The Bluestocking - your local women's pub, warm, friendly, and not at all unusual in any way.

[MarieDeGournay]

Welcome to The Bluestocking, the welcome is warm, the conversation is wide-ranging, the food and drink are delicious but magically free from anything they need to be free from, and the bar staff are highly-trained, professional, efficient and very friendly gerbils.

Need those. Where did you get them?

I've often found that the best thing to improve "bottom-of-the-fridge" soup.........

is to pour it down the sink and make yourself a toastie!

Amazon.

The options are the really expensive original with bendy legs or the cheap knock off with no bendy legs. All the cheap knock offs are no doubt coming from the same factory so I chose the cheapest and waited for them to come from China!

Just search sheep toilet roll holder (or ant toilet roll holder if you fancy an ant with a wheelbarrow)

I feel like mix and match might be in order!

There's loads of different ones, you could have a whole farm!

Baaa!

Thank you for the kind thoughts everyone, although I'm a little disappointed no-one had anything to say about my crochet news 😁

My toilet roll holder twin!

Can you explain this one, Boiley? Your house is a stash of oddness.

I'm still visualising the amount of yarn you will need to make an elephant

Apparently Aldi had a yarn sale that I missed! Could have come in handy.

Well done with the crochet! You can surely make an elephant one row at a time.
And the serendipitous birdwatching. I also saw a heron today…and geese (Canada, greylag, Egyptian and surprisingly a snow goose) and pelicans.

Marie, this touched me. And I am finding exactly the same about some “friends” too. Completely oblivious, it seems, to what has changed. It’s so shocking, to me.

Glad we have the Bluey. 💙💐

Thankfully I've only just popped in at this point so I can re-prioritise my post to say - a whole lot of crochet accomplished! brilliant, Cake, onwards and upwards etc till it's an elephant.

You saw a grey heron? that's super, they are such distinctive birds, aren't they? and they look like pterodactyls when they take off.

You are not alone about herbal teas!

And then there was the matter of the results you got today and to send you a big hug [delivered by Rosie] and well done for going to get checked cos that means they've got it early.

But it would be so much better if there was nothing to catch at all😞

We're here for you, its difficult but it'll be fine - you're getting really good at crochet now

@lcakethereforeIam that’s such a bugger! I wish you strength with all the horribly buggery buggerness 💙

One of the wonderful things about the internet (and about the Bluestocking in particular) is that you get lovely, sometimes funny, sometimes serious, sometimes moving, conversation from who-knows-where by people who are just minds floating onto the page. Things like aches and pains and disabilities are there but at that point don't intervene in the interaction.

I saw geese today, but I was driving at the time and they were flying overhead so I didn't try to ID them!

I agree with you both. When DH got cancer I was staggered by the number of people who looked the other way. I shall never forget.

Someone asked me about Patience; might have been you, Android? It’s too far to go back now I’ve posted….

I watched Patience first so had nothing to compare it to. It wasn’t too demanding, which I needed, so it suited me. I enjoyed it. I was gutted when the DI changed in S2 because I found the first one rather watchable (and she reminded me of an old friend). But, once S2 warmed up a bit I preferred the second one (brought more humour to it).

I think I’ve watched the first four Astrids. The first one was annoying because I already knew the plot from Patience so it was like watching a play I’d seen before. The second was different so that was better. I thought the DI in Astrid must have inspired the second DI in Patience. They even had the same hair!

I find Astrid fine. It’s easy watching and there’s a good few series, so it will keep me going for a bit. I notice I’m not as keen to turn it in tonight (and was keen to follow Patience) but that might just be because the novelty has worn off. I did think it sometimes seemed that Astrid had two different faces. Did anyone else notice that?

Yeah, Fuzzy. I shall never forget too.

💐💐💐

Thank you for saying that Swash.
There's definitely nowt as queer as folk, some of them are oblivious, some of them are self-centred, one or two may be uncaring, and I suspect a lot of them don't know how to handle what's going on.

A couple of my friends are somewhat on the autism spectrum - I don't think the term Aspergers is used any more? - and in their case, they just keep treating me as if nothing had changed because for them nothing has, I'm still me. So I know that they'll never change. I meet them where they are, they won't come to me - I meant that figuratively, though it's literally true too.

I think a lot of people don't know how to handle bereavement - should they say something, should they not, would it be opening up wounds that are starting to heal, if I say something will I upset them, if I don't say anything will it seem like I have already forgotten their loved one and their loss?

So avoidance can seem like the 'best'/easiest option.

I don't think it necessarily means that people don't care, I think a lot of them are just really really bad at knowing how to show they care.

That's not much comfort when people you thought would be around are not around when you would like them to be. Personally, though, it takes the edge off the disappointment - it's not that they don't care about me, they probably still do, they're just bloody useless at it
But there's probably still warmth for us in their hearts
💙

It no doubt does it during the day but I'm not around to hear it. When you flush the loo the water pipes in my house go all over the place and not just from a to b as they should. So flushing the loo causes the water tank that was originally in the loft but someone moved it down a level into a cupboard, in my bedroom (seriously do not know what the previous owner(s) were thinking.) to refill and it whistles as it finishes filling. It very noticeable at 3 in the morning if I have the two doors between me and it open. And don't even get me started on the sales literature for the house that described the water tank cupboard as a "walk in wardrobe" .

Did you buy it from a Mr Heath Robinson?

You often see the best in people, Marie, which is lovely.

And some of what you say might be true for some people some of the time. And some people, I’m afraid, are just self-centred superficial twats.

Not in the Bluey though…. 🙂

Plumbing by Heath Robinson, eh?😄