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 was driving home yesterday and passed a field with a couple of gazebos and a large teepee style tent with food being cooked, a big sign saying 'In-field demonstration' and some farm machinery lined up. So I assume some sort of sales event, though goodness knows which farmers have the time to attend at this point in the year.

The combine over the road knocked off at about 10.15 last night, was back out there at some point I didn't notice this morning, and then at about half one it finished the field, the header went onto the trailer and the whole lot trundled off somewhere else. The looks-like-a-12-year-old girl was busy tractoring. Watching her drive that tractor, I have a feeling she could teach Jeremy Clarkson a thing or two.

This afternoon I'm taking the dogs to some land I have access to, in the hope that I will find stubble to run them on.

when I lived in the US I was for a while baffled how many traffic reports mentioned accidents involving tractor-trailers on the major roads as I’d never seen any agricultural vehicles on them at all. Eventually I realised this was American for ‘articulated lorry’.

😮no way is it really what that means in the states? Ok I've learned something new there (I often do in here!)

Oh! I'd forgotten all about that! Yes, tractor-trailer - used a lot when I was a child. Later (sometime later), the term eighteen-wheeler became ubiquitous for anything large, carrying or dragging freight, whether articulated or not.

I'm so sorry this is happening, Hussy. I remember the same with my grandmother, but she only reached 90. I was thousands of miles away as she was departing "this earthly realm" as she liked to call it (my mother's side of the family were Catholic, until my mother was not, which is another story entirely). So I talked to her on the phone as she was on her way out (my cousin held the phone to her ear), and I hope and pray that she heard me.

I'm sure your MIL knows you are there for her. I'm glad you are close (physically and emotionally).

@Boiledbeetle Great news re the weight loss, Boily, (send some of that willpower my way, wouldja?)

I rarely buy biscuits anymore because they survive until I get home from the supermarket, then they're all gone by the end of the day!

I’m in a dilemma. The machine at the gym told me today that I have a metabolic age of 37 (I’m 52).

So that’s all very nice, even when taken with a bucketful of salt, but if I identify as 37 in future do I have to give up my over-50s railcard? Or can I just identify as 37 when I’m not on a train?

I think that if the rest of Europe can identify as non-binary, then you should be able to identify as 37 when you feel like it, and not when you don't. (You wouldn't want to be identifying as 52 right now, if you could identify as 67 and claim your pension!)

WHY can’t I identify as 67 for financial purposes and claim my pension?

It’s completely unfair.

I have my pension. It's not all that, trust me.
Although I like the bus pass.

Yes, but if I identified as 67 for pension purposes, 52 when on trains & 37 at other times I could get my pension and my Freedom Pass while still working.

It is. Only speshul people get to identify as they like. Sorry. 😑

☹️

As soon as you identify as 67 you get instant arthritis, muscle weakness, eyesight problems etc and society hates you and thinks you should pop off to Dignitas in the next half hour. You up for that?

Hm. When you put it that way…

They seem to be called semis (pronounced semeyes) around here.

Yes! And semis!

DS2 is on ADHD meds - basically amphetamines.

He finds that one drink has the effect of about five so can't have any booze without being hammered, that he has no appetite whatsoever, struggles to sleep but his focus is great.

Semi whats though?

Semi-truck or semi-trailer. (trans. articulated lorry)

And of course there's a Wikipedia page 😀

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semi-trailer_truck

It's the day of our local 'pattern' (patron saint's pilgrimage) so about 70 or 80 of us gathered for prayers etc and circuits of the holy well. We were invited to pray for people who needed it, so I thought of Marie (having had a mild and minor brush with fibromyalgia years ago), Mr Hussy's mother, and Hedgie's nephew. And all the rest of you. Including the shrinking ones.

It was lovely, under a circle of trees - ash, holly, hawthorn, with the vegetation fresher than most of the countryside because the water was still bubbling out of the spring wells as it has done for a millennium or more, and the scent of hay drifting in from the orchard field next door

I didn't get a picture, but here's last year's

gah, apologies for the duplication

That sounds lovely, Deano. Who is your local patron saint?

That sounds lovely and is also very interesting, Dean

Apart from the Christian association, the trees you mentioned, ash, hawthorn and holly were all significant in pre-Christan times.

Ash was considered to be a healing tree, hawthorn was associated with the Green Man of ancient tradition and holly was supposed to protect against storms and in particular lightening strikes. So, perhaps the Holy well has been a site of pilgrimage since ancient times?

ETA a word

It isn’t that horrible.

Actually not drinking cardamom’s tea will be horrible.

But I have been tee-total before.

It’s the contradiction between wanting to start the medication tomorrow so I can focus on the interview on Monday, and not wanting to start it till Thursday so I can enjoy a boozy day out.

It will all work out.

Thank you for thinking of me and my ailments at the Holy Well, Deano, much appreciated