The Bluestocking Inn, cocktails and cocoa and all

[DeanElderberry]

Opening soon in a salubrious location.

And thanks to the miraculous qualities, although we will indeed have

One-steps and two-steps and the divil knows what new steps
We know that we never would be dull again, bedad
We'll have wine, porter and lemonade.
We'll have cocktails and cocoa and all
We'll have champagnes tonight
But NO real pains next morning
Tonight when we dance at the Bluestocking Ball

slight apologies to Frank Harte

You are spoiling us, Cake - so much in one post: folklore, botany, toponymy, nature and a joke about flip-flops
Which are named after the French designer Philippe Phloppe...
I'll get my manteau..😁

I love stoats and weasels.

'We love you back, Cake!'

Twenty years ago last year I had a mastectomy for a bc recurrence at the John Radcliffe hospital in Oxford. My female surgeon didn't do reconstruction. Her speciality was giving those who didn't want reconstruction the best possible result. At 59 I was perfectly willing to have to wear a prosthesis as long as it was comfortable. I knew too many older women whose surgery had been done by general surgeons, not specialists, and who had been left with horribly uneven and bumpy scarring, so that they were never really comfortable. When the dressing was removed after my op, I couldn't believe how fine and smooth and flat the scar was, even before it had completely healed. Now it is virtually invisible. She had obviously taken such care to achieve that and I've always been grateful she was my surgeon.

The saying I grew up with was "When gorse is in bloom, kissing's in fashion." 😁

Funny - just the other day I was thinking about I-forget-what:

'Tis flyin' in the face of nature. Still, it might be worth a try.

I would re-read Cold Comfort Farm, but I lent my copy to someone in the 1980s (you know who you are) & I've yet to get it back.

I've got Cold Comfort Farm on my TBR pile, but that constantly gets higher, and I'm enjoying some Len Deighton at the moment.

I've checked out animals native to NE USA & some of them don't seem very conducive to sleep & sweet dreams: the blacktip shark, the screech owl & the snapping turtle aren't going to do anyone any favours late at night.

So I've gone with chipmunks.

An accidental alternative image (Gemini is vvvv slow today).

My intended alternative, once I hit the right prompt.

I answered the door the other day to a delivery guy, tatty van parked on the road behind him. He had a parcel for fella. He'd ordered a cheese knife after being unable to find the type he wanted in a shop. The delivery fella wanted my date of birth. I refused to tell him, that's personal information imo. I understand why he asked, following orders because of knife crime laws. But anyone looking at me could tell I was over eighteen. As it happened fella heard us squabbling and came to the door. Delivery bloke just asked him for his birth year! Which he gave and knife was delivered. Fella doesn't gaf and would probably have happily told him his NI no., PIN, mother's maiden name...

AI says it's personal information.

I take neighbours parcels and refuse to sign anything or give details, if they dont like it well tough.

I love the Sleep and Dream Chipmunks and Raccoons, Android.
I think the Raccoons look very stylish, though I suppose Chipmunks are a bit more cuddly..

The problem with both of them is their tails - I know if we're talking flying on gossamer wings, aerodynamics shouldn't really come into it - but I worry about them being able to maintain altitude with those tails..

Can Bluestocking magic overcome the drag? [no not that kind😃]

I thought gophers might be a candidate and looked for some cute pictures, and found this:
A different approach to Sleep Gerbilling from the North American Sleep Gopher:

'OK now see here, the way this works is I come along and tell you to go to sleep and you go to sleep, capisce? And when I say sleep, I mean sleep, you stay asleep all night, or else..

Dream Gerbil? I don't know from any 'Dream Gerbils', just consider yourself lucky you got the Sleep Gopher and not my associate the Insomnia Skunk...

I have often thought when telling various hounds what angeldogs they were, that they'd need a second set of wings in the hip area.

Cats will just waft under the power of their own superiority.

It's years since I've re-read Cold Comfort Farm, and you've now just sent me to the riverine website, where it is currently available on the US site for $2.99 on Kindle, which I do not begrudge paying.

Tails, correctly used, are no hindrance to flight and can be used to help with steering. If you don’t believe me, ask Magpie.
Of course they’re not much use if they’re just hanging like wet string.

I stand corrected - and in fear of a swipe of your dragontail😄

Ever since I read CCF, all convolvulus is 'sukebind' and any light commercial vehicle is 'One o' they Ford Vans'

I'm not convinced by the idea of sleep or dream racoons. I thought that they spend all night banging garbage bins together and shouting at each other.

The fluffiness of a tail could be an issue, but slicking it down with gel would sort that

There's a line in one of the DH Lawrence poems I was obliged to 'do' at A Level which goes something like, 'What if gorse should die and kissing be lost?'
Our English teacher said he had no idea what it meant. I was the class's token rustic and had to explain.

They also like climbing in and out of bins, and searching the bins thoroughly when in them, such that the bins vibrate and shake and make pissed students stumbling home think that they're hallucinating.

So I was told by an American, anyway.

I had a similar experience with a Seamus Heaney poem at school (Digging, I think). My English teacher was convinced it's talking about broadcast sowing potatoes, which she apparently thought was a thing. I had to make a point about harvesting potatoes, but resisted the temptation to elaborate by saying that fresh produce doesn't, in fact, grow its own plastic packaging.

I am neither rural nor rustic, but when I was doing A levels I ended up explaining to the class and the teacher the meaning of the first line in a poem called Wessex Guidebook by Louis MacNeice we were studying:

Hayfoot; strawfoot; the illiterate seasons
Still clump their way through Somerset and Dorset

You guys are very clever so you probably all know this anyway, but the class didn't and I had just read (in a Readers Digest my mum had) that new country-boy recruits who were illiterate didn't always know left from right, but they all knew the difference between hay and straw, so the sergeant would tie a wisp of hay to the left foot and a wisp of straw to the right. So not exactly country knowledge but at least the RD was useful for something!

https://www.best-poems.net/louis-macneice/wessex-guidebook.html