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.

Android, its Stargazy pie! A puffin's favourite. Thank you. Care to share- I'm sure all that fish oil would be good for your joints?

This isn’t far off, Android.
The cottage is extremely crooked all over. He was scratching his head a lot and had to keep going outside to saw more wood off as each shelf needed to be so different.

And, yes, he was a whistler!

I don't know, the design-your-own-t-shirt site I was on just asked to upload the photo and say that you weren't breaking any copyright laws etc.
We'll see, It's just for fun so I won't do it if it's too complicated!

Gosh but haven't the AI images got realistic! It seems like only yesterday there were extra arms and bad spelling...😟

Thank you, dear! A hot pie on a miserable damp day (well, it is round here) is a wonderful thing. Hope you feel better soon.

I was impressed the AI knew what stargazy pie is, especially when it can't tell 'in front' from 'behind'. But there, it makes it more human: we all have hidden depths of knowledge along with blind spots & other failings.

Sympathy to MrFrozen and you, that sounds very tough.

I'm sorry, Cher - my sympathies to you and Mr Frozen.

Well, if you start now... maybe next Christmas?

She sounds like one amazing woman (of course, you are as well). I started Googling her name and trying to find a biography. You don't happen to know of one do you?

I want to know how she packed in all that creative, educational, literary, political stuff into her life and managed to have time for those perfect ringlets.

Which reminds me - Sionnach?? please wave a healthy paw in this direction so I can tick you off my List of Concern
She's around, I saw her somewhere else earlier, possibly the Green arty thread.
Where do I sign up for the MdG club???

I've just read a post of hers on the Brigitte Phillipson thread, where the discussion is now a debate about Reform.

Well, I’d never heard of Stargazy pie either! Have done a google thing and it looks like a fairy tale dish. How exciting! I love pilchards. It’s an education here, innit.

Do you know the children's picture book The Mousehole Cat by Antonia Barber? This was where I first heard about stargazy pies. This is an animated adaptation of the book

No, I didn’t. I’ve just watched it. That was very lovely; thank you! 🥰

Am I going mad or can anyone else see what I can see in this photo?

A frightened polar bear cub?

A little dog?

I see a seal with feathers.

Gollum 😕?

@Boiledbeetle Where have you been this evening?

That's what I can see! If there is a dog in the loft it's being very quiet!

You haven't knocked down your partition wall, have you, Boily?

Ah, well looking to the right I can see some fleecy insulation, so if its that, it could just be the way it is arranged. A bit like seeing pictures in clouds. That must have given you quite a shock.

I'm not deid!

Just not particularly active at the moment because other things are going on. And January is a bad month for the ailments.

On the plus side, I'm most of the way through reading Simon Raven's Alms for Oblivion series, which I recommend to anyone with a nasty sense of humour. A deep dive into Barbara Pym is to follow.

Evening all. Working this morning then enjoying "kulchure" in That London this afternoon, then home via a cheese shop. I bought cheese.

I've been playing in the Bluestocking snooker tournament in the billiards room.

Quite a few gerbils have ended up in the pockets.

Thankfully the Bluestocking has it's own version of snooker and you get extra points for potting a gerbil. Triple if you pot one the same time as the black ball. Score goes back to 0 if you pot a gerbil at the same time as the pink ball though. So like Monolopy one game can go on for days.

To add to the fun the juggerler gerbil throws extra balls onto the table at random intervals and there are two cue balls so both players play at once.

I could do with some cheese right now, but I'm trying to cut down on dairy.

If anyone's interested in biographies, I have one from my genealogical studies into the extended family, Northern Nurse by Elliott Merrick. It was actually a bestseller back in the 1940s though it's little known today. My connection is not to Elliott, who became a well known conservationist, but to his wife Kate Austen, who's the subject of the book. Kate grew up in Australia but then, randomly enough, found herself working as a nurse in an isolated community in rural Canada.

It's an enjoyable read. I get the impression that rural settlements in Canada have a definite Craggy Island element to them.