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?)

It did...several hours later than expected. But it works. Yay!

I'm afraid I haven't had a holiday for over 13 years. A long- forgotten memory now 😞

Just got back from a lovely meal out, including the characteristic smart-assed conversation from the junior Magpies. Mama Magpie many years ago laid down the law about me not cooking every single meal while on holiday in a self-catering cottage. Same shit, different place, doesn't meet my definition of a rest.

I don’t think all of east anglia say fil-um given the amount of stick I used to get for it

I grew up in Essex & never heard fil-um there.

Mama Magpie is (was?) a wise woman.

I hope so, Mama Magpie is me!

One of my formative memories of fillums was trying to figure out what picture my granny had seen on the TV by her description of it. She often didn't remember the names of the actors, so it took a while for me to figure out that "him with the teeth" was James Coburn.

Another time I was confused by her description of something she'd seen starring Yul Brynner, until it became clear that it was not in fact Yul Brynner but Rory Bremner.

Oops - sorry Magpie! I thought you meant your mother!

Yul Brynner and Rory Bremner are very similar, to be fair 😂
I remember a conversation with FIL where he informed me that Rick Wakeman had died. He meant Alan Rickman.

I thought I'd posted but I'd forgotten to press 'post': no one says fillum around here except for stray Irish persons (and we don't get many of them).

Rumour in the vicinity of Chez Edith suggests that we might get fibre broadband along this stretch within the next month or so. I am very excited. Proper interwebz!

You were not only missed, Fuzzy, you hade a poem composed for you, see above😁

Woley had said how the heat was bad for her feet, so...

Blow, Northern winds!
Bring snow, bring sleet!
Bring cooling breezes
To Woley's feet

and I remembered that you had mentioned the heat being a bit much, so
you got a poem too😃

Glad you're back online, and has it started cooling down yet? It's very definitely cooler here, all we need now is a good soaking of rain...

Awww

🥰

what a delightful event all round!

Thank you for all the thanks for the Gerbil World Cup. I hadn’t realised it would be so epic.

Taking a break from gerbil stories for a bit (unless a world record gets broken), as the gerbils not only don’t understand politics, they don’t understand why anyone would be excited about it.

Personally, I couldn’t wait to get home from the cinema to see who has which job in the new cabinet, but Griselda, Maud and Gubbins didn’t even look up when I expressed my excitement. Phew!

We saw The Odyssey. It was amazing. Utterly brilliant. I really do recommend it.

The only annoying thing was we booked in the middle of row K in an empty cinema and despite a sparse audience, people were sat right next to us on each side. I think it’s like parking in an empty supermarket car park. People see where you’ve parked and park next to you because that obviously where you’re supposed to park. They must have seen where we booked our seats and thought that must be the best row, right next to the people who have booked those seats…

Thank you for my poem Marie. That's very lovely and I am honoured.

Who won the Gerbil World Cup?

TUNNEL!!!!

I am so, so sorry - I did miss that wonderful poem, @MarieDeGournay - my feet and I are so honoured.

It is gradually getting cooler here - in the low twenties rather than the mid to high twenties, so my feet are starting to look more like feet and less like products of the Richmond sausage factory. Who knows - maybe by next week, they will fit in my shoes again! A wolef can but dream.

Every summer I wonder about buying a portable air conditioning unit - ds1 and his family have one, and it has been so helpful in the worst of the heat down there. But we don't usually have really bad heatwaves in Scotland, and most years it would only get a few days use, so I can't justify the expense.

I’m not sure you need to justify something that will keep your feet fitting into your shoes, Woley, even if that’s only a few days a year at the moment. Climate change is likely to mean this gets worse over time, rather than being sporadic.

DH isn’t good at temperature regulation nowadays. A wall mounted unit in the main bedroom means it can be cooled in summer when necessary but also heated more than the rest of the house in winter, very efficiently unless the weather is unusually cold. So we can run the CH a bit lower, I don’t like the whole of the house too warm.

I'm glad Fuzzy and Woley enjoyed their perms😁
Just as well it's cooling down, as I would have felt obliged to come up with more silly verses about cooling down using words that rhyme with other usernames😧

I think you are right, @Chickadeeinme. I am expecting the money from my mum’s estate through soon, so I think I may use a bit of that to buy an air conditioner.

For @EmpressaurusKitty’s Kitty and @Boiledbeetle‘s cats who I will refer to as Boy Cat and Girl Cat because their names are a mouthful.

https://www.theguardian.com/thefilter/2026/jul/21/best-cat-toys-tested-uk

and of course anyone else with cats or who likes looking kittens playing.

Best budget toy is a scrunched up shiny bit of paper available to buy rather than make at home…

Thanks @MyrtleLion.

Honeysuckle, hmmm….

Catit Senses super circuit, YES! We can play with that together for ages.

The best catnip toys EVER are the woolly mice one of the rescue volunteers makes, though. Every cat I’ve given one too has loved it.

https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/te-ao-maori/729863/maori-word-kaitiakitanga-named-world-s-most-beautiful-by-language-app
Knowing we have some linguists among us!

Thank you Magpie, that's a wonderful article, I loved all the words.
The winning word reminds me of the Hebrew Tikkun Olam, 'repair the world' but the Maori one wins on how it looks and sounds.