The Bluestocking Women's Pub: Where the Bluebird Sings to the Lemonade Springs

[AngleofRepose]

Croeso/Welcome to the Bluestocking Women's Pub, with our lovely gerbil staff, the icy Mojito foot-bath for those of you fed up with the heat, a Quilting/Craft Nook, lots of yummy food and drink with zero calories, gluten, or allergens, the Gerbil World Cup, and a brand new magic pool that becomes a babbling brook whenever you want it to!

Come on in! All women welcome! (Men welcome at The Staunch Ally pub down the road aways)

(security provided by the capybaras, lovely folk, but try not to get in their way)

(oh, and don't mention triangles, please. Gubbins gets very overexcited)

(did we mention the Gerbil World Cup?)

That sounds intriguing Dean. is there any particular aspect of medieval history you'll be looking into?

It's this, held in a tiny village that was the site of a significant monastic scriptorium and later Friaries.

https://www.nenaghguardian.ie/2026/04/14/medieval-conference-lineup-announced/

the place where this was found

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stowe_Missal

and this

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faddan_More_Psalter

I was going to car share with someone but she's finding the heat too much, so I'll have to get up at some stage to leave time to buy petrol. Not a day to get stranded on the road miles from anywhere.

We're in the middle of (another) busy weekend.

Your trip to town sounds lovely, Deano.

It looks great @DeanElderberry but sorry your friend can't go. Are you still mid heat wave? I was very excited last night on the local weather report that they had labelled the map with the phrase "heatwave over".

Term ended for me yesterday. I always find the last half term of the year ridiculously busy and limp to the end. I've got a busy first week of the holiday too but then I'm really looking forward to having time for myself and perusing the Blue Stocking / catching up with the gerbil world cup.

Your town sounds delightful, Deano, and the conference interesting - hope they can ventilate the room well at least if it’s small.

I was out volunteering with the Canals and Rivers Trust yesterday, mostly strimming and removing grass and weeds from the stonework of a lock. We were rewarded with lollies at the end which was most welcome!

Cooler and at least partially cloudy here today with a slight possibility of rain - the garden could do with it.

That sounds fascinating Deano, tell us all about it afterwards!

Morning, all! Bar gerbils, coffee and a croissant, please.

We finally had some rain late in the evening yesterday, first in near a month- it lasted about 15 minutes, so not great, but this morning it's much cooler. Unfortunately I am heading off later this morning to stay with a friend in Cardiff for the week, where it looks like it may be 26-27C all week 😝But, we'll manage, although we hope to do a lot of work in her garden. She can't manage so well on her own now, so I said I can help. And, it's so time consuming driving back and forth to the city to view houses, so she said I should line up a few viewings for next week, and come and stay. So, there's a plan anyway...

Deano, that medieval conference sounds really interesting. I hope it's not too cramped for all of you!

I am driving to see the Walrus’s sister and family for lunch then he will drive back so I can drink. We always do it this way, even though it’s his sister so I should be the sober one, but he likes it like this.

The third place match will be posted later.

We're off to the wilds of Sussex later today, for a while. Depending on how irritated I get with Mr Magpie (going on holiday with a workaholic is always challenging), I might be quiet for a couple of weeks. I have a big stack of books to take with me. Both the junior Magpies are joining us, which will be nice.

I've been loaned two novels with a deadline (because they were promised to someone else first) so I am mostly reading rather than being online or doing anything useful.

My fave bit from the latest match report:
Death made another of her tackles — calm, silent, utterly untouchable — and the Tunnel winger simply found the ball gone from her paws without experiencing the moment of its leaving.

I liked it because it reminded me of Donnes'
As virtuous men pass mildly away,
And whisper to their souls to go,
Whilst some of their sad friends do say
The breath goes now, and some say, No:

which I'm sure is exactly what the Tunnel winger thought as she realised she had inexplicable lost the ball😁

I'm very excited because I HAVE CAT PHOTOS TO SHARE!!
At last I can look the East End Bluestocking in the eye😄
The amazing cat that has visited my garden twice in the past year or so, and which I eventually IDed as a Maine Coon, showed up yesterday.
As instructed last time by you, I took photos.
I was able to get up really close to it: not only was it not frightened of me, it didn't really seem all that interested in me at all after a bit of token rolling over and showing a white tummy😒
Given its very thick coat, I thought it might be overheating and brought it a bowl of water. It sniffed at it, and turned away saying 'It's not Perrier!' - well that's what it looked like.
It had a bit of a lie down, sat up and looked around, and ambled off.

I tried telling it it was a lovely pussycat yes you are yes you are, but it didn't seem to be very interested in what I had to say😏
[it was a yawn, not a laugh BTW]

Any vet dentists in the house to comment on its dental health? Is that what it's supposed to have, toothwise? it looks a bit sparse to me...

Love the photos. Try blinking at it very slowly next time and see if it blinks back, @MarieDeGournay!

I’m not an expert on cat teeth though.

💚 Thanks for the kitty pics, Marie! So pretty!
Yes, cats will drink only what they want, when they want it, from whichever container they deem acceptable...today. Tomorrow will be different, but they won't tell you how or why.

As to responding to compliments, only if they think it's to their benefit (i.e. they will get something they want from you)

I love cats 😃

Have a great day, Deano, the line-up looks brilliant!
Esp
Matthew Seaver - Words on the Wave: Ireland and St Gallen in Early Medieval Europe.
The Words on the Wave exhibition at the National Museum was superb!

Seeing actual manuscripts that had been written in the 7th and 8th centuries was... it was a bit mindblowing, actually - seeing the individual strokes of the quill made by a human hand so long ago was amazing.

The accompanying catalogue is superb too, but for some reason the Natl Museum doesn't have an online shop - they're missing a trick, and an income stream there!

