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

[Magpiecomplex]

Next thread!

I meant to tell you all about the Walrus, who as you all know is a kindly gent who bears more than his fair share of domestic duties.

He collected a paper bag full of this month’s prescriptions last Tuesday, which I duly took upstairs and placed on the sideboard in the living room to take into our bedroom. I didn’t need them till Sunday when I put all my medication in pill boxes.

On Sunday I looked for the bag but couldn’t find it. And he looked too and then he said, do you think it has gone in the recycling?

Usually after I have emptied the paper bag I flatten it and leave it on the sideboard along with the emptied tablet boxes. Other bits of paper and glasses to go downstairs to be washed are out there. It seems he collected the recycling and took my bag of drugs (not flattened, heavier than empty boxes) and put it in the recycling bin.

Fortunately it was not the week it was collected. So he went out, emptied the bin and retrieved them for me.

He did this before with a Pandora box that contained a bracelet for one of my bridesmaids, but that was never recovered and we had to buy another. I was astonished that he thought I would recycle a Pandora box.

I am clear that the left side of the sideboard is for going downstairs and the right side is for not going downstairs, but he takes it all.

I’m going to have to stop putting things there.

@MyrtleLion Mr Magpie takes the opposite approach and will not recycle anything without checking with me first, which is infuriating when it's clearly junk mail but potentially helpful when I've left an empty something on the side to remind me I need to replace it. He's obviously just decided to outsource all the thinking about it to me.

Wasps? No problem.

Everything was damp when we woke up this morning, but I doubt we got much. Plenty of possible showers shown in the forecast, but they rarely seem to materialise. The little river that runs alongside our garden is almost dry.

All heatwave-scunnered Bluestockingers are welcome here - we are currently 16 degrees and rain. And I don’t think the temperature has been over 20 for a week or so.

My job for today is charting the centre section of my embroidery - ds2’s name, his fiancée’s name and the date and place of the wedding, and making sure I can centre it in the panel.

I am a dreadful gardener - my mum’s green fingers have passed me completely by, and most things I plant, die. I would love to have the sort of borders that are so full of plants that you don’t need to weed, but have no idea how to achieve this (other than getting a professional in and throwing money at it). We do have an apple tree that we planted and usually does well - it is three different types of apple grafted onto one rootstock, but we can’t tell the apple as apart now, and have long since forgotten what the three types were. Sometimes we get so many apples we have to give them away.

I'll be right there Woley. It's not supposed to get as low as 16° here even overnight tonight! The Met Office says max 29° here today.

@SDTGisAnEvilWolefGenius Woley, I'll be there as soon as your apples are ready (if not before - no serious rain in the forecast for the next two weeks and temps climbing back to about 25 or 26C...grrr) - an established apple tree is high on my list for the new house. (I don't want much, do I?)

Woley, thank you so much for the offer. The Met Office says maximum 30° here today, and the lowest overnight temperature will be 18°.

We've had rain once in the last week, and that was only briefly. A friend who lives only 7 miles away reported that it rained heavily there at around the same time for 2 hours.😒

There were several well-established apple trees at our last house, but they were all cookers.

My (corporate) neighbour planted a row of apple trees a few years ago, which I can see from my window. I doubt that they are doing well this year, though.

It poured with rain here yesterday, which we really needed, but why do people drive so insanely in that kind of weather? I had to drive half an hour or so down the turnpike (motorway, 70mph limit) when it was throwing it down so hard I was driving at 60 because it was clearly unsafe. People were passing me at 80. And I am not generally a slow driver, but when there’s standing water on the road and spray going everywhere from big Lorrie’s, you’d think a degree of caution was warranted.

@Chickadeeinme has reminded me of a journey we took when I had recently passed my driving test.

It was a very long way, so I took over part of the driving. 2 small children in the back, DH and me in the front. We were on an A road, 2 lanes of nose to tail traffic in our direction moving fast, inside lane packed with lorries and vans.
It started to rain very heavily, and the windscreen wipers couldn't keep up. I looked over to DH for guidance.

He was asleep.

