The Bluestocking - Best Pub on the Internet

[EdithStourton]

Welcome to the Bluestocking women's pub. Excellent (if sometimes wilful) gerbil bar staff, varied cocktails, splendid cakes, cracking Sunday roasts...

Voted Best Pub for the umpteenth thread running, join us for conversation about tractors, units of measurement, films, wildlife, and even, sometimes, women's rights.

Just keep Glenda off the gin.

Any men, you can trot along to the Staunch Ally just up the road.

I can confirm this from my personal experience.
You drive out all the snakes, Patrick, and I'll replace them with cats'
'Oh grand so, Gertrude'
Love this quote @MarieDeGournay

There's Cat Cafe in the Bluey??
I'm off to join St Gertrude and @ChristmasStars for a coffee and cake!

Great!

Beautiful day here. We were going to go out for the day but DH had a couple of important parcels due, one of which still hasn’t arrived. So we’re doing garden stuff - he’s mowing the front lawn, no idea where he’s going to put the grass as the brown bin is full already with buddleia and dogwood. I need to go and start shifting some of the many pots off the patio as it’s perfect weather for its spring clean.

Just breathe on it @ErrolTheDragon and have a small bonfire 😄

You need a compost heap Errol.
Everyone needs a compost heap.

I've got two large compost bins and a chicken-shit-and-woodchip mound and two brown garden waste bins, and we still have sacks of prunings to go to the tip. The lavatera gets flipping enormous.

I went to my physio class in the pool this morning, had a coffee in the garden with a neighbour, went for a cuppa with some other friends and just had our Muslim neighbours bring a big tray of vegetable samosas and pakoras over. I bloody love Ramadan! They always send over a big tray of food at least once, and I give fresh eggs and baked goods.

Now building the outdoor storage for the power chair.

Had my online language lesson and then nipped up the road for my Stretch class, followed by using the adductor in the gym.

Thought about doing the lat pull, but it was in use so had lunch. Thought again about lat pull, but lower back is a wee bit sore and I'm not risking injury these days.

Took a packet full of Sight and Sound mags from the '90s to the post office to send to someone who's teaching film studies and DH's old leather jacket to Barnardo's. I think it's just going in their recycling pile but it doesn't fit anyone I know and I can let it go cos I never really liked him in that one and he'd not worn it for years.

That sounds very productive, Weary!

I do need one, but we had a rat problem a few years ago which led to Mr Dragon getting rid of ours.

we got our food recycling caddies today though, our area hasn’t had them since a trial quite a while ago…maybe now it’d only be garden waste not peelings etc. to compost I might be bel to persuade him to rethink.

The gynaecologist was terrific. She's ordered more blood tests and told me to do more HRT. She says some of my difficulties are probably related to the connective tissue disorder of unknown origin that they think I have. It means I have a lot of symptoms but no known cause.

I did actually feel as if someone had finally listened to me.

Return visit in two months.

That sounds as though you're making progress, @MyrtleLion ?

TMI to follow:

I'm now on a combination of Mirena coil, Elleste single 1mg and Vagirux and my UTIs etc appear to have diminished, thank goodness.

I think so. I had to come off HRT for my operation and couldn't go back on it for four months because of a minuscule risk of clots. Cue simultaneous eyerolls from the doctor and me. The risk is so tiny it's higher on the pill which I took for decades.

I'm on Elleste Duo, estradiol pessaries and estradiol cream and things should improve.

As we're sharing...I went to the Breast Clinic yesterday to find out the pathology results and to have the wound checked. I saw the surgeon who had done the surgery. She told me I was healing very well, to which I replied thank you 😊 like she'd given me a compliment. She said they found a tumour but it was teeny tiny and the non-invasive stuff wasn't as clear of the margins of the flesh that had been removed as they would have liked. My case is going to be discussed tomorrow and I have another appointment next week when, I assume, I'll be told what they recommend. Possibly more surgery to remove a bit more. She doesn't think for such a small tumour they'll bother with my lymph glands. But if more surgery is warranted because of the margin thing, they might take a sample if I do have another general anaesthetic.

I'm thankful for all the good wishes here. I'm aware though that some of you have been through similar. I'm sorry if this is bringing back bad memories for anyone. I don't wish to 'trigger' any upset, as I believe they say in the vernacular nowadays.

