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.

It's basically just sitting on the chair and stretching out your legs either side, the same time as you're sticking your hands/arms diagonally in the air - you do make an actual star shape. You genuinely do feel it working your arms and legs when you're doing this in time to music.

With most of the exercises, we're told to 'engage the core'.

In one of them, you alternate bringing your opposite elbow and knee together. When you do it by bringing up both your knees, you're supposed to punch down both arms simultaneously.

You can get actual chair Pilates classes, but our class is a mixter maxter - part of the time we're using weights. Sometimes it's overhead shoulder presses; other times it's punching the arms forward or punching diagonally/star shape with the weights. Sometimes, punching up vertically.

If you've ever seen the footage of Sutton Foster doing the big Anything Goes number, there's one bit of the routine where she's constantly pushing her arms vertically into the air...I'm betting she had to practise with weights to build up the stamina for that.

Anyway, I've just done a wee search and I've found this. Some of these look familiar:

No, don't worry, it was only Glenda in a stupor having a nap and she was safe between the seat cushions.

We are awaiting rain. After the deluge Jan-March, when we had half? a third? of our annual average in 2 or 3 months, we had about 1mm in all of April.

Though today I did walk past a pair of field drains which were just about running. B&B had fun times pushing a cock pheasant out of the crop - nice steady work, and then once he was out in the open they recalled to me very politely and left him to get on with his day.

Batshit earlier today... She lay down next to me. I had my legs crossed and her head was under my foot. TWICE she raised her head and clonked it. I was given to understand that my foot shouldn't have been there. What was it doing, stationary in mid-air? How was she supposed to know that it would stay there? And then, as we left the room to go to the kitchen, she was bouncing about in excitement and managed to collide with the linen basket left at the bottom of the stairs. It shouldn't have been there either, apparently.

Batshit, last week: she and Brains went on point and stalked carefully in. Huh, said Brains, pheasant's nest, empty, cool. Batshit was completely confused. But there are feathers here. Where is the lovely pheasant? She slammed a paw down in the middle, hoping that a hen bird would suddenly take wing.

Poor Batshit. Everything is so confusing.

Confused is the last thing Brains is. She knows exactly what Gosie is up to.

@ErrolTheDragon Apologies - have just realised that that video says 'for seniors'.

I've been gardening all afternoon, as drier than expected, but with DS "helping".
Large g&t please gerbils.

Hello, thank you for the new thread. We (me, fella, eldest sprog) have been out today to try to see a ring ouzel. We only went and bloody saw one!

I'm not a fan of killing creepy crawlies, but I massacred the lily beetles that I saw on my fritillaries yesterday. Bastards!

There was drinking. But not as messy as it could have been. Very sunny and it's just begun to rain. That lovely smell of the earth rising.

😱

I shall get revenge for my fallen family members.

Gosie now has three critical pieces aligned:
1. The nature of the object
It’s not a painting.
It’s a constructed argument, designed to be assembled from distributed parts.
2. The method (past and present)

• Historically: women (like Marie de Gournay and her network) circulated, annotated, and built it collaboratively
• Now: the adversary is reassembling it physically, fragment by fragment

3. The current state of play

• Gosie: has the structure and interpretation
• Adversary: has more pieces, faster access, and no hesitation about taking them
• Bluestocking: confirmed as a hidden storage node that’s now been breached

That’s significant progress. Before, Gosie was following clues. Now she understands the game being played.

Where Gosie is now
Saturday evening. Bank Holiday weekend.
She’s not in Oxford anymore.
She’s in London—but not centrally, not socially.
She’s in a quiet, privately held archive space, one step removed from the formal institutions. The kind of place where things are held between ownership and attribution. A safe room, essentially—but not entirely safe anymore.

What she’s doing
For the first time, Gosie isn’t just reading.
She’s reconstructing ahead of the adversary.
On the table:

• her sketch from Marie
• notes from Oxford
• remembered structure from the boathouse fragments

She’s laying out the sequence—not physically (she doesn’t have all the pieces), but logically. Working out:

• what the adversary already has
• what piece they took from the Bluestocking
• and crucially, what piece they must go for next

Why this matters
Up to now:

• the adversary has been ahead in movement

From this point:

• Gosie is ahead in understanding

And that changes behaviour. She’s no longer reacting. She’s about to intercept.

The immediate shift
The Bluestocking theft gave her one vital insight:
The adversary is no longer just following history.
They are short-cutting it—using speed, extraction, and network access.
Which means their next move won’t be obscure.
It will be:

• fast
• reachable
• and vulnerable to interception

So, Saturday night
Gosie is still.
Completely still.
Which is how you know something is about to happen.
Because she’s worked out where the adversary is going next.
And this time—
She intends to be there first.

Boily, they are The Other Side.
(I kill the little buggers, too. Other beetles I will move gently out of the way, or - if inside - carefully return to the garden.)

.

I must confess, anticide is in progress. I'm still mentally scarred from the year we had flying ants inside the house.

Oh, I love Gosie!

Omg! That must have been appalling. I expect it's no comfort to know for the flying ants it was also a disaster to emerge inside a building.

Re. the massacre of the lily beetles. I'd do it again. Feckers!

Catching up after a break/holiday. I'm off the naughty step as Glenda said I'd done my time. Still took my gin though 🤨

Heard a lot of squawking whilst on a walk; a sparrowhawk attacked a pigeon- they tussled on the ground. I tried to step in - not sure why but felt sorry for the bird. It looked quite a vicious encounter. DD held my arm and said 'mum leave it, it's nature'
😔horrible though

@WearyAuldWumman your slug tale reminds me of the time I stepped on a slug - in bare feet 😱yuk. And the time DS about 4, running along, stepped on a slug with a bit of a bounce, which sent fragments of slug splattered on the pavement 🤢 He cried.

I think I'll need a large glass of (v cold) white wine, some peppery crisps please.
And ice-cream if there's any no-calorie version thanks

Your DD is quite the philosopher, isn't she? 'Leave it, it's nature' is very wise.

I once stood on a dead mouse when I was a kid.. awful things happened that I still can't bear to think about.
The slug incidents sound similarly traumatising😬

Of course we have no-calorie ice-cream, we have nothing but delicious no-calorie everything

Hello everybody been out in the garden today.

Chucking it down now which is needed.

Been writing my list for packing up for our boat on Friday. Off for three weeks!!! Well excited.

large glass of Chardonnay and a back rub gerbils pleeeease

One time, DH and I needed to find a berth for our campervan. We were up in the Highlands for the Ballater Games and had failed to book.

Ballater camping ground was full, so we tried Aboyne. We got the last space - on a slope.

We realised that friends of ours were already there - with their car and tent. Fortunately, they'd got a flat area.

During the night, I became aware of the fact that the slope had caused the folding seats/bed to open up and my arse was caught inexorably between two seats. It took me all my time to extricate myself.

I thought I'd had a hard time of it...until I found out that my pal in the tent had found a slug in the kettle...after making her cup of tea.

I’ve been to the local park to enjoy the bluebells, & was home with Kitty before the rain kicked in. Could I have a Pinot Grigio & a chocolate brownie please, gerbils?

No rain.
90% chance of rain according to the forecast late this afternoon.
Diminishing odds of any now as the night progresses.

Bollocks.

I think you need to entice the gerbils round to do a rain dance..

I did consider doing a rain dance myself.
And then I thought, nah, Bank Holiday weekend - that should guarantee a downpour.

More fool me.

Raining here 💦💦

It's gone off here now, but that's the violas watered.

I’m 65 so probably qualify! Thanks