Bluestocking Women’s Pub - it’s Maytime!

[ErrolTheDragon]

Welcome to any women who want the company of women!

Thats it really….ok so this place is staffed by gerbils with the occasional quokka or capybara but it functions like a friendly pub where you don’t have to know what’s going on all the time.
The drinks don’t intoxicate and the food is delicious yet healthy so please do come in.

Excellent crafting, Dean! I am sure your shortbread was delicious, and will get even more so.

I was shouting at MasterChef as we caught up on some recent episodes last night. A crazy woman was piping spirals of shortbread dough so it looked like a turd.

You can't pipe shortbread and expect it to work. It needs to be the same thickness across the biscuit, which is why rolling it out and using cutters or making it into a sausage and slicing it works so well.

If you pipe into whorls the thick bits will be raw and the thin edges overcooked. MrPasta was laughing at me yelling at the telly - he says it reminds him of the early series of Bake Off. "Those big chicks of apple will sink in the cake! Dice them smaller! No, not 220⁰! It will be charcoal! Oh god, I can't look!"

Our cherry blossom is finally out, I’ve seen magnolia blooming, and the tulips are up. Suddenly the trees are starting to get that light tender green they get when the leaf buds break. I walked past willow trees yesterday trailing these long fronds like delicate green fingers. When spring finally comes to Maine it comes in a hurry.

Himself has repaired a plumbing problem in the poly tunnel and built experimental anti-pigeon structures over the fan cherry in the hole of preserving just a few cherries from us. It looks very Heath Robinson.

I've spent over an hour (with breaks) digging up bindweed from the raised beds. Pernicious stuff.

Gerbils, a nice restorative draught of something, please!

I love my garden at this time of year - a self seeded froth of forget-me-nots punctuated randomly with purple honesty and purple and pink aquilegias amid mounds of fresh green perennial leaves. Then above the pink masses of clematis Montana, rhotedendron and crab apple blossom, slightly past its prime but still pretty.

Wow Deano, that was a morning and a half!

Apart from the achievement of starting to actually make things, there's the symbolism of having your own you-time to use your sewing machine at last, after so many years giving so much time to others

I like the idea of making craft-y things which will then have a purpose - apart from doing something lovely and supportive for the recipients, it also justifies buying lots of crafting tools and materials

Has anyone else got that Debenhams underwear advert popping up here? Its really REALLY annoying me.

Woman's underwear..photo of woman with knickers up her bare arse, suspenders, high heels, sunglasses, coy "come hither" look.

Men's underwear...photo of 5 pack of check boxer shorts.

My feminist sensibilities are incensed!

Yep not something i would choose to look at, in fact i was quite startled.

Did not know stockings and suspenders were still a thing.

Just tried to find details for Debenhams customer services to complain, but they don't give them up easily. And the customer WhatsApp is only usable for those with phones, which is not me.
Shitshow.

Thank you DuckDuckGo.

Saprinus semistriatus: Beetle enthusiast records species not seen in Ireland for nearly a century
A woman from Northern Ireland who loves beetles ... hmm... anybody we know I wonder?😁

I'm not getting the Debenhams ad, I'm glad to say Fuzzy, I'm getting Ceiling Roses and Coving🤔

I'm getting RSPB and universities. No lingerie ads here!

I see no advertisements because the ducks make them go.

I’ve just been for a walk along the nearby canal and seen my first swallows of the year swooping over the water. Also heard and correctly identified sedge and willow warblers.

Such a lovely time of year! Our swallows came back to the same nests in our porches a few weeks ago. Only just behind the returning bats - we are privileged to have 2 nursery roosts in our walls and watch them streaming out in the dusk.

Excellent blanket, @EmpressaurusKitty. I like your colour choices - the whole thing looks great!

Very interesting about the cherry blossom dates in Japan, @ErrolTheDragon . When I was a student I always missed the blossom, because during the Easter holidays it was in flower in my college city. My home was further North, and flowering there waited until I went back to college.

A lovely friend of ours died in April a few years ago. It was no coincidence that her funeral was held on May the 4th.

I’ve actually been into school to teach today (one whole lesson, I’m retired) but didn’t write the date. Rats! I was in a friend’s classroom so I could have left something on her board for her to enjoy tomorrow.
(School was technically closed but boarders could stay in if they wanted. A Levels start next week and some GCSE’s this Thursday.)

I'd put half the shortbread dough in the fridge when I made it earlier this week, so I sliced it and baked a dozen small shortbreads to be the Biscuits with the Bond-Film-With-Tea-And-Biscuits Retro British Bank Holiday MrPasta and the older two offspring had planned.

I did another hour or two in the garden and listened to next door's young sons raising holy hell and making me laugh. They were helping their parents prune and overgrown shrub and found the garden ornament buddha hidden by overgrowth. "Daddy! There's an ugly fat man in the hedge. Can we use him in goal because Liam won't play in goal"

I spent the afternoon helping at a post-AGM tea (managed to dodge the AGM itself).

I made cups of tea and coffee, washed up, dried up, tidied up and ate my bodyweight in quiche, sandwiches and cake - and half an Anzac biscuit which a friend pressed on me as we cleared up at the end. 'You have to try these, Edith!' She too had eaten her bodyweight, hence the sharing of the final biscuit: neither of us could contemplate eating a whole one.

There was one rather sad fruit cake where all the fruit had so thoroughly sunk to the bottom that it looked deliberate. At the other end of the scale was a coffee and walnut cake that looked utterly epic, but I didn't get around to that before it went.

All the helpers (and any lingering guests) were forced to take doggy bags home.

👻 <- I believe this is the correct emoji for when you find you haven't even finished one thread before you realise there's a whole new one?

I rushed so quickly into this one that I may have stepped on a gerbil. Apologies.

There was one rather sad fruit cake where all the fruit had so thoroughly sunk to the bottom that it looked deliberate.

A fruit cake should have so much fruit in it that it can't sink, the 'cake' is just binding the fruit together! I do love a fruit cake and they're always the ones left over so I get extra helpings!

@SidewaysOtter , I've been a bit 👻too, but galloped in earlier today to have a moan at a horrid advert.
I can't keep up most days!

@SidewaysOtter - I agree about fruit cake - especially Christmas cake, which is packed with fruit and brandy. I know I could make it more often, but my blood sugar levels wouldn't thank me.

Earlier I was getting adverts for kids' ball pools and now it's Amazon ads for lube

I bloody love a proper Christmas cake, including the marzipan and icing. I usually soak the fruit in sloe gin before I make the cake.

Hello again Sideways, nice to see 👻coming in handy again
Pull up a chair, brush off the gerbils, sit down, and have a drink!🍷😄

I don't really like Christmas cake. Only palatable with some Wesleydale cheese.

Anybody seen the players in the snooker final? This reminds me of the young lad's hairstyle😄