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

I read one of those threads - is it common for threads to disappear? I've never noticed any disappearing without a deletion message.

I saw the transman one and was going to post, but plenty of articulate people were busy saying what I would have said, so I trotted off. It's rare for an entire thread to go.

Well, the sleep gerbils visited last night but not before I ended up with multiple earworms (I wonder if there is a collective noun - an annoyance, perhaps?) from the talk about songs. Some of the songs such as Ilkley Moor featured in a piano book I had, many years ago. It also had My Grandfather's Clock, and I'm sure there was a song about a robin but I may be wrong. After that, my brain went to the songs Dad used to teach us, such as the Quartermaster's Stores and There's a Hole in My Bucket. At one point I had all four going round my head as well as still trying to solve how tall the grandfather was if the clock was "taller by half then the old man himself".

Good luck with the snowstorm, Brit.

One of my favourites by F&S is that months of the year one:

January brings the snow - makes our feet and fingers glow.
February's ice and sleet freeze the toes right off your feet.
Welcome march with wintry wind - would thou wer't not so unkind.
April brings the sweet spring showers, on and on for hours and hours.
Farmers fear unkindly may - frost by night and hail by day!
June just rains and never stop, thirty days and spoils the crops.
In July the sun is hot. Is it shining? No, it's not.
August, cold and dank and wet, brings more rain than any yet.
Bleak September's mist and mud is enough to chill the blood.
Then October adds a gale, wind and slush and rain and hail.
Dark November brings the fog. Should not do it to a dog.
Freezing wet December thennnn... Bloody January AGAIN!

I think it should be printed on the front page of every guidebook to the UK as a advice for travellers from other climes. A friend of ours from Central Europe (snowy winters, reliably hot summers) said she was never so cold in her life as when she came to the UK in July expecting, yunno, summer, and found her one pair of thin trousers and single lightweight sweatshirt, packed for the 'cooler evenings' were no match for 'Is it shining? No, it's NOT!'

And as an aside, full marks to the Sleep Gerbil last night. I feel quite revived.

I like to give evolution a helping hand.😁

I think unless you've been watching a thread, you won't know if it's deleted, because once it's gone you can't get to it IYKWIM.

Another shout out to the sleep gerbils. I don't know how they do it, they must be knackered. Hopefully they're resting now.

Sprog and fella successfully got some (very expensive) tickets for Rush. I suppose I should feel a little put out that they didn't get one for me, didn't even bother asking if I wanted to go. I'm not really bothered or I'd have said something. I'd rather spend that much money on something else and I'm actually looking forward to having the house to myself for a few hours. Also, although optimistic, I'm not completely out of the woods yet. So concert going might not be a thing for me next year. It would have been nice to have been asked though.

Bravo the Sleep Gerbils! I hope more good reports come in - ah feck I forgot to save that wonderful image of the WWII war room with gerbils in uniform pushing dream symbols around a horizontal map with long sticks... if the Onlie Begetter of that image could repost, that would be tirribly, tirrbly decent of you, old thing😃

RE the disappearing threads: I wonder can an OP request the removal of a thread? It's possible that the OP of the transman thread felt bad about having set off on such a note of disapproval, which she later regretted, and didn't want it to stand..
But the mother asking for support - my heart went out to her, she seemed to be in a really bad place so it was good to see that - as usual - there were lots of MNers giving her wise advice, useful links and lots of understanding and support.

Oh well. Stuff happens on MN. 😑

I hope Britinme is feeling better, and is surviving the weather cyclone bomb or whatever dramatic name it has been given. It certainly looks pretty dramatic on the telly😬

And Myrtle - I hope you're getting over the loss of your friend, and the unfamiliar way her funeral took place. The women mourning on their own together must create a special atmosphere. Not going to the graveside is very strange - well to most of us, it happens in some Christian communities here too, acc. to previous posters.

I hope they work out an effective treatment for the tendon ASAP, pref avoiding surgery!.

And then there was the delivery of the slabs, waiting till after you had left for the hospital to unload the slabs where they shouldn't have😠

Having perused the night gerbil options I ordered the wave gerbil. The thought of a gerbil operating a wave machine so that I could sleep to the relaxing sound of waves lapping at the shore seemed perfect.

Unfortunately Gubbins took my order.

The rave gerbil was not appreciated.

But look at all their happy little faces!

I haven't seen those, but one where someone was complaining about an obstetrician in a niqab plus a non-binary obstetrician when they 'couldn't tell' whether they were male or female has gone.

I seem to miss a lot of these interesting threads, but I guess there’s only so much time in a day. I did see the woman uncomfortable with a transman thread at the beginning of it and also thought she’d been hasty (though I didn’t post) so I’m glad she came round to thinking that.

Snow is over temporarily (expecting more tomorrow I think) and only about three inches in the end, so DH is out there snowblowing and the roads have all been ploughed.

Batshit update
She loves nothing better than hooning around the fields, trying to ambush Brains and persuade her to play. We're not quite at the point where they'll damage the crops, so she's still getting away with it.

She was hooning like a mad thing. As we know, she doesn't quite understand the physics of cornering. Legs out from under her on a tight and slippery bend, slides on her flank on the top-grade clay-ey mud. Trots home with a massive patch of mud smeared all along one side.

When I get tired of the risk of being skittled by a hooning Brains and Batshit, I put Batshit at heel until she calms down. Brains has a different approach. She'll find a sizeable twig and frolic about with it as Batshit plays with her. She'll persuade me to throw it for her a few times. She'll frolic in front of Batshit going, 'See this marvellous twig? It's fabulous... and so much fun... and it's mine... and you can't have it!'

