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?)

I'm so happy!

I'm never leaving.

Just watch out for the flying squirrels. I can’t remember exactly why they are our librarians rather than, oh, how about a nice lady orangutan?

to poor Mr Dragon.

Apart from that [Mr Lincoln😄] nice days out seem to have been had by many of you
There was a very cool breeze today, so I pottered in the garden, and found that unwanted ivy growing along the ground where it shouldn't be growing was very easy to pull out of the dry ground roots and all -usually it would be a tug of war that would end with most of the root staying in the ground.
I know the best thing to do would be to dig it out thoroughly, but I can't do that.
So the drought conditions have had one good outcome, for me at least!

Cat photos in the morning, gardening reports in the evening - I'm morphing into some of you, amn't I?😁

As you can see on the left, there's a well-stocked bookcase in The Real Bluestocking.
[for recent Stockingers: I made a model of the Bluey a while back, sooooo much fun😃. I made almost everything from scratch, except the chairs which I already had, and the gerbils who came from Amazon - the shop, not the river, it's the Capybaras that come from the Amazon I think!]

@Thehorticulturalhussie that sounds like a great hobby! (and of course it's one of mine!) It has definitely been warm and humid here in the Big City, but also some clouds. Catching up, looking at the garden work, planning the week. I hope it's not too hot to sleep tonight.

Sorry to hear about Mr. Dragon's sprained ankle, Errol 😕I hope it heals quickly..

Will catch up later, I'm making dinner tonight!

ps. The 5G here is amazing (city living!)

The flying squirrels are available to collect the books on the higher shelves. I believe the library extends to several stories.

As evidenced by the historical images below which are kept in the archives, it also stocks lost/unreleased episodes of Firefly and Star Trek Enterprise - I wouldn’t be surprised if series 3 of Fawlty Towers and The Young Ones can be found there, as well as the missing series of any other fan favourites.

I strongly suspect that we might collectively morph into a single intelligent, empathetic, awesome female entity who cares deeply about justice, books, animals, insects, history in all of its permutations, coffee and mojitos.
No wonder the TRAs hate us, together we’re unconquerable.
Or do I need to have a little lie down in a dark room?

Third-Place Play-off: Hanseatic League vs. Discworld

Nobody at Gerbil HQ had ever quite worked out what to do with the third-place match — it belonged to two teams who’d each come agonisingly close to something bigger, and Griselda’s bulletin board had a section for it that simply read CONSOLATION (BUT TAKE IT SERIOUSLY), which Gwendoline had illustrated, unhelpfully, with a small drawn bronze medal wearing a slightly brave expression.

The Hanseatic League arrived with their band at three-quarter volume — enough to show up, not enough to suggest they’d fully recovered from the semi-final. Discworld arrived exactly as they always did, Weatherwax unreadable, Death unhurried, though Nanny Ogg’s usual mischief seemed, for once, a little muted. Both teams, it was generally agreed, wanted this rather more than either was prepared to admit.

It was, from the first whistle, a tight, watchful, faintly weary affair — two sides who’d given everything a few days earlier finding just enough left to make sure neither gave an inch. Errol tested the keeper early; the Hanseatic striker who’d scored against Play School worked a near-identical chance and was denied by a save of real quality. Nobody broke the deadlock at half-time. Nobody broke it after it either.

Minute 70: GOAL, Hanseatic League — a scrappy header from a corner, greeted by relief as much as joy. 1-0.

Minute 81: GOAL, Discworld — Death, of all gerbils, arriving late and unhurried at the back post to nod home with an expression of total, serene inevitability. 1-1.
Extra time came and went without another goal, both sides visibly running on nothing but stubbornness by the end of it. Griselda’s notes for the whole thirty minutes read simply: “attrition.”

Penalties.

Gwendoline’s bulletin abandoned prose entirely and just began logging them live, exclamation marks flickering in and out of existence in real time.

Hanseatic League 1, Discworld 1. Both scored, clean and calm. Hanseatic League 2, Discworld 2. Both scored again. Hanseatic League 3, Discworld 3. Nanny Ogg’s effort wobbled in off the underside of the bar in a way nobody was quite willing to rule on, given the day that was in it. Hanseatic League 4, Discworld 4. Hanseatic League 5, Discworld 5. Errol’s shot arrived with rather more heat than the previous four, and the keeper’s paws smoked faintly for the rest of the shootout.

Sudden death.

Six: both scored. Seven: both scored. Eight: the Hanseatic keeper produced a save that bent her backward nearly double, only for her own side’s spot-kick to cannon back off the crossbar a minute later — 8-8 and somehow still level. Nine: both scored again, greeted now less with celebration than sheer disbelief that this was still happening. Gertrude had, by this point, produced and quietly consumed an entire tray of seeds shaped like a question mark.

