The Bluestocking Women’s Pub: Where Clever Women Sit and Think, While Gerbils Run the Bar.

[MyrtleLion]

Come in. Yes, you’re in the right place. No, you don’t need to explain yourself.

Coats will be drycleaned before you depart. Bags won't be stolen because Gubbins will play her triangle. And you really don't want to hear it.

The gerbils run the bar.
They are small, brisk, and unionised.
One is polishing a glass with unnecessary seriousness.
Another is keeping the tab and will remember what you ordered last time.
There is a triangle involved. No one knows why. It keeps Gubbins happy.

Sit. Think. Drink. Join in.

The gerbils have it from here.

Previous thread...
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5481554-the-bluestocking-womens-pub-definitely-full-of-ludicrous-halfwits-who-refuse-to-get-a-grip-with-unionised-gerbils

I’m not sure pheasants have the cognitive ability required for play.
Hares otoh ….our first dachshund once ambitiously set off in pursuit, up a fairly steep slope, followed by DH… some time later I discovered the latter hanging onto the dog in a ditch where he’d eventually rugby-tackled him (short dogs are very hard to catch!) while the hare looked on decidedly unfazed.
Or magpies - we used to watch one standing on the ridge of a building behind the house while our cat stalked along…when he was just within pouncing distance the magpie would calmly fly to the other end. Turn around and repeat….

Thank you Marie . He's definitely improving. 🙂

That's good, you must have been worried yesterday.
You could declare a Puffling Pancake Day when he feels much better, and gorge on pancakes with all the fillings you had to forego when he wasn't well yesterday

Oh dear - I didn't mean 'Puffling Pancake' as in puffling pancake😱😁

I could, but it is now Lent, which we observe, so he's missed the pancake boat for 6 weeks!

Also, anyone thinking of avoiding the Lenten "no meat" rule by saying puffins are fish, and eating them, might I suggest you desist?

Paddington Bear death stare to ye olden monks 🐻

Despite fantasising about them, I didn't have any pancakes yesterday, as I'm sticking to my low-carb regime until Easter (virtue signalling🙄). So I lived vicariously through all your descriptions of the ones that were eaten and they sounded excellent. Definitely given me some ideas for the future.

The good news is that I've lost 3-and-a-bit kilos since Christmas (the bit is very important!).

I spent most of yesterday in the garden, but the wind has veered round to the East again today and it's nitherin',* so I'm sorting out cupboards instead.

*nitherin' - old Yorkshire term meaning to make you tremble with cold.

I’m not sure pheasants have the cognitive ability required for play.
Pheasants haven't the cognitive ability for much at all. They can't judge speed. Just yesterday, a big cock-bird launched himself up from the verge just as I approached, and the windscreen missed him by a few feet. He was of course indignantly shouting his head off at the time.

Hares OTOH - apparently if a dog chases one of a pair of hares, as it tires the other will 'pick up the course' - get the dog to chase it instead. And by the time dog is completely knackered and returns to the form where it found the parents and the leverets, the leverets have of course sodded off. I heard this from a bloke who claimed this had happened to his dog while he watched, and I was slightly incredulous, so ran (haha) the story past a gamekeeper who, at the end of every section said, 'Ye-ah, hare'll do that... Ye-ah, that's what they do....'

And @MarieDeGournay do not be misled by cute stories of B&B. They are prey-driven little monsters. The approved command for 'stop hunting' is 'gone away'. At times the two of them are circling a thicket and I call, 'Gone away!' and they pause and look at me as if to say, 'Are you fucking demented? There is a muntjac/ woodcock/ rabbit in there!' And then they sigh and, like good girls, trot over to me.

Of course! That was very remiss of me, I blame the lack of adequate caffeine for forgetting that the whole point of Mardi Gras was to get rid of the fancy food before Lent started🙄
Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa, or as naughty altarboys used to murmer 'Me a cowboy, me a cowboy, me a Mexican cowboy'

So Mr Puffling can look forward to Easter Egg-filled Pancakes😄

And don't worry, we'll see off any olden monks who approach Chez Puffling bearing cutlery....

