The Bluestocking women's Pub- spring is sprunging and MN's name generator can do one!

[lcakethereforeIam]

Welcome to the Bluestocking women's pub. Men are directed to the Staunch Ally just down the road. Otherwise all are welcome. Pull up a chair, give your order to the Wait Gerbil or the Gerbil behind the bar.

Don't forget to name change if you wish to.

'And where for me, the apple tree does lean down low in Linden Lea'
That one Marie?? We sang this at school!

Whoever built this behind the Bluey, well done! Everyone's loving it.

https://x.com/Rainmaker1973/status/2039223735912374551

All the sung versions of it I’ve heard all sound dreadfully RP though.

Is there one in the right size for humans? Asking for a friend.

This is genius!

I've won £50 on the Premium Bonds.

Off to look at sports cars.

The gerbils were up late last night watching the moon launch and have decided to build their own rocket. They couldn't find any rocket fuel, so decided to use Granny Grapeseed's home-made blackberry wine (the patrons of the Staunch Ally suggested it tasted like rocket fuel). They are going to visit the man in the moon and bring home some cheese.

I've scrapped the sports car idea and donated my vast winnings to the gerbils moon landing fundraiser.

If you wait until Gosie gets back, she'll come with you.

She's got rather into cars, motoring around France.

Can they bring back some Gorgonzola please? That's the cheese, not the gerbil named after the cheese.

There are no unusual variants of 'you' in East Anglia that I can think of, other than people saying it as 'yew'. 'Do you', as in Nelson's 'Do you anchor, Hardy', is an instruction - 'Do you put that in the dishwasher'. If you were making that statement as a question, you'd use a rising inflection at the start.

I was talking to a semi-retired farmer the other day, and he came out with 'over yonder' which I'd not heard in decades - 'Keep going past those trees, and over yonder you'll find the end of the bridleway.'

There are all sorts of dialect words and phrases that cling on - linen line (washing line), drift (path or track - 'You'll find a grassy little drift on your left, turn up there and that'll be our back gate') and 'on the huh' (wonky, not level).

Oh, and 'cupla three' which means 'a few' (as opposed to 'several' which means 'quite a few' - probably 5 or more).

I just looked up something on East Anglian dialect and found this, which is 100% true:
'Nevertheless, this feature [rhoticity] has come to represent a generic ‘rural south’ stereotype for many people, and so it is often used in impersonations of East Anglian speech, or in film and television representations, much to the frustration of East Anglians [YES!]. A notable exception is the actor Ralph Fiennes’ recent performance in the film The Dig (2021). His mastery of a Suffolk accent in his portrayal of the archaeologist-excavator Basil Brown has been praised for its authenticity.'
Well, indeed. Multiple women of my acquaintance, self included, went all gooey. 'Do you listen to that...!'

I wondered who had won the first prize!

I came second: £25. Might go on a luxury cruise.

That's the one, FF - we learnt it in school too, 'multiculturalism' back then was learning an English song [Linden Lea] and a French song A la claire fontaine] as well as all the Irish songs we used to sing
Beautiful song, I love it still❤
I've never heard it sung in 'Dorset' either, Britinme, I think the standard version was what took off, and not everyone agreed with William Barnes' version of 'Dorset', he may have tinkered with it a tiny bit to make it more distinct...

Thank you for the E Anglia input, Edith, I love hearing about accents and dialect - all this diversity in one language!

I'm firmly in the rhotic camp, being Irish.

Isn't 'u' pronounced 'oo' in E Anglia?
I had a colleague from Norfolk who pronounced 'computer' as comp-oo-er - the intervocalic 't' went AWOL too.

Congrats Boily! 🍾riches beyond the dreams of avarice, eh? Another yacht, perhaps?😏

If we pool our winnings we could buy an island!

I could literally as in literally literally spend all day chatting about accents and dialects and gerbils in space and diving piglets, but I have one of those things that us retirees laughingly call [look away now, Magpie and other working folx] 'a busy day' 😃
so l8🐊s

But before I go - having shared in the celebration of Mr Walrus' and Deano's cat's birthdays yesterday, a question popped into my head last night:
Edith, when is our beloved Batshit's birthday so we can put out the bunting and crack open the bubbly at the Bluey?
Will Brains be jealous? When is hers? Or does she think that birthday parties like soooooo totally infantile🙄

I grew up on the Essex coast, really only came across one person who distinctly used the oo - he was the church secretary who read out the notices so many events happened on a Toosday.

My DH and dd rather charmingly and entirely appropriately think that her birthday is also a date on which I too should be congratulated.
Whether this line of reasoning logically extends to canine mammas or not, I’m sure Brains is a wise enough beast to understand that her birthday celebrations may be for your benefit as much as hers and accept them gracefully.

I remember when I first visited Nottingham (Nott'num, for authenticity) in 1983. Got caught in an absolute summer downpour on Market Square, so went into Clark's (Clark's! That dates it..) to replace my holey shoes. Having bought said green leather boots (Bit of a New Romantic back in the day. Bless.) I was absolutely mystified when the assistant informed me that "Yuh ay tuhget spray, suh theh wun't lerrin." Took me four repetitions before I worked out that I was required to buy Scotchgard to stop them leaking. I've lived here for 43 years now, and sometimes I still have trouble..

Marie
Isn't 'u' pronounced 'oo' in E Anglia?
I had a colleague from Norfolk who pronounced 'computer' as comp-oo-er - the intervocalic 't' went AWOL too.
DH well recalls his headmaster banging on about the 'stoodents'.
Short 'u' (butter, cut) stays as a u. The 'yu' sounds (commyunity) is the one that gets turned into 'oo'.
Consonants between vowels don't die completely or turn into a glottal stop, they just go very quiet, so you get the ghost of the sound.

The East Anglian classic is transformation of the 'i' in e.g. nice into 'oi'.
'That were rioght noice dowun the towun las' noight for them foirworks.'

Batshit's birthday is in early May, but she celebrates on the 1st to make sure that she doesn't forget it.

Brains has reached the age where another birthday is 'just a number', but is not yet at the point where it's a victory against the odds. She believes in keeping fit to stave off the influence of time. I believe in keeping her slim to the same ends. She's not so sure about that.

Not a lot to report from Batshit of late. She has been quite sensible since her falling-twice-off-the-bench (and then almost falling off a third time) episode. She jumped up onto a large and very slippery felled tree the other day, Brains already in residence, and managed to keep her footing. I was quite impressed.

Generally she is gambolling about like a spring lamb, as Brains, with her usual focus, trots about ever on the QV for pheasants/ partridges/ muntjac/ etc. She put up an enormous cock bird the other day, and watched him fly off with an expression on her face of, 'I knew you were tucked up in there, you old bugger!'

While Batshit, who has an excellent nose when she chooses to use it, was very much, 'Oooh look! Gosh, wasn't Brains clever to find him?' She'd been busy in the middle of the field, and hadn't even noticed Brains go on point.

Not at my school 😄

I need to persuade them to aim the rocket at the actual moon, rather than at the Bluestocking Pub.

What could possibly go wrong? 😬

But we did have to sing and speak prop'ly
Or be yelled at

I grew up in Hull, which has a very distinctive local accent, though I never acquired it, that mainly affects the O sound in a word, turning it to ER. DH finds it very amusing when I look out of the bedroom window on a winter morning and use the accent to tell him we have snerr on the rerd today.