The Gerbil World Cup at the Bluestocking!

[Magpiecomplex]

New thread.

No pushing at the back, please, we have plenty of scones and kilts for everyone.

😂For some reason, autocarrot is convinced I had a flying wrench in the house, not a wren.🕊closest thing I could find to a wren (not really very close)
I'm so glad you saved the wren!

Did it have a "cocked up" tail? If not, it might have been a fledgling robin. They are very curious and I've seen them in interesting places before (including in a locked shed, luckily for poor baby robin, I found it,)

Excellent.
How many each per day do you think they'll need?

Oh, according to the adverts its just the one!

I don’t think it had a cocked up tail, @AngleofRepose, but it was moving fast so I’m not sure.

I am actually sitting in the arbour I cleaned out yesterday. My surprise there is because I’m usually absolutely crap at just sitting in the garden reading, without seeing something that needs doing. I’m also bad at sitting in the shade - I briefly tried the sunlounger but it was too hot in the sun. It’s ‘only’ 31° here, there is some breeze but this corner is a bit too sheltered.
Im also crap at reading rather than messing about on my iPad…I didn’t used to be able to do that outside but it’s shady enough to read the screen and hotspot to phone works.

I’ll make it easy for them.

If you were born with a willy, use the men’s.
If you were born with a vulva, use the women’s.
If you need more space, for example to accommodate a wheelchair, or have personal needs such as a stoma, use the accessible toilet.
If you were born with a willy and feel vulnerable in the men’s because you “identify” as a woman, use the gender-neutral facilities.
If you were born with a vulva and have taken testosterone that now affects your appearance because you have a beard or look masculine, use the gender-neutral facilities.

Main rule: If you were born with a willy, stay out of the women’s toilets.

If it was really tiny, tinier than you think a bird ought to be, it would be a wren probably, a goldcrest (possibly, but unlikely), or a firecrest (highly unlikely).

(Remember, as is is not an ought) <ducks for cover>

You'll have to discount the number of MSPs who only said this to appear virtuous. I'm only investing in products for people who <stamps foot> NEED IT!

New sofa has arrived and is very comfortable. Old sofa has gone. He managed to scrape our brick path but it’s not noticeable.

Peace is restored.

Perhaps these guidelines could be knitted into the support blankies, or written on the bulky pee-pants, @MyrtleLion?

But if they buy them from us at hugely inflated prices who cares if they actually need them or not?

Profit, dear Angle, profit.
Puffinangle Enterprises all the way.

Myrtle, the 'Place that never existed and somehow become real anyway’ is beautiful💙
And sometimes the gerbils just know when to be silent and present and at one with the moment, like when Queenie said that 'thank you' - two words that contained multitudes..

That said, never having read a line of any of JKR's books, a lot of the Hogwarts references went waaaay over my head, but I don't mind, I enjoyed it all anyway.
I know Hogwarts and all that is just a fantasy. Unlike the Bluestocking😁

It really is hunker-down-and-keep-cool day today😬
I nipped down to the local supermarket nice and early to get in and out before the merciless sun started beating down again.

So did most of the local population😒

And not one but the TWO people ahead of me at the checkout had major problems with paying - the first got her PIN wrong several times; the second had a huge trolley of stuff and also forgot their PIN, and hadn't enough cash to cover it, and tried Google Pay and Revolut but that didn't work, and then one of them went out to the car to get another card, and then they searched for more cash, then tried this that and the other. I was expecting barter to be suggested next. Or their First Born's labour for five years, or something.
Somehow they worked it out, but it went on for ages.

I started off feeling sorry for them, but in the end I found them Insufficiently Embarrassed - I would have been excessively embarrassed to be such a nuisance to so many people, and I wouldn't expect them to be that bad.
But they seemed a bit too serenely laid-back about the huge delay they were causing😠

In fairness, one of them apologised to me/us as they left, and I slipped straight into typical Irish brushing-over-awkwardness mode:
'Ah sure lookit, it could happen to anyone - technology, eh? -if ye'd been using real money, we'd all be home and hosed by now ha ha ha! Bye now, take care, all the best, bye bye, good luck now.....' etc.

You can take the woman out of Ireland but you can't take the Irish brushing-over-awkwardness out of the woman🙄😄

I'm happy to offer training on this topic, Errol. I can spend hours and hours sitting in the garden and reading.