I'm about to scurry off to my Irish Placenames bookshelf to see what the origin of 'Lorrha and Dorrha' is. Nenagh is 'An Aonach', the fair/gathering, and Lorrha looks a bit like 'laithreach' meaning 'the site/place'.
I wouldn't be surprised if Lorrha and Dorrha mean completely separate things in Irish, but it was 'fun' to make them look the same when anglicised
I'll report back to Pedantry Corner - join me there if interested, if not, I'll completely understand😄

Dear Deano, I've never been to Ireland and how I'd love to go! I'm enjoying imagining you getting ready and going to your mediaeval conference. It was lovely reading about your visit to town, too.

@MarieDeGournay your comment about the manuscripts reminded me of being on a dig a few years ago when I was at uni. Ok, so it was over 20 years ago allegedly but I refuse to accept that the early 2000s were actually that long ago. Anyway, despite not getting on with most of the other students when they were in a pack, bits of the dig were amazing. I found pieces of pottery with tiny fingerprints on them. We were excavating a Neolithic era site and to think that I was the first person to touch that pottery in thousands of years was mind-blowing. The fingerprints were the size of a small child's, but we're almost definitely an adult's prints.

I also got to excavate a deer that had been buried the year before as part of an experiment about decomposition. The lecturer asked for a volunteer to do it and I gladly put my hand up, to get away from the pack as much as anything else. The deer was completely decomposed except for the covering of two hooves (keratin?)

@AngleofRepose it's already warm in Cardiff, but cloudy and muggy, at least in my bit.

I won't be very far from St Gallen in about a week. The schedule won't allow for a visit, though. Maybe next time.

I've never been to St Gallen either, but I believe the library is amazing - they sent over many of the manuscripts in Museum exhibition.
Words on the Wave: Ireland and St. Gallen in Early Medieval Europe | Archaeology | National Museum of Ireland

We got temperatures in the mid 20s yesterday - maybe 26-27 - so my poor feet are swelling up again. They swelled while we were down in Ipswich, and I thought when we got home, things would be better, but the temperatures in Scotland this week have been as hot as Suffolk last weekend. This is Scotland, though, so it can’t last, and I’m sure it won’t be long before we are wondering if it’s too soon to put the heating on! 😂😂😂

I have a full day of rugby to entertain me - the Nations cup - and I should be getting on with the blackwork embroidery for ds2’s wedding, but I am having to unpick so many times, because I have counted wrong, and it is just too frustrating.

If the bar gerbils could bring me a massive iced coffee, I would be very grateful.

MrPasta is cleaning the hen house. This means the gens are free ranging under strict supervision. They aren't used to free ranging across the garden because since they hatched we've been under moderate to severe bird flu restrictions.

I'm mostly engaged with keeping them away from the salad crops, which is fine.

Then the plants in the cut flower bed started shaking. Swaying side to side quite dramatically. Then three heads popped up at once. It was like a scene from Jurassic Park 😆

I have also never been to Ireland, and must try and remedy that before I shuffle off this mortal coil. It looks beautiful in all the travel shows and the history is fascinating. Your medieval day sounds great, Deano.

I have the summer board meeting of our state Poets Society today, and as I'm the president I guess I ought to show up. It's cooler here today thank goodness, and a little cloudy. We're meeting at our treasurer's house, about an hour from here. so I'm up and about earlier than I might otherwise be on a Saturday. DH is still asleep, I think.

We have slightly unusual guests at the moment. I was chatting to a nice neighbour of ours who is an Indian guy married to an American woman, with two teenage children, a few months ago, in the hope of paying his kids to feed our cats when we go to the UK in October. He told me his parents were coming to visit for a couple of months in the summer, though they would be travelling around a fair bit while they were here, and asked if I knew a reasonable hotel nearby as he didn't really have room for them. Impulsively I said "well we have a spare room and we're literally across the road so why don't they just stay with us", and so it has been. They are very nice people, they speak good English, and we hardly see them - they've been on a cruise to Alaska for a couple of weeks, back here for a week or so and today off to visit bits of Canada for a couple of weeks. I think they'll be here for two weeks before they leave in August (at which point my daughter and family are arriving for a week so I'll need the room anyway). They are from Goa, but both of them grew up in Bombay, which is where I was born and lived until I was almost five, so weirdly our times there overlapped by a couple of years. They're incredibly quiet and polite so we've hardly known they were here, and it hasn't been a problem at all.

Here's your iced coffee @SDTGisAnEvilWolefGenius

Copilot wilfully misunderstands my instructions, so this is the best I can manage for now because my image limit has been reached.

Lovely image 🥰

That's amazing about your guests, Chickadeeinme - what a generous offer from you, and how lovely for them to have such a welcoming and convenient place to stay on the far side of the world - with somebody who knows their home town!
A lovely story.
I hope the poetry meeting goes well. Have sales of your book been good? It deserves to be widely read, I'm just going to put on record again that I'm quite fussy about poetry and I loved discovering yours

I hope the promised cooler weather arrives ASAP, it can't come soon enough for some of us, and some of our feet - Woley🙁
I'm sure the hens will be talking about today for weeks to come, Pasta -

It was a grand day out, wasn't it? Lovely to be out after lockdown. I don't see why we had to stay indoors, I think it was a government plot to control our movements, why are they so afraid of poultry in motion? Anyhoo...We visited these gardens that were open to the public, very nice it was too. And they had a pick your own and all you can eat buffet too, it was lovely. It was a bit hot, Henrietta ruffled some feathers by saying that it was 'roasting' - honestly, what a birdbrain!, and spent the rest of the afternoon apologising for her use of triggering language...
Best of all, we had the cleaners in, so came home to a lovely clean house..'