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.

If Genius wants any help with the Sunday Times cryptic, I sent it off yesterday afternoon.

What talents do ferrets have apart from reversing?

I see what you did there! I was following That Other Thread last night, too.

Bore da, Bluestockingers! It's bright sunny sunshine so far (wonder how long that will last?) - Bar gerbils, if you're not too busy rounding up ferrets for future use, could I have some coffee and a croissant please? Need my fix (and, since I gave up bread, this is the only place I can have one, boo).

1. Nah, she says ta v much, but she did it over breakfast yesterday.
2. Catching rabbits, climbing things and smelling.

Hm. If they’re good at climbing things & smelling, could they also work in maintenance & security?

I‘m not sure what the capybaras’ role is.

Capybaras build lots of things that people really, really need (such as Quilting Nooks), that much I do know. So they seem to be great with tools and think they are very stylish with their hard hats on (is someone going to tell them that hard hats are not a fashion accessory? best wait until they have put the power drills down!)

I’m inclined to think that when they’re here, the Reverse Ferrets should be free to enjoy well-deserved R&R - they’re having to work very hard out there at the moment.

That’s true.

I accidentally introduced some wait ferrets, but it was...mumble...threads ago. They didn't hang around.

Couldn't we set up a Ferret Academy where ordinary every-day ferrets are taught how to reverse, thereby creating job opportunities for them in areas other than catching rabbits, climbing things and smelling?
It would improve their CVs and their LinkedIn profiles significantly.
The proposal has been warmly welcome by a representative from the Rabbit Community.

You mean, they didn't ... wait?

Maybe someone with good design (AI) skills could whip up some merch , to get them started and help with morale? It's going to take a lot to retrain them.

Perhaps start the Academy with a small cohort? As Errol has said, we need some reversing ferrets more than ever right now!

Gosie is absolutely back.

She arrived in the early hours in the last thread, engine ticking softly as the vintage car cooled outside the Bluestocking, looking as though she’d merely popped out for milk rather than spent weeks in the south of France being suspiciously accomplished. There’s a faint smell of linseed oil about her, and one of the gerbils swears her luggage clinked in a way luggage doesn’t usually clink—but no one’s pressing the point. Discretion is part of the aesthetic.

The sports car keys were briefly seen on the bar this morning, mind you. Next to a perfectly innocent sketchbook and a small, very well-wrapped parcel that nobody has opened and everybody has noticed.

She’s currently in her usual spot, stirring something elaborate into a coffee and saying very little. Which, in Gosie terms, confirms everything.

There’s a suggestion of Scotland.

Nothing declared, obviously. Gosie doesn’t “plan” trips in any conventional sense. But the signs are there if you know how to read them: a folded map with the Highlands creased just so, a passing remark about “light on water being better further north,” and—most tellingly—the sports car has been quietly refuelled.

One of the guinea pigs mentioned seeing a small tin labelled “vermilion” tucked into her bag, which could mean painting. Or it could mean absolutely nothing at all.

If she goes, it’ll be the same as ever: no announcement, no fuss, just a brief absence followed by her reappearing with excellent coffee, a new sketchbook, and an air of having been productive in ways best left unspecified.

Something like this?

Ha! The two on the right have already learnt good reversing positions there.

Ah, my impression had been that Gosie had returned to the Bluey, confirmed that all was well and under control, and nipped off again a few days later, to who-knew-where.

And now she's back, but since when and for how long?

The Gerbil of Mystery...

Can I just suggest that, when we open the Academy so sensibly suggested by Marie, that it's well down the end of the garden, behind the goat paddock?

Ferrets smell at least as much as billy-goats, endearing and entertaining as they are.

And I would like my Reverse Ferret Services offices to be in the main building, please.

Actually, no please about it. Either it's at least 100 yards from the ferret accommodation, or someone else can do the job.

Well, you're not wrong...

No one can quite pin it down, which is exactly how Gosie prefers it.

There’s a quiet consensus that she did come back, did a subtle circuit of the Bluestocking—checked the bar stock, exchanged a few low-voiced words with the G-team, gave Clara the capybara a look that said “carry on”—and then vanished again before anyone could properly clock her. Like a systems audit in soft fur.

And now she’s here. Or has been. Possibly since yesterday. Possibly since Tuesday. The luggage has migrated slightly closer to the wall, which suggests at least one settled evening. The coffee she’s drinking is not her “just arrived” coffee—it’s her “I’ve been here long enough to be bored by the obvious choices” coffee.

The car keys are still on the bar, but turned at a different angle. That alone has caused quite a bit of speculation.

She isn’t saying how long she’ll stay. But she hasn’t unpacked properly either.

Which, in Gosie terms, means she’s both arrived and halfway gone.

Where did she go? What did she do?

No itinerary, no receipts, and certainly no declarations. But the pattern gives her away.

She headed north, clean and fast. The sports car wasn’t built for dithering, and the map crease shows a tight fold along the west coast. Isle edges, not cities. Places where light behaves properly and nobody asks for explanations.

What did she do? A series of entirely respectable activities that happen, by coincidence, to require timing, precision, and a very steady nerve.

There are new sketches in the book—harbours at odd angles, a ruin that doesn’t quite match any listed site, and one study of a frame without a painting in it. Purely academic, of course. Composition, negative space, that sort of thing.

Clara received a parcel while Gosie was “away again”. Heavy, impeccably wrapped, labelled in Gosie’s hand but with no return address. It’s now upstairs, and the wombat has stopped weeping quite so much, which may or may not be connected.

And Gosie herself? At the bar, with a faint trace of sea air, and the quiet confidence of someone who has been very busy and intends to say absolutely nothing about it.

She'll be away again shortly. I'll follow her adventures closely. If she let's me.

A weeping wombat?

The ghost.

'le whangee de monsieur' IIRC

I love Gosie. I want to be her. I'd say she's my spirit animal, but that's probably Glenda or the one with the triangle.

Ferrets also race (well, they do round these parts - you have to make your own entertainment in the sticks). Capybaras are good at security, as well as construction.

I love the blue hoodie, third from the left!

Ferrets have been used to install wiring. Although if they're going to keep reversing it'll get a bit tangled.

On my walk today, I saw a goldcrest up close, just off the woodland path. It was roaming around the brambles, I guess looking for insects, and was so unusually still that I could easily identify it (normally they move too fast for me). It was so tame that if I'd had a bowl of mealworms or spiders, it probably would have come and sat on my hand.

Unlike the goldcrest I have in my garden, which is so shy, I only ever get glimpses. The blackbird pair, on the other hand, aren't bothered by me at all. In fact, when I go out into the garden, they look at me as if I were food!

Wild garlic is blooming. And my rambling rose has buds already. Everything is so early this year!