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.

Thanks, Marie . You can share Puffin Day if you like, as I don't think there's an "Ancient French Female Philosophers Day". Could be wrong of course.

Showing my age here, as I'm sure this is a lost cause, but 'bored of' drives me mad. It should be 'tired of' and 'bored with'.

Grumps off into a corner with her tea...

Sorry to be so late to congratulate you. That's really wonderful news. 💙

Sorry but I was about 3 days behind on this thread so trying to catch up.

Firstly, and most importantly, @PastaAllaNorma I am so glad about your Dad's good news.

Next, @WearyAuldWumman is your Dad Polish? My DGF was a Polish war veteran and could make Stoics look like 5-year olds.

Finally, I'm struggling with Gosie passing unnoticed though north Northumberland. We visit a cousin who lives beyond Alnwick. There is no human habitation for about 20 miles before you get to their place but the tea is always just brewed as we arrive. Apparently, "We was telled you was on your way" every time. It is very spooky and you would need more than mystical oriental skills to be unnoticed up there.

DH has spent his entire working life with computers. He had his own computer when they were newfangled gadgets with about 1% of a normal modern smartphone.

Sometimes shit happens to my laptop, or it won't talk to the printer, or whatever. DH's advice? 'Have you turned it off and back on again?'

I don't even bother asking now. I turn off my laptop, turn off the printer, turn them both back on, wait for bloody ages while the printer wakes up, press print and bingo, whirr whirrr clunkety-clunk clunkety-clunk brzzzzz brzzzz (repeated a few times) whirr whirrrrrrrrr and out comes the document.

Yesterday I pressed print expecting the usual tedious rigmarole, and it printed straight away. Maybe it knows that I'm onto it...

@AlexandraLeaving @AngleofRepose
See below

@AlexandraLeaving @AngleofRepose
Will pm you both.

I'm with you both on this, although I am 20 years younger than you, Not.

My state primary school was probably the last Victorian school in the USA, during the late 60s and early 70s. They had only just stopped allowing physical punishment (ruler) when I started at the age of four, boys and girls were separated completely at all times except lessons (girls on one side, boys on the other), and we learned by repetition and regimentation. My grammar teacher (and it wasn't "English" but "grammar) was, however, a lovely person, and I still remember probably everything she taught me. Including how to parse (we called it diagramming) sentences. She insisted that we memorize all the prepositions. She insisted we learn basic Latin and Greek (the root from which so many of our words derive). I was 8/9!

She would have disagreed with "bored of" vehemently. Friends tell me I sound quite old-fashioned when I "speak properly." My teachers and my father were definitely on the same side of that argument!

To add to the lovely news about the success of Pasta's dad's surgery, I had some good news today about my youngest sister. She has several longstanding health conditions which are under control, but last year her health deteriorated - anaemia, severe fatigue, etc and she was referred to the nearest haematology department. In February it was confirmed that she has chronic lymphocytic leukaemia, which is normally very slow-developing and often doesn't need treatment straightaway. Unfortunately, in her case, her noticeable symptoms mean that she does need treatment and a number of tests and gene analyses have been done to decide what that needs to be.

Today she had the results and they are as good as it's possible for them to be. The only gene mutation is a positive one and there is a good chance that a year's course of chemo + a targeted drug could achieve remission. The alternative is a daily tablet for life with its own ongoing side-effects. Compared to the worst possibilities this is really good news and we'rs so relieved that she actually can choose what treatment she has. The best birthday present I could have had.

It knows... it knows.

Fantastic news! I'm amazed how treatment has changed in the past few decades, now there are choices! Wishing your sister "very good independent responses " to whichever treatment she chooses. Chemo is not fun, but that other option doesn't sound pleasant, either. There will be options to counteract side effects as well

Sorry, Edith, I don't think I know about pm? Is that an image below, because can't see one?

No, no image. PM = private message. But I can't make it work for you!
Have dropped a line to Alexandra.

oh ok I get it, will look into that, might be my settings.

Wonderful news, @NotAtMyAge. A friend's husband has that and responded really well to treatment a couple of years ago. He is still going strong and doing all the physically active things he did before.