I'm 2 1/2 hours in so far today and I have bugger all else planned today. I'm a champion languid lounger. I could reduce your productivity to almost nil in no time.

Oh, dear, I'm not good enough for business enterprises..I was trying to be nice and logical, forgot that I need to be ruthless and relentless. I forgot about profit, which I imagine is Rule #1...

(I also think I wouldn't make a very good activist)

Stick with me, babe...

Lovely Hogsmead story, Myrtle.

I would offer to help with the blankie Fuzzy and Angle but I couldn't cope with anything woolly at the moment - I'm glad I'm not a sheep😬

Wouldn't you think all those MSPs would be embarrassed to admit to not knowing which way is up - or at least pretending not to know? As the saying goes "better to keep silent and have everyone think you're a fool, than to speak (or put in writing) and confirm it"

A large iced coffee please gerbils and a paddling pool for my feet - with ice!

I strayed beyond this board - very unusually - yesterday because the word 'Sussex' caught my eye in Trending and I thought it was about Sussex Uni.

It wasn't, it was about conspiracy theories about ' The Sussexes' [East and West? No, Megan and Harry]- that their children are not real.🙄

I was delighted to see that the Spirit of Bluestocking is abroad on other threads:
somebody said that not only are the Sussex children not real, but' neither is Finland.'
'Or birds.'
'Birds aren't real?? so what are they then?'
'Probably some kind of government listening devices...'
'Oh yeah? well the government had better get over here and clean my windscreen!'
😂😂😂
Of course it may have been Bluestockingers On Tour Under Different Usernames, but whoever it was, it made me laugh - wonderful use of surreal humour to puncture daft conspiracy theories, and it was nice to see it flourishing outside the walls of the Bluey.

edited to add that Magpie will be pleased to hear that another poster confirmed that birds ARE 'some kind of government listening devices'
'Apparently the magpies are in charge..'🙂

I am doing my lounging indoors, @PastaAllaNorma - so I can cover that aspect of @ErrolTheDragon’s training! I may do some knitting later on, if I can work up the energy.

Marie 'Ah sure lookit, it could happen to anyone - technology, eh? - if ye'd been using real money, we'd all be home and hosed by now ha ha ha! Bye now, take care, all the best, bye bye, good luck now.....' etc.

When you slip into the brogue I always hear the words in the voice of my ex-MIL, who was lovely. She had a stock of phrases to keep her 4 sons in order, my favourite being " I didn't float down the Liffey on a lily pad y'know!"

It' not a blankie, it's a major consignment of bulky pee pants. No wool involved. ( That would be itchy)

It is hot out there isn't it? I went out to get the washing in from the line about an hour ago and had to have a little sit down afterwards.

I slightly feel the postman shouldn't have to work in this heat, but I'm glad he delivered my car insurance documents. I was felt like a criminal yesterday, out on the road without displaying my current disc - house insurance docs arrived on Monday, bought on the same day from the same firm but from different women with lovely Donegal accents.

Ahem.

Ah, that explains it. I got lost somewhere around the wrens and Myrtle's poem! 😁

@DauntlessDamson ”I didn't float down the Liffey on a lily pad y'know!"

I think that takes over as my favourite saying from Ted in Line of Duty’s

“I didn’t float up the Lagan in a bubble”
which I read the writer included as the result of a challenge to include a Belfast saying.

It’s Liffey and Lily that make it.

I wouldn’t claim to be productive when I’m failing to sit/lounge and read. Mostly it’s hacking stuff back and weeding. Though just before I came inside for lunch I did remember I had both compost and languishing seedlings so I did a bit of potting on though at least I managed to do it in the shade of the parasol.

If magpies are in charge of the birds, can one or two come and have words with the unruly starling families? Following the advice to not put out seed, I switched to suet pellets. This has changed the clientele at the feeder from mostly finches and tits to sparrows and voracious starlings. Perhaps I should get a caged feeder and see who turns up for that. I wouldn’t mind a few starlings but this morning I had nearly enough for a small murmuration.

My dad’s getting good results with peanuts if that helps. Sparrows, magpies, robins, pigeons & starlings but also goldfinches & a woodpecker who’s becoming a regular.