The Bluestocking Women's Pub, in which Gosie returns to the trail

[Magpiecomplex]

Next thread!

The wood pigeons on holiday were certainly going at it with great enthusiasm Edith. Thunk! as they landed on the tiled porch. Clatter! as they postured for each other's benefit. Thunk! Thunk! as more landed. Scrabble! and the clap of wings as they all buggered off somewhere else to do it all again.

My afternoon walk was a short circle through the village, down a farm track and over a field to the canal. On entering the field gate a hare popped up and loped away - I’d hoped to see one.
Later went for a stroll in the park under its lovely shady trees. A kerfuffle made me turn, to see a couple of squirrels performing a high speed helical chase up a trunk and back down again.

Can I have something long & cold please, bar gerbils?

The tube was buggered, it’s taking me twice as long to get home & I’m sweating on a bus. Almost there now.

The iced coffee bowser is pulling up alongside your bus now, @EmpressaurusKitty.

Im sorry I haven’t been very active in here - I am reading things, but have been doing a lot of embroidery - I am doing a blackwork design, as a present for ds2 and his fiancée when they get married in a couple of months. I really want to get it done before we fly out to Australia for the wedding. I seem to be hampered by a complete inability to count - there has been much unpicking, and muttering of sweary words - but I do seem to be getting there.

Ooh that sounds interesting @SDTGisAnEvilWolefGenius What's the design?

I remember once complaining that M&S didn’t do any bras over about a 40, apart from ones that started just underneath the chin and went down almost to waist level, and that could have doubled as armour plating. I wanted to know why those of us who are larger of nork couldn’t have attractive bras. I was told there was no demand. Bollocks, thought I.

It is this design, @ChristmasStars, but instead of the tulips in the middle, I will put their names and the date and place of the wedding. I did a similar one doe ds1 and his wife, and I also did one for my mum, but with irises in the centre. She liked it, but said I had used the wrong shade of yellow for some tiny part of the petals, and did I mind if she snipped them out and did them in the right yellow.

At the time she was waiting for bilateral cataract surgery, and the thought of her and a sharp pair of scissors attacking my hard work made me go pale. Luckily my sister whipped it out of her hands and got it framed pronto, so she couldn’t have her wicked way with it.

Oh yes, the old "no demand" chestnut. Translates to "we can't figure out how to do it and we haven't bothered doing enough market research to know that it's worth persisting". It took Bravissimo making their own to prove that plunge bras can go higher than a G cup.

August bank holiday Monday here so the long awaited rain has showed up and it was so cold earlier that I switched the heating on for a couple of hours.

We did need a break from the drought, but the timing was a bit sad.

I needed that, thank you Woley!

Home now & it’s cool(ish) & shady. I’m at least wearing a loose & floaty cotton maxi frock, courtesy of Vinted.

Cotton dresses have to be frocks because they always seem to be in books.

What awful timing, Deano.

Hopefully your cold drink has arrived. There was a false start when one of the newer gerbils on the team proudly got a cucumber out of the fridge but fortunately it was intercepted.

If ever there was proof that nature loves a joke... 🤦🏻‍♀️

The iced coffee bowser had enough not just for me but for everyone ekse who got off at my stop, Errol.

Ok, Magpie, Fuzzy, Errol and Angle, despite the fact the back of my hand that I knew in the clichéd manner now somehow resembles the hand of an old person (when did that happen?)

Here's my ring - although it's hard to catch the lovely colours within.

Pasta, that is gorgeous. Exactly my sort of thing; I love it.

Lovely! Blimey your mum!

That's a beautiful ring.

That's a lovely opal, and cleanly set. Good spot! You know to take it off before washing your hands, don't you?

Perfect setting for it, opals don’t want anything fussy do they.

Lovely ring. Your wedding ring is a bit like mine. Mine belonged to my great grandma before me.

Mine was my grandmother's, from her wedding in 1934. It was stolen, so I had a replacement made to the same specification.

What a coincidence! Except the stolen bit 😀. I think my great grandmother got married in 1905. My gran told us it was Welsh gold when she gave it to us but I once got it stuck on my right hand and had to have it cut off - the jeweller told us it's definitely not Welsh gold!

I would love to have an inherited wedding ring but I am the youngest of my maternal granny's nine granddaughters so that was never going to happen. I comfort myself by thinking that it isn't the ring, it's the eternal love it represents and a brass curtain ring is just as good as a 24 carat heirloom.

On the other hand, my engagement ring was left to DH by a maiden great aunt who had inherited it from her mum. I think that it's quite ugly as it is a Victorian over-the-top pile of diamonds and sapphires but it's the one I have.

Yes, this year has swung very markedly between wetter than normal and drier than normal. The Met Office website has published an analysis of July's weather today which makes interesting reading. This is a quotation from it:

So far this year, four months have seen above average rainfall (January, February, March and June), with three months seeing below average monthly rainfall (April, May and now July).

This kind of variation is hard on agriculture and gardens alike.