Possibly. Maybe drop me a line and see if that works.

Angle your grammar teacher sounds just like my primary school headmistress (2 teacher village school) who taught the top class (8 -11 yr-olds) We did sentence parsing with coloured chalks 💛and were not allowed to get away with any sloppy grammar.

I've never known anyone else outside of my school who knew about parsing sentences! Oh, and correct penmanship, which, unfortunately, I left far behind when I was finally allowed to my final year in high school. We learned penmanship on specially-lined paper, and pencil only (we were not allowed to use a pen until we were in our final year at primary, had demonstrated that we could write correctly every time).

As I recall now, there was an awful lot of "not allowed " at my school!

I agree, @NotAtMyAge - it is very slightly better (an infinitesimal difference) than should have/could have etc. Or ect.

I will join you in your grumpy corner.

Edith, I think I have sent you a message, but my phone keeps crashing this evening, so may have to check back later.

Great news about your sister, Not! I hope she continues to improve and benefit from all the new developments in treatment that are making such a difference - I know of a few people who are 'living with' conditions that would have been very serious in the past - and living well

I recognise your schooling, Angle - my education up to the equiv of A-level when I went to a 'good' school, was in a number of 'National Schools', primary schools with no frills, with very high teach-pupil ratios, which ran alongside the posher prep schools - often run by the same religious orders who had one school for the better-off kids, and one for the less well-off like me, in the same town*.

We learnt how to parse sentences. We knew the difference between transitive and intransitive verbs, suffixes and prefixes. Because we learnt Irish as well as English, we learnt about subjunctive moods, conjugations and cases.
And since it was a Catholic school, we also learnt words and ideas like omnipresence, omniscience, calumniate, eternity, fortitude, and a smattering of Church Latin.
Not to mention the dreaded-by-me 😱sums😱
All at primary school.
I think we knew more by the time we were 12 than a lot of adults know now!

And of course geography and history, Irish and European.

Sounds very familiar! Except for the religious aspects, which we not only were not able to be taught, but were actually forbidden from discussing on school property ( they took separation of church and state very seriously). Apparently, it's very different now, with prayer in some schools in the US.

Yes, I think the grounding in grammar and languages was something that our whole education was built on (and the arithmetic yes). I find that it has stuck with me, in a way that later years of education, in much different style, has not.

Not saying I agree with all of their approach, of course! But there is something to be said for learning the basics, I think. If I had been dyslexic or had other needs, however, I doubt I would have learned as much. The teachers were stern and not patient!

Once again, I have to commend Batshit. Twice so far this week!

I was running them on some fields this afternoon. A hare had already done one of the things hares do: it got up and went when we still a distance away. There had also been partridges and a pheasant, so both dogs were quite excited.

Batshit was right next to me, and Brains a little way off, when a hare got up right under my feet and accelerated away at the usual zero to Mach 2 in no seconds. And Batshit just stood there (as did Brains, but it wasn't as temptingly close to her). Bloody big hare, too, as the first one had been.

In the next field they mooched about while I walked slowly along, watching a crow chase a buzzard away. The buzzard mewed very crossly a couple of times as it tried to gain height away from the crow, which followed it determinedly up and then dive-bombed from an angle. There were some quite tight and controlled aerial acrobatics against a very clear blue sky: it was very beautiful to watch. I had to glance away to check on B&B, and noticed a second buzzard floating across the meadow and into the trees where I'd originally seen the crow getting arsey. The first buzzard finally gave way to the crow after about a hundred yards of airborne squabbling, and the crow flew back. I wasn't able to see if it found the second buzzard and gave it the same treatment, as we were too close to the trees by then, and the dogs were enthusiastically on a scent.

Corvids are buggers with raptors. This isn't the first time I've seen something like this.

@JanesLittleGirl No, he was a Yugoslav. He had a lot of Polish friends from his time in Displaced Persons' Camps and the Mineworkers' Hostel.

When I was a little girl, I'd see him holding conversations with his pals. They'd each speak their own language, but it was close enough for them to understand one another.