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.

Phew! A large cafe latte please, gerbils and an even larger bacon sandwich, with ketchup.

I've been fighting a force 6 gale to plant the two camellias and some hellebores that I bought yesterday. Not the best day to do it, but the last chance before the rain comes in again tomorrow.

@Swashbuckled. If yer man is local, he's probably used to strangely shaped corners in the cottages. Is he one of the smugglers? 😉

I'm feeling slightly off colour today.
Storm Ingrid is still blowing and dropping far too much rain on us. The steps at the swimming beach seem to have disintegrated.

You have a swimming beach?

I'm sorry you're feeling a bit off-colour. Maybe stay inside the burrow for a while

It's properly cosy inside that burrow.

Everyone's popping in ... thanks to Boily suggesting you light the lamps!

Oh I love the cosy burrow pics and in a very un-mn way, I like visitors too. Thanks @inkymoose .

The swimming beach isn't mine, it belongs to the council. If I owned it, the steps would be properly maintained

Round the coast from us they're losing their (admittedly crap) pier!

I expect there's lots of snapping back of retractable metal measuring tapes, and that tuneless whistling that men do when they are putting up shelves and the likes...
Hope the result is to your liking

Sorry to hear you're not feeling great today, Fuzzy, hunkering down in your very well-appointed burrow with your Bluey friends seems like an excellent idea

Thank you to my Appreciation Society😘
On reflection, I think the concern for other people's feelings is from my mother, she always seemed to be managing a tangled web of making sure that Uncle This doesn't feel slighted if we visit Aunt That instead of him...
It was OTT, now I look back on it.

I try to filter out the OTTness of feeling an obligation to manage other people's feelings for them, but it looks like I'm stuck with a bit of if!

Which reminds me - Sionnach?? please wave a healthy paw in this direction so I can tick you off my List of Concern

Please include me in Marie’s appreciation society.

I forgot to add the image.

Love it! Basking in the appreciation😄

I like that image, that's a nice 'I may be wearing a frock with a ruff and flanked by roses, but that doesn't mean you can mess with me, capisce? ' look on her face.

This is lovely. We have some cheese plates that look a bit like this but without the glorious portrait in the middle!

Get well soon @FuzzyPuffling enjoy the chance to hunker down x

Do the gerbils have a badge making machine? That lovely image lends itself to being printed out and made into a pin badge.

I saw this and thought of someone....

Hello, all. I haven't been around for a bit. First because I was gallivanting and then because the gallivanting had to be cut short. Poor Mr Frozen-Face has lost yet another family member, unexpectedly. And this time not only is he the person shouldering the burden of the arrangements, it's all really complicated.

Anyway, sympathy to everyone facing troubles of various sorts, and drinks all round. Make mine a large one.

So sorry to hear about another sad loss in the family, and a sudden one, with a lot of responsibility and complications falling on your DH, and you. Take care of yourself x

I was seriously thinking of a t-shirt!
It would be fun because it's completely un-outing, nobody knows I am MdeG, but I could explain the t-shirt by saying that I am a big fan of the 16th-17th century French essayist and philosopher😄

Hm… I wonder how long that’d take a complete novice for a 12 petite length…

Cher! Sorry to hear your news. 💙

Woley, may I use your image to see about having a t-shirt printed? Is that OK?

Welfare delivery for Fuzzy!

I'm not sure those spirit levels are accurate...

Won't you need the original from Woley? Image size, pixels, etc.

The man is, indeed, from the secret fishermen’s pub. He’s not a night fisherman though, so not one of those smugglers. However, he was EXTREMELY reasonable (cash, of course) so he might be smuggling something or other somewhere.

I will need to finish them over the next few days. Then I’m looking forward to the fun part of putting things on them.