Which makes me wonder - what is French for puffin? It never cropped up in conversation when I lived there
Google Translate say macareux.... hmmmm not as cuddly a word as 'puffin', is it? and unpleasantly close maquereau which means pimp😕

I feel sorry for Francophone puffins, they'll never sound as lovely as our own dear Fuzzy Puffling

I'm shocked, I tell you, shocked, Edith - I assumed that the term 'game dog' meant that they love playing games with smaller creatures.
Not.

So hare today, gone tomorrow is the tactic, eh?

It's interesting that a command can overrule their hunting instinct - or maybe
they just prefer the dogfood you give them in a nice shiny bowl instead of having to kill their own😄

😳😬 That sounds like the voice of experience.

As life lessons go, it's right up there with keeping your coffee on a different shelf from your gravy granules.

😁
They've taken a lot of work to make them into the passably well-mannered dogs that they are today.

@AuntieMsDamsonCrumble well done on the weight loss. I'm not fat, but I am carrying a surplus. I'm hoping that cutting out booze, chocolate (unless cooked with) and commercial cakes and biscuit for Lent will help me drop a bit. But have a guest for tea, and I have made biscuits...

I don't often do Nature Notes, but:

I just found out there are frogs in my garden pond!
I found out by seeing one of them go down the gullet of a heron!
I hope there was more than one!
Herons look like pterodactyls when they take off!

☺️ clearly restaurant reviewers don't judge by the same criteria as me!

I used to get frogs in the garden in wet weather. The cat would catch them. He didn't eat them or anything, I think he just found it amusing to catch a frog and then put it down and watch it hop around.

I wondered why the Corsodyl was burning...I'd only done all the top teeth at that point. Hurriedly rinsed everything out.

Do not recommend.

The second emoji is what I looked like when I was checking for missing gums.

Poor you. Not nice. 😟

I wonder if the frog laid any spawn before"meeting" the heron? You may find your garden full of hopping froglets in a few weeks time - and becoming a regular heron pitstop.....

@EdithStourton wrote: I'm hoping that cutting out booze, chocolate (unless cooked with) and commercial cakes and biscuit for Lent will help me drop a bit.

That’s a lot, all at once. Fingers crossed.

But have a guest for tea, and I have made biscuits...

I rarely bake, but that Lenten devotion might make me start increasing my cooking, guest or not.

We all know that Sundays don’t count during Lent, don’t we?

We all know that Sundays don’t count during Lent, don’t we?
We do!

It's cold and rainy here, just for a change. The Magpie-mobile has passed its MOT though, so that's good.

Marie, I used to work right next door to the Regent's Canal. We had a few resident herons which I was reliably informed used to nick fish from the penguins at London Zoo.

I am being a bit sorry for myself today. I’ve done something to a muscle in my hip, which cramps agonisingly any time I try to move it, and makes standing and walking - even round the house - very difficult. Dh has been looking after me, but he had to go away for work today - just for the day - but I pretty much freaked out about having to cope without him. Ds3 has been working from home, and has been a massive help, but I was still feeling hard-done-by.

I know I am being unreasonable, and everything has been fine (I didn’t fall over in the bathroom and need picking up by ds3, or fall down the stairs or fail to get out of bed unaided), but I do worry a bit about how I cope when ds3 leaves home - he is looking to buy a flat later this year. It sounds so wet and wimpy, but just the effort of getting downstairs, making coffee, letting the dogs out and giving ddog2 her anti epilepsy meds is too much for me, so how will I cope if ds3 isn’t here to do it? It is so unfair for dh too - he needs the odd day away - and some days are vital for his job and can’t be done by Teams, so I shouldn’t be guilting him about going - but I did.

I have self-medicated with peanut M&Ms, and given myself a bit of a talking to.

That sounds miserable Woley, but I definitely approve of your choice of self-medication. Are there any gadgets or other adjustments you could use to make things easier?

Thank you, @Magpiecomplex - if my hip doesn’t improve, I might get a wheely walker (rollator?) to use round the house - I have one for using out and about, but it is too big and clunky for indoors. But I’m hoping that my hip muscle will settle down, if I give it time and ibuprofen (and chocolate, of course). It may be that the new exercises I’ve been given have aggravated my hip, so I’ll check with my physio when I see her next week.