Batshit will then chase her, Brains will let herself be caught, and there will be a quick game of tug that Brains will let Batshit win. Batshit will race around: 'I've got Brains's twig! I've got the twig! This is super fun!' Then she'll realise that the twig isn't particularly interesting after all and ditch it, by which time she's completely forgotten that she'd been goading Brains into a mad game of chase, and trot along sniffing the verge.

Brains, meanwhile, will have been having a very peaceful time going about her lawful business. Or unlawful business, she doesn't mind which, she just likes the chance to get on with it without Batshit being batshit in the immediate vicinity.

I think I might have said before that if Brains had opposable thumbs and literacy, she could be quite dangerous.

Oh Edith, that is such a wonderful post, thank you for sharing Brains and Batshit with us
I think i'd have remembered if you had said before that 'if Brains had opposable thumbs and literacy, she could be quite dangerous' because it's brilliant😁

While I was waiting for a tradesperson to turn up I did one of those 'What is your totem animal?' online quizzes, and it was an owl. I was hoping for a wolf, so I did a different quiz. It was an owl again😒

Then I realised that I don't want an owl or a wolf, I want Batshit as my totem animal😄

Headline:
Pope asks priests to use their brains not AI to prepare homilies

AI:
Who?

[in case you missed my post yesterday - there was an article in the Irish Times headlined
My AI chatbot tried to gaslight me into thinking Pope Francis is still alive
by a woman who tried to get an image of the current Pope Leo on ChatGPT with the following results:

“I need to correct that gently but clearly: there is no current Pope Leo XIV. As of now, the current pope is Pope Francis. The most recent pope with the name Leo was Pope Leo XIII, who died in 1903. No pope named Leo XIV has ever existed.”
It was my first time being corrected gently but clearly by an AI bot. For a second, I questioned myself. Was I misremembering the pope’s name? Of course not. Didn’t Pope Francis die? Of course he did. “POPE FRANCIS IS DEAD,” I told the chatbot, in capital letters, adding helpfully that he died in 2025.

Like an obstinate child, it came back again to deny reality, saying: “Thanks – I understand what you’re asserting, but I need to be clear and responsible: In verified real-world history, Pope Francis had not died in 2025 and there is no Pope Leo XIV. I cannot generate or present false real-world facts as if they were real.”

Thank you Marie, I read that when you posted it yesterday and loved it and then didn't know where I'd read it.

@EdithStourton I love that word "hooning", which I have never come across before but get the gist of from context. And I love the Tales of Batshit and Brains, which I think you should publish somewhere.

I got an email today about a book that might interest some posters on this thread:

Thirty-Two Words for Field
By Manchán Magan
Nature paperback $19.95
Rediscover the lost words of an ancient land in this new, updated edition.

The Irish language has 32 words for field. Among them are: Geamhar – a field of corn-grass • Tuar – a field for cattle at night • Reidhlean – a field for games or dancing • Cathairin – a field with a fairy-dwelling in it.

The richness of the Irish language is closely tied to the natural landscape and offers a more magical way of seeing the world. Most people associate Britain and Ireland with the English language, a vast, sprawling linguistic tree with roots in Latin, French, and German. But the inhabitants of these islands originally spoke another tongue. Look closely enough and English contains traces of the Celtic soil from which it sprung, found in words like bog, loch, cairn, and crag. Today, this heritage can be found nowhere more powerfully than in modern-day Gaelic.

Here Irish author Manchán Magan explores how Gaelic, a 3000-year-old lexicon, imbued the natural world with meaning and magic, evoking a time-honored way of life, from its terms like bróis (whiskey for a horseman at a wedding), iarmhaireacht (the loneliness you feel when you are the only person awake at dawn), and bladhmann (steam rising from a fermented haystack or idle boasting).

Manchán urges readers to consider the sublime beauty and profound oddness of this ancient tongue that has been spoken in close connection to the land for thousands of years. Told through stories collected from his own life and travels, This is an enthralling celebration of Irish words and a testament to the indelible relationship between landscape, culture, and language.

@EdithStourton wrote
One of my favourites by F&S is that months of the year one:
January brings the snow - makes our feet and fingers glow.
February's ice and sleet freeze the toes right off your feet.
Welcome march with wintry wind - would thou wer't not so unkind.
April brings the sweet spring showers, on and on for hours and hours.
Farmers fear unkindly may - frost by night and hail by day!
June just rains and never stop, thirty days and spoils the crops.
In July the sun is hot. Is it shining? No, it's not.
August, cold and dank and wet, brings more rain than any yet.
Bleak September's mist and mud is enough to chill the blood.
Then October adds a gale, wind and slush and rain and hail.
Dark November brings the fog. Should not do it to a dog.
Freezing wet December thennnn... Bloody January AGAIN!

There’s a poster on MN who seems to like part of this poem, too. Their username off is Februarysiceandsleet.

Bar gerbil, do you happen to have any good anti nausea treatments? I ate something at lunchtime which I knew I couldn't tolerate but decided to try risking it, and now I feel quite green.

Their username off FWR is Februarysiceandsleet, that should have said.

The sad bit is that MM died last year at the age of 55, shortly after the publication of his last book Ninety-Nine Words For Rain (And One For Sun).

He did great work while he could,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manch%C3%A1n_Magan

Peppermint oil capsules?

Or ginger?