.
Personally I'm fond of St David's.

By an amazing coincidence, checking my emails brings up this:

'It's Black Friday Week at Chocolates Direct and have we got a packed week of offers for you.
We're kicking things off with 35% off all Lindt including our hand packed hampers and 50% off Reber Chocolates.
Watch this space for more deals to come through the week.

To claim 35% off Lindt now enter the code LINDT35 at the checkout unless already marked with discount.

Offers running from Sunday 23/11/25 to Monday 1/12/25 take a look at these amazing offers and grab a gift for a loved one this Black Friday.'

https://www.chocolatesdirect.co.uk/product-category/manufacturers/13/Brands/Lindt.htm

I was brought up in east Anglia and we’ve visited quite a bit between DD living in Cambridge, a holiday in Ipswich (not a typical destination) when she had a whole summer’s internship at BT, and some holidays on the Broads. The wildlife is fantastic.

Two lovely posts in a row - Myrtle's DSD loving her Xmas stocking so much, followed by Cake introducing us to another Maud💙

I've visited Norwich several times. On one occasion to buy an emergency stroller when ours unexpectedly broke. Don't think I've been to Bury St Edmunds. Love St David's, although I'm sure everything there is uphill. In both directions. I did visit Ipswich, can't remember why, and I'm in no rush to go back. Tbf, it was a miserable day. Is Lincoln the place where the cathedral spire is next to the cathedral rather than on it? If it is, I've been there and have faint but fond memories. I think I saw one of the Magna Cartas there.

Funny what sticks in your mind about Cathedrals.

Ely = loved it. I found a lovely spiritual book there & dithered but didn't buy it & regretted it afterwards & then couldn't remember enough about it to order it.

Salisbury = (a) there was an exhibition/rally of powerful cars outside & as we browsed a young chap came up, pointed to one & said, "Bit of a beast," made a snort-snort & went off again. It's become a family catchphrase, complete with awkward snorts. (b) another time we were having lunch there & a bloke at the next table put on a full horse's head & neck. As you do.

Winchester - OMG THE CROWDS!! I went for a flower festival & it was packed. Such a struggle to see anything.

Wells - sublime staircase, fabulous art exhibition & poem - the one about trailing clouds of glory. Hastens to consult Mr Google...

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting;
The Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting
And cometh from afar;
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!

Apol's to any atheists or agnostics. It was quoted in the exhibition, I think. Wordsworth.

I once had The Christmas Holiday From Hell in Ipswich.

shudders

Loving Mrytle's DSD's enthusiasm for her stocking, and the extra Maud.

Ipswich is fondly known locally as Shitswich.
And Bury St Ed's as BSE - 'Live in it but don't catch it!'

I think I have worked out who has done the Christmas window over at the Staunch Ally:
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5447921-to-say-that-my-husband-is-extremely-talented-pic-included

DS bringing his partner (P) to the Fens for the first time, commenting on the landscape looking eastward:
DS: You can see for miles and miles
P: But what is there to see?

If you travel to Ely from Peterborough on the train you can get a magnificent view of Ely Cathedral rising above the landscape. Bonus points if it’s early morning and you see the cathedral rising out of the mist.

That is a very talented husband.

He’s an HR manager - if he’s as good at that as he is with spray snow we know several companies which ought to hire him.

Cloudscapes is what you see much of the time! I’m sure the importance of landscape painting in British art is at least in part due to our weather and Constable being an East Anglian.

localish joke though is to try to get someone to ask ‘why Bury St Edmund’s?’ ….
….cos he’s dead

I didn’t RTFT but did see one exchange something like ‘is he a graffiti artist?’ ‘No, he’s an HR manager’ which for some reason I found funny.

I keep meaning to go to St Paul's, but for the eccentric reason that they've got a statue of Rollo Gillespie.

I have an ambition to someday write a book about Gillespie. He's almost completely forgotten now, but he was one of those mad buggers you used to get in the British Empire - while being the most splendidly Irish person you can imagine - who was a sort of James Bond circa 1800, and if you didn't know his adventures were true you'd never believe them.

We 'did' that poem in school, Android - 'Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood' by Wordsworth.

Newborns coming into the world from heaven, 'trailing clouds of glory' is a lovely thought
I haven't much experience of newborn babies, but I get the impression that they often start off with open eyes, which look very wise and knowing, so I can see where Wordsworth got the idea that they have come from somewhere else, and are sussing out their new abode.

Then after a while they close their eyes more and and go into sleep/eat mode.

On the basis of that observation, I think I should be awarded the title of Professor of Neonatal Paediatrics😁
[I'm assuming you've all seen the outbreak of professorships on the SM v BFF thread?]

Lincoln Cathedral is well worth a visit, one of the UK's finest IMO and visible from far away. The castle is also of interest and as PP said holds one of the 4 copies of the Magna Carta.

😂My first thought was, 'Finally, we've found a useful one!' but I'm jaded from reading about too many tribunals.

Some lovely news - 49 saplings grown from the Sycamore Gap tree are to be planted across the UK. One will be planted at Greenham Common, a place where the Guardian article says “became the biggest female-led protest since women’s suffrage.”

I remember you mentioned him before and I looked him up - a fascinating life!

Apart from being born on the island of Ireland, though, what was 'splendidly Irish' about him? He looks like he was very enthusiastically British.

A really amazing Irish adventurer was Arthur MacMorrough Kavanagh b.1831 - the fact that he had no arms or lower legs didn't stop him from becoming an excellent equestrian, and didn't hold him back from making an overland journey to India. He later becoming a unionist MP for his native Carlow.

,

Father (or is it Mother?) christmouse?

Oh my goodness I feel I need to make an apology. I wrote this in my last post:
"the fenlanders what collected reeds"

I am so sorry. I do genuinely know that it should be who, not what. I don't know what came over me.

I'm a bit all over the shop.
DH's wonderful best friend died very suddenly and unexpectedly this weekend. He was far too young.
I'll be back when I've recovered my equilibrium.