Touchdown at the Newest Bluestocking Inn. Pudding, cups of tea, the vegetable garden coming into its own, and gerbils beautiful gerbils all furry.

[DeanElderberry]

All females welcome for intelligent discourse and non-harmful comestibles.

Dean, peppermint or camomile tea is brilliant at settling flatulence. I learnt this when breastfeeding DS2. Everything gave him gas, but necking peppermint or camomile tea three times a day completely solved it.

I think there must be something in the Bluestocking water (or gin) as I've had a similar challenge to @DeanElderberry these last 24 hours. I better switch to peppermint tea for a while... Hopefully the bar-gerbils can supply us both.

Ah... I think Giggle might have something she wants to admit. Apparently she was planning a joke on Glenda, but had to hide the packet in a hurry.

Tsk, Giggle. <<deploys Stern Look>>

Many years ago, when DS (now 57) was a baby and we lived in a decrepit old farmhouse in Cumberland, I looked round from the sink to see a stoat in its white winter coat, brazenly stealing the carcass of our Christmas chicken from the bin. It had come in through the adjoining barn door which DH must have left ajar when he went through for another bucket of coal. We watched mesmerised as it dragged the whole thing along the passage to the barn. Such a handsome creature and I like to think of it enjoying the remains of our festive meal.

Lovely stoat. Either the aniseed or the herbal tea or the passage of time had cured my little problem in time for the meeting, which is just as well since there was a time in the afternoon when I really didn't like being in the same room as myself. I have no idea what caused it, I hadn't eaten beans or brassicas. Maybe some fleeting and targetted virus.

And - dogs, eh?

Darling Albertine loved to roll in fox/otter/badger poo but hated hated hated being washed, and came to learn what I meant by the phrase 'actions have consequences'. Which sometimes surprised people when they heard me saying it to a small dog. But it did, usually, stop her putting her shoulder down.

Hector was other roller, less wise, or more wilful than Bert, but his most notorious wash happened after he went down a hole after something and emerged with his thick curly coat completely clogged with fine red soil. I got him into the car, drove him down to the lake and dropped him over the quay wall. He was only about a metre from the steps out, but the water around him had stripped the earth by the time he got out. A few horrified spectators seemed to think I'd been trying to drown him.

Morning all, and thank you Not for the image of a stoat in its winter coat, and Deano for the image of the onlookers' faces as somebody apparently attempted to drown a dog😮😄

Magpie, now that AI has got very realistic, can we take that as an accurate representation of what a gerbil really looks like, when not wearing a natty little uniform and carrying a tray with G&Ts?
Still cute - the big eyes are nice, and if there isn't a legend about a gerbil accidentally dipping its tail into a scholar's inkwell, there should be😄

Just leaving this here for no particular reason.

Clown of the sea! 😍

I managed a full six hours of sleep last night, which was very impressive since the gerbils were otherwise engaged.

Late yesterday afternoon...

The situation has escalated.

The Sleep and Dream Unit, previously dabbling in “light interest,” is now running a full two-shift tracking operation. The discovery of Flight 8—a second leg—has tipped them from hobby into doctrine.

A fresh map layer has been pinned over the original, slightly skewed one. The route from Exeter down past Plymouth and out along the coast is now marked in emphatic lines, with at least one gerbil insisting on calling it a “southern sweep,” despite no one asking.

Gretel has taken charge of timings and is announcing “15:50” at regular intervals as though this alone will ensure operational success. Two others are arguing about whether Salcombe/Bolt Head requires a dedicated sub-team. It does not. They are forming one anyway.

The toy vehicles have been redeployed to coastal positions. This has improved nothing but morale.

Meanwhile, the chalkboard now reads:

“SLEEP SUPPORT: PAUSED (TEMPORARILY).
SPITFIRE TRACKING: CRITICAL.”

No formal communication has been issued to the Bluestockingers, but the assumption appears to be that anyone struggling to sleep will understand that history is happening and adjust accordingly.

Commander Gwendoline has not moved from her post.

Colin the dachshund has wandered in, looked at the map, and quietly decided this is above his pay grade.

The gerbils are, without question, having the best day of their lives.

Morning! Ah, so that's why I slept late this morning, was wondering.

I think Colin is wise to stay out of this. It's all getting a bit intense!

I love your Command Post scenarios, Myrtle😂
The bunting is out in Salcombe/Bolt Head to greet the news that they have their own dedicated sub-team. A local was quoted as saying 'Proper bloody order an' all!'

I was still glowing with pride at having invented a German word - fuchstrampelpfad
but I've been put in my place by encountering this German word, which makes mine look pathetically simple -
Frauenbewegungsgeschichten

[women's movement-related writings, I think, with the help of Google translate]

Oh thank goodness! I was worried that the good folk of Salcombe/Bolt Head might tut.