The picture of the be-sweatered puffins has me going

There once was a puffin who went to sea
The name of the puffin was Fuzz-uz-zee 🎶

I can't remember how the rest of it goes. Something to do with tongues? Very useful for accumulating sand eels.

Very good to read you were happy with your gynaecologist visit @MyrtleLion and your very encouraging morning, @CoutingCrones

It’s @NotAtMyAge who had two particularly good nights of sleep, Worley, although I did, too. Amitriptyline helps mine. Prescribed to me in a low dose for pain, but has many useful side-effects.

It’s interesting to read about the US high school bands coming over for the Dublin parade. I remember many ‘Gala Days’ from my childhood 60 years ago, with much lower-key but still loved parades through the streets.

We happened to be on holiday in Sheringham perhaps a couple of years ago when it was their Gala week. A parade was advertised: I thought I might as well watch it as I was there anyway. I was amazed at how many people there were lining the streets to watch, clapping and cheering as the various groups went by, including at least one group from a local dance or theatre school, with tiny children dancing past. It was delightful.

Gah-la or Gay-la? I’d say the former now, but then it was Gay-la.

@lcakethereforeIam

The only Fuzzy song that I ever knew was:

Fuzzy Wuzzy was a bear,
Fuzzy Wuzzy had no hair!
Fuzzy Wuzzy wasn't fuzzy...
Was he?

There's something about 'a barber's shop' and:

But when they took his crop away
He wasn't what he used to was!
Cos!

Fuzzy Wuzzy was a bear,
Fuzzy Wuzzy had no hair!
Fuzzy Wuzzy wasn't fuzzy...
Was he?

Fuzzy Wuzzy wasn't fuzzy, was he!

ETA AAAAAAAARGH! Accidentally quoted the full post. Sorry!

Cake, I'm very sorry the results of your surgery aren't as clear-cut as you hoped. Sending best wishes for your appointment next week. If you do have to have extra surgery, it's good that nowadays they take only one node to sample, which shouldn't leave any after-effects. When I had the lumpectomy for my first bc diagnosis 27 years ago, it was standard practice to clear the whole first level of nodes, even for very small tumours. How surgery has improved in the past quarter of a century.

I have been.both Fuzzy Custard and Fuzzy Pheasant on here, before the Puffling incarnation, so a bear.is fine.

Cake, I hope everything goes well for you from now onwards, although you didn't get quite the ringing endorsement you were hoping for after surgery.

And I hope that all the things being taken by Myrtle and WAW have the desired effects

Dearest Cake, I'm sorry everything isn't as crystal clear as you hoped. Bodies are strange and wonderful things until they go wrong, when they become a mystery to all.
I shall hold you in my heart for a proper plan, a clear way ahead and no further worries.

Best wishes to all Stockingers with ailments <3

i went for an intake chat and a tour of the gym I signed up to yesterday and did a mile or so on the treadmill so go me! They offer a beginners Tai Chi class on Thursday mornings so I shall try that out - I’ve always fancied trying Tai Chi.

Apologies that I didn’t notice Woley “autocorrected” to Worley.
Cake, my best wishes for the next few days, and after.

I’m not brave enough to start a new thread, perhaps someone else is as I write, but wanted to share the good news that Police Scotland will now record biological sex and that facilities advertised as single sex should only be used by members of that sex and not their self-described gender.

Links from that page also led me to articles about Joanna Cherry (“The rengade Nat is set to reveal how her party became in thrall to the transgender lobby and ditched its independence campaign”) and ‘Controversial Sandie Peggie statement.’ (NHS Fife secretly briefed the Scottish Government about its controversial Sandie Peggie statement - which led to an angry rebuke from the Scottish Information Commissioner. In the middle of the July hearings, the health board put out an infamous 1,700 press release where it accused charity Sex Matters of inflaming violence towards staff members.)

I can’t say it better than that

Dinnae fash yersel’, @AsWithGlad!

lovely weather here today - after clearing and cleaning the patio and path I stayed out weeding (mostly incursions of grass from the lawn) and tidying until 6pm - in just a t shirt! (Well, obviously not just a top).