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.

@WearyAuldWummanthe class I’m going to try out is at the gym I just signed up to, which is specifically for people over 50. Of course I could fall flat on my face rather than doing those lovely graceful swooping movements!

I am rather pleased with myself today. It was below freezing today, though thankfully not snowing (lovely bright blue sky) and my friend and I did a walk in our mall. If you go round once, including all the bits that go to the exits, it’s a mile, and at least it’s warm and flat. Between that plus doubling a bit of it and walking to and from the Japanese restaurant where we had lunch plus other normal movements, I have done 7207 steps today, according to the app on my phone, which is a hell of a lot of more than I normally do.

We went to see The Bride this afternoon - it was really crap and we walked out after about 45 minutes. Don’t waste your money if it comes round your way.

Really busy day in the garden yesterday so I only visited the thread briefly, but the main topic of conversation appeared to be......scones!

Scones dripping with butter, scones with cheese and bacon, home-made scones with blackberry compote and cream (yum), scones with apple, scones with cherries 😋

And then there was @CoutingCrones and her hot-cross buns from Bettys. One of the joys of lockdown (and there were a few) was receiving deliveries of deliciousness from Bettys through their on-line ordering services.

In fact, my low-carb regime ends at Easter, so I've decided to put in an order to celebrate. I really fancy a fat rascal!😋

Meanwhile, I'm back into the garden to work off the calories in advance....

Yes, precisely.
But I went to bed gin-less and lay awake for bloody hours.

DH has apologised properly this morning. For context, he's had a crap year, and I do feel for him. I'd just had enough last night.

But on the plus side (I am an eternal optimist), the sun is shining and the birds are singing. And cutting the crap out of my diet is working - I stood on the scales this morning and my weight has gone down again.

Who knew that cutting out most of the sugar and alcohol would have that effect?

Gillian is running exercise classes. Who'd have thought bossing women and other gerbils around 'for their own good', would be something she excels at! She's put a timetable up by the bar and embraced a Jane Fonda 'aesthetique' although she keeps blindfolding herself with the headband.

That's it - she is still the same lovely person.

Good redeployment of skills, Gillian.

I'm eating perfectly poached eggs in the garden. My son's WhatsApp ING me from Korea with his adventures today. (He climbed one of the mountains and saw a lovely pagoda)

If I can persuade Mr Pasta to make me a coffee, my morning will be pretty much perfect.

NB - I tried to add photographic evidence of perfect eggs but my phone camera resolution is too high and I don't know how to change it

As I assume any fule kno, the starting instruction for perfect poached eggs is

1. Build your hen house

Freshly laid eggs poached into perfect quenelles without any stirring, vinegar, wrapping in cling film, putting in a silicon pouch or other such faffage. It's a daily delight to me.

I'm sure the gerbils have a henhouse somewhere around if anyone wants to join me for brunch.

Gillian is in full Jane Fonda mode: headband (frequently over her eyes), whistle, and clipboard, but moving with the intensity of someone who has discovered structure and is applying it to everyone else immediately.

Key traits now:

• Laser focus on “improvement” (whether requested or not)
• Relentless energy — no half measures, no sitting out
• Bossiness rebranded as “encouragement”
• Zero tolerance for slacking

She’s bouncing on the step shouting things like: “UP! ARMS! AGAIN! YOU CAN DO BETTER THAN THAT!” …while completely blindfolded because the headband has slipped.

The other gerbils are:

• trying to keep up
• slightly alarmed
• but also oddly motivated

Because Gillian means it. All of it. She has taken:

• her natural tendency to boss everyone about
• added structure, routine, and a sense of purpose

…and turned it into aerobics instruction with evangelical zeal.

Result:
A room full of gerbils doing side-steps under strict supervision from a very intense, very determined, definitely-gerbil Gillian who has decided that fitness is now mandatory for all.

No need to reduce resolution. Take a screenshot of your photo and post that. Much lower resolution for MN and you still have your hi-res image as well.

I have also lost 4lb this week, reducing my weight to exactly 12 stone. It's the lightest I've been in 25 years.

It's DSD's birthday next week so we're celebrating this weekend, then it's the Walrus's birthday the following week quickly followed by Easter, so I might not stay this weight for long, but it's very satisfying. 7lb till I hit a BMI of 25.

I think all that flouncing up Peak Woo has given Gillian a taste for exercise. She's talking of starting a running club at the weekend.

I wish I knew someone who kept chickens. Having once been given some fresh eggs via someone who knew someone, it's totally ruined poached supermarket eggs for me. Unless I order them in a café. What I don't know...

Congratulations to all successful weight watchers. I’ve spent too long watching mine go up so now I have to get it to go down again. When I was still in the UK in the 90s I got big like I am now and successfully got it down to about the weight @MyrtleLionis now so with any luck I can do it again, though being 25 years older won’t help. I don’t care too much about the actual BMI number, but getting it below the “obese” category would be good.

On the subject of poached eggs, I have learned how to cook them in the microwave. I have a couple of small, shallow dishes - only about 2 and a half inches across. I grease them with a butter paper and break an egg into each. Then I get a skewer and stab the whites a few times, then carefully stab the yolks three times in different places (I promise the yolks and whites still stay separate). Then I put both dishes in the microwave for one minute. Works perfectly every time,

Thank you!

I have sadly put some weight back on, so I guess it's back to the jabs for me. Damn.

I need to lose weight to be able to have a major hernia repair, so back to misery and no food for me for a while. Bugger.

<jealous>

I haven't weighed myself since the end of January and will only do so on Easter Monday, but I can already get back into my "benchmark" jeans, which tell me when I have put too much weight on. They're old, but lovely and soft and comfortable. I hadn't been able to wear them since summer 2024.😬

Could Gillian be sent out as a mobile service please? I fancy doing the "Batterberg Burn".

I knew Maud lending out her Jane Fonda dvds would come to no good!

<Hides before Gillian sees I'm slobbing in the corner eating biscuits>

That is a perfect egg

🥚 😋 👌 😍

I am grumbling today - I have put my back out and aggravated my hip muscle too, so sleeping was not easy last night, and today, I’m limping round the house like I’m 99.

One large ibuprofen on the rocks please, bar gerbil.

Ddog was very pleased with her muddiness - and at least we can see when she is muddy - our first dog was a chocolate lab, who could conceal incredible amounts of mud in her fur until after she had been thoroughly towelled, and then wipe it off onto the walls!

Oh, I'm aching to work in the garden in this gorgeous weather, but the eye hospital was adamant about no gardening for at least a fortnight. I compromised yesterday by making a few token cuts through some invasive brambles at waist height, leaving the debris to be picked up later. At least I'd done something...

After that, the cat and I sat on our Jack and Jill garden seat (DH's retirement present from his work colleagues years ago) until he came home from his eye test, when we had a hot cross bun with tea outside, in the shade, with no coats on, in mid-March! 😊

Glenda snuck out during one of Gillian's periodic bouts of blindfoldness. Although she did bump into the doorframe several times before she successfully made it through.

Sorry, I meant to quote Cake's gin emoji post in my last comment above.

After a frustrating morning, I will be gardening this afternoon...

Gosie decided that she'd had enough of dealing with Gillian and Glenda, and was finding Gerlinde a little grating. So she hopped on the Eurostar earlier this morning, picked up a jazzy little hire car, and is enjoying her solo drive to the south of France.

She wishes us luck with our aerobics regimen.

(I still can't do AI, the image is from FB.)

I hope someone warned her to avoid the Paris Peripherique. Imagine the damage one of the Bluestocking gerbils could do on that!😱