Down in Salcombe/Bolt Head, matters have taken a distinctly festive turn.

The moment word reached them that they had been granted their own dedicated sub-team—formally recognised by the Sleep and Dream Logistics Unit, no less—the bunting went up. Not politely. Not sparingly. Aggressively cheerful bunting, strung from harbour walls to chimneys to what may or may not be a capybara maintenance scaffold.

A small delegation of local gerbils, wearing hastily assembled “Sub-Team South Coastal Command” badges (handwritten, slightly wonky), are attempting to look professional while clearly vibrating with pride. One has brought a clipboard purely for status.

The human locals are less organised but no less enthusiastic. A man in a windbreaker, clutching a mug of tea, has already been quoted in full:

“Proper bloody order an’ all!”

No one is entirely sure what operational role Salcombe/Bolt Head will play in tracking an aircraft that is, by definition, not landing there. This has not dampened spirits.

Back at HQ, the decision is being quietly reclassified from “unnecessary escalation” to “excellent stakeholder engagement.”

The bunting, however, is unquestionably justified.

Well the Spitfire's final leg was from Exeter airport to Southampton airport this morning.

And the gerbils hit the inevitable endpoint of peak gerbil overcommitment.
The final flight has come and gone. The Spitfire has completed its route. The mission—entirely self-appointed—has, technically, been a success. Every leg tracked, every coastal deviation debated, every unnecessary sub-team proudly stood up.
And then… nothing.
No next flight. No new data. No further escalation possible.
So the entire Sleep and Dream Logistics Unit has simply… powered down.
They didn’t wind it back gradually. No debrief, no tidy handover to actual sleep support. They ran flat out on excitement, ceremony, and improvised command structures—and then stopped dead the moment the stimulus disappeared.
The room tells the story:

• Maps still covered in pins and lines, mid-analysis
• Sticks abandoned exactly where they were being used to point
• Toy vehicles frozen in positions of great imagined importance
• The chalkboard still insisting sleep support is “temporarily” paused, which is now doing quite a lot of work

They’ve essentially burned through all available operational energy on something that didn’t require any of it—and now they’re asleep on the job they were actually meant to do. Colin, notably, is the only one still functioning. He has taken up quiet observational duties, which in practice means sitting there thinking, quite reasonably, that none of this needed to happen. It will all resume later as if nothing happened. The bunting will be referenced. The sub-team will remain “on standby.” And the gerbils will, with complete sincerity, return to offering calm, restorative sleep support—without ever acknowledging that they briefly turned it into an air traffic command centre.

As you may have gathered from my previous post, I'm chasing the real Marie de Gournay down some internet rabbit holes, and I came across this absolute gem:

Vincent de Gournay turns out not to be any relation of Marie, he was an 18th century economist from Brittany, she was from Gournay-sur-Aronde in the Oise department. 'Gournay' is not an unusual placename in France, it is of Celtic origin and seems to mean a marshy area.

But I'm still delighted I discovered him because he coined the term 'laissez faire' as in 'laissez faire, laissez passer' AND the word bureaucracy - government by bureau=desk!

Howzat for a wonderful piece of internet serendipity

They ran out of energy pretty quickly, didn't they?😐
The order 'stand down' was never executed so quickly, and so thoroughly...

It's Let Them!

People will disapprove of the Bluestocking? Let Them. And Let us enjoy it.

They go and go and go. And then they just stop.

Sadly I think yesterday's Spitfire was piloted by Glenda after she'd been on the sauce.
This is the route it actually took.

The Salcombe, Bolts Head and Plymouth gerbils were very disappointed. And all the Cornish ones too.

Whatever about people disapproving of the Bluestocking, I massively disapprove of gerbils feeding me fart powder. I hope someone has given Giggles a strict telling-off and handed her an appropriate penalty task.

'God pardon us, nor harden us; we did not see so clear
The night we went to Bannockburn by way of Brighton Pier.'

is part of a poem, not a flight plan, Glenda!😄

😂

I've just caught up. We're having a wee break in Wales. So I've not been able to read or post much.

I hope everything continues to improve Pasta.

We missed the Welsh leg of the Spitfire unfortunately, but we did see a Beluga aircraft flying...somewhere on Wednesday morning. It replaced the Guppies that occasionally were seen flying over where i lived. I would also argue that the Vulcan bomber was a more beautiful aircraft than Concorde. I saw one of the last Concorde flights from my sister's back garden and one of the last Vulcan flights over the factory where they were built.

The place we stopped in last night was a self catering chalet booked last minute. Was very compact. I noticed a few design features and woke up early this morning thinking 'Murphy bed'. I must have been mulling the table in a cupboard by the bed, the latches, the two 'headboards', in my sleep. Fortunately not because I was woken by the damn thing closing on me.