Ten: the Hanseatic League’s youngest player, barely old enough to have a shooting boot her own size, stepped up, paused, and side-footed it dead centre, low, unhurried — and the Discworld keeper, diving early to her right, could only watch it go the other way.

Eleven: Vimes stepped up for Discworld needing to score to stay in it, struck it firmly and well — and the Hanseatic keeper, entirely out of ideas, got down out of pure instinct and turned it round the post.

10-9, Hanseatic League win the shootout.

Both benches emptied at once — not in triumph and despair so much as in mutual, exhausted collapse — and for a moment the two teams were simply tangled together in the centre circle, too tired to separate, patting whichever paw happened to be nearest regardless of colours. Weatherwax shook the young scorer’s paw with something that might, in poor light, have been mistaken for warmth.

Greta’s line was waiting under the glass, uncharacteristically long, as if even she hadn’t wanted to rush it:

Eleven penalties to settle what ninety minutes and thirty more couldn’t. Bronze has never looked so hard-earned.

The Hanseatic League take third place.

https://myrtlelion.substack.com/p/hanseatic-league-vs-discworld

I have no idea where the Wee Free Men came from, unless it is a Discworld reference.

They are - a diminutive race of hairy kilt-wearing, fight-picking redheads, the Nac Mac Feegle. Prone to exclaiming "Crivens!" in some cases.

Garden dinner tonight - fried halibut with zucchini fritti, salsa verde and new potatoes. The courgettes, spuds, parsley and basil from the veg patch. I love eating what I grow.

I've just finished reading "Blood and Roses" by Helen Castor. It's based on the Paston Papers, a series of letters spanning most of the 15th century between members of the Paston family, who were landed gentry based in Norfolk. Various family members had roles at Court under both Edward IV and Henry VI and their fortunes changed with the ups and downs of the Yorkist and Lancastrian monarchs. However, the letters also document the day-to-day concerns of family members, including the women of the family and how the wars disrupted their lives. An interesting perspective from a family who were not quite at the centre of the action, but had to live with its consequences.

The Nac Mac Feegle, who are Pictsies. I’m not sure how they have got into the stands for the gerbil World Cup as each clan only has one female (she produces all the babies and does their thinking), except they can get in pretty much anywhere.

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

And tractors. Don't forget the tractors.

We have arrived, and figured out the oven. Staying in a 1420 house complete with thatched roof and a bread oven built into the fireplace. Fortunately we also have 5G and modern WiFi.

That sounds fascinating, I’m going to look it up. Thanks Damson.

Is Greta a ghost gerbil?

Apologies 🚜🚜🚜🚜🚜

Perhaps the awesome female entity would ride a tractor called the Dreadnork?

Love that the one female member does all the thinking. Ain't that always the case?

I hope Mr Errol's foot recovers quickly. I went on holiday on the Norfolk Broads with some friends back in the 1990s, when one of the men broke his ankle in an impromptu game of football. I think we were at Barton Broad at the time and the ambulance men had to carry him quite a long way to the ambulance. It was also a major logistical exercise to get him back to his home in Wiltshire. So if Mr Errol had to trip up, he did it in the right place!

That looks amazing Magpie. If walls could talk!

Tractors ? I’m missing tractors ?

I rather think she might. She’d also have a galleon, steam train and a team of winged horses. If she wanted to. The awesome female entity needs a name, preferably one with historical significance.

Boudicca?

Or Hyppolyta - Queen of the Amazons and the original Wonder Woman?

Or both?

I remember Natalie Haynes explaining that zoster, the original word for the item Hercules stole from Hippolyta, is now mistranslated as girdle but actually means ‘war belt’ - something very different.

This board is so educational ♥️

I used to have a book with all the Paston letters in it. Back in the 90s I wrote a book (I say wrote but it was more like editing really) for Addison Wesley Longman for the schools market. It was a collection of historical diaries, letters and journals, which form part of the National Curriculum at KS2 English. It was a fascinating job and I used one of the Paston letters in it, because it was from the wife to the husband when he was off on one of his never-ending court case visits to London. She's instructing him not only what to buy for cloth and food before he comes home, but also on what weapons and equipment for their archers to defend their house. I thought it put a hole in the 'meek medieval woman' picture.

Today I chaired a board meeting of our state Poets Society and we got through a lot of work planning for the year. The others on the board are a nice bunch of people so we work well together. The house we met at was about an hour's drive from me going north, but also an hour's drive from our vice-president going south-west, so nothing to complain about. It's a big state with a small population!