The Bluestocking, where the cheese is plentiful and the Champagne is on Boiledbeetle

[Magpiecomplex]

Welcome one and all. Quick précis - women's pub, rodent staff, apparently we're sane.

That's the kind of anaesthetist you want!

Yes, indeed!

Well done!
I can’t walk that fast now, hurts my ankles. Mind you, I think my legs are significantly shorter than yours so I probably have to take a lot more steps for the same distance.

Colin is looking at me querulously… yeah, it’s embarrassing being easily outpaced by a dachshund.

Well, even if their legs are shorter they do have twice as many, which evens things out.

I've chickened out of going to the gym this weekend - don't want to negotiate icy paths and roads.

Ordered my main meal from a local restaurant. According to their website, my mince and tatties have been delievered. No, they havenae!

The place is now closed, but I've left a message. I'm not out any money - I was to pay cash at the door. Have now ordered fish and chips from Just Eat.

I know...Should be better prepared, but my groceries have run down and I'm not wanting to risk slipping on ice. Next time, I might have to brave a Morrison's or Asda's delivery, but I've been put off by previous experiences - some of their delivery folk are excellent; some less so, and I find that I tend to get bashed items.

I didn’t chicken out of the gym.

coz I never go in the first place lol

I'm usually a 3mph walker, except in cities where I walk faster to get it over with (unless sightseeing). Our current walking pace is controlled by the amount and type of mud. The worst is a slippery layer over rock hard (possibly still frozen) ground. I trod on a frozen molehill when out dog training today to see what would happen to it. Answer: nothing.
Batshit was gaily running through frozen puddles, ice-breaking as she went.

I was hoping 2026 would be an improvement Chez Stourton, but it's still like living in Eastenders for drama, stress, hassle and unexpected revelations. I was drinking whisky at 5pm... Not a habit to get into.

We keep thinking that the next thing will be when we get the phone-call about Disastrous Diagnosis (now in the hospice), but something else manages to happen. They have all been minor in the grand scale of things, but they just keep coming: boiler issue, buggered car...

I just want a month off, and then feel pathetic because, as I say, they're not big problems when viewed in perspective.

Whisky.

Edited for fat fingers.

mince and tatties
Mince and taters, as we call that delectable dish in these parts.

I was giving a friend a lift recently and we spent most of the journey discussing mince and taters: our mothers' recipes, how we make it, when we last had it, whether one does or does not put tomato ketchup or Worcester Sauce on it. Are the spuds mashed, or just boiled and served with butter on them? Does one have it with cabbage or carrots? And the great philosophical questions like, it still mince and taters if you put garlic in it? Or is that just an update or does it, at that point, become Foreign Food?

Neither of us can discuss this with our partners, as they're both from posher backgrounds than we are, and mince and taters wasn't on their childhood menus.

Your granny always made the best mince and tatties though.

I do believe garlic has been used for centuries, and ransoms the wild version

@EdithStourton I began to suspect that my uni (ex-private school) boyfriend wasn't for me when he castigated me for tidying my plate when we were having a meal out: "There are people paid to do that!" (It wasn't a posh restaurant.)

Later, he complained that my middle name was "common". (He was a Kelvinside Academy boy.) I got my revenge. By then I was in teacher training and - courtesy of pupil puns - was able to counter with "Duncan make yer grass grow!"

My late husband was from Aberdeenshire. He was shocked that some people in Fife use corned beef in order to make stovies. I agree with him on that point.

Update

My fish and chips arrived and I have been fed.

Rosie has got back-up because hugs are much needed here this evening💙

I made a chicken curry in the slow cooker a few days ago. It wasn’t great, but there was enough for three meals. Has it for the third and final time tonight and I was glad to see the back of it.

I was like that with the turkey etc. It was only a butterfly turkey, bu I had to freeze half. It lasted until 2nd January.

My sympathies. It was a bit shit on day one, to be honest, but I felt I had to persevere.

That is so true @Taztoy! I still remember my gran's mince and tatties with cabbage. She used to put a pinch of bicarb in the cabbage, which made it bright green!

And a rice pudding (with skin) for afters 😬

@WearyAuldWumman I was once throughly castigated in Aberdeenshire for asking if they did a vegetarian stovie.
Not for the stovie, so much as for being English! (Do only English people refuse meat?)

Granny McBoiled certainly did.

If I think about her kitchen I can taste them now, despite her having been dead 40 years.

She is the granny that made coconut tablet and took the recipe with her!

Aa they English fowk wi their weird ideas...

Oh, we definitely have vegetarians in Scotland. TBH I've never encountered vegetarian stovies. I'm trying to figure out the recipe: add butter, onions, leeks? Parsnips, maybe?

Onions and leeks yes but....Add cheese. Lots of it.

NB I am married to a Scot, but not an Aberdonian!

I think it's been years since I've encountered cocoanut tablet.

The Treasury off Princes Street (Edinburgh) often offers genuinely home-made tablet.

Is there any cheese that you recommend?

Oh aye. Aye better with the skin on.

Cheddar. A good bit of strong cheddar.