@AsWithGladat least he had confidence in you. I note that in my post above yours my American autocarrot, which does not recognise the word lorry in the plural because we call them trucks or semis over here, has rendered the plural as Lorrie’s because I didn’t notice it while I was writing. Apologies to anybody who wondered who Lorrie was and what belonged to him or her.

@MyrtleLion- we have baskets (one upstairs, one downstairs for stuff to be recycled. Maybe the Walrus’s overzealous efforts could be curbed by having a container rather than just a space?

@Chickadeeinme at least he had confidence in you.

Thank you.

Either that, or he needed a rest and wanted to get us home. It probably wasn't raining when we changed drivers. ;-)

The rain here didn’t amount to much but we’ve had enough showers in the last couple of weeks that the back lawn only has a few brown patches. DH has had his ankle strapped by the physio so it’s stable enough at the moment for him to mow, as there has been a bit of growth.

The garden is in its August lull - I’ve got too many geraniums etc really which are over by now, not enough of the repeat flowering ones. I’ve got some pops of colour from some cleomes which I grew from seed - I’ve never tried them before and they’ve been only partially successful. The seedlings I planted out vanished without trace, while of those in pots some are ok (though I forgot to pinch them so each currently has just one flower and I don’t know how they’ll do when they’re gone, but others haven’t taken off.

@Chickadeeinme It's fine, I translated Lorrie’s into what you probably meant, and I expect everyone else did, too.

Most if not all of us have suffered from autocorrect at some time.

Very mixed met reports - I agree with Magpie, about being 'so over Summer' - when it was mid to high 20s at first it was An Adventure so stay indoors during the hottest hours, go to the shops early or late, only sit in the shade in the evenings, harvest waste water for the garden, etc etc.

Coping strategies'r'us.

But then it dragged on and on and on and that short-term coping ability started to wear thing and I just wanted it to stop😡

Fortunately for us in this part of Ireland, it stopped a while ago and we had a good lot of rain last night, and I feel very sorry for those of you who have to keep on keeping on in yet more heatwave conditions
I can see the grass in the back garden looking less yellow already, though on closer examination, the patches of refreshed green are the dandelions and other weeds🙄

I didn't read yesterday's posts properly yet - sorry to hear that the London meeting was not good, Myrtle, and I hope you extricate yourself from it all ASAP, you don't need that kind of hassle.

Beautiful opal ring, Pasta, and it was nice you were able to treat yourself after that horrible ordeal you went through.
I had a similar 'oh look, there's an older person's hand at the end of my arm, how did that get there?!' moment, followed quickly by '..oh look, my arms have been replaced too!'
Weird how that happens without us noticing, isn't it?
Your hand carries the lovely ring beautfully

My garden is too big for me too, Angle, and it costs a lot to have someone in to do the heavy work.
I've often thought that there are probably people living in flats who would love to share someone else's garden, it would be a win-win if somebody came and shared mine. 'Garden Buddies'.
It probably exists already somewhere, my 'brilliant ideas' are rarely original...or brilliant, but I've never come across it in my locality.

Apologies Glad and Edith. I don't think I had both eyes open when I posted earlier

Well, I got to the optician and back without being rained on.

The good news is that there is no sign of glaucoma, which is a family concern. The not quite as good news is that my cataracts are developing and will probably need doing in the next couple of years, but my eyes are otherwise in good general health and I'm fine to continue driving, so I'm not complaining

It was fine, Chickadee - I guessed it was US autocarrot.

Still bone dry here, though cloudy off and on. Lawn the approx colour of wheat stubble.

DH has three approaches to recycling:
Leave it in or near the sink hoping that Edith will wash it out
Leave it lying around until Edith puts it in the recycling tub in the utility room ready to go out to the garage
Dump it in or near the recycling tub, regardless of how much is in there already, and expect Edith to take it out

Last night was typical. We finished a jar of mango chutney. When he washed up, he filled it with water and put the lid on, and made no attempt whatsoever to rinse it out. When I tidied up, I rinsed it out and it very quickly came up clean. And I <gasp> took it through to the utility rather than leaving it by the bloody sink.

He works much longer hours than I do, so he currently gets away with it. He's in for a nasty shock when he retires.

How much of men being domestically inept is nature and how much is nurture?

I came across the attached photo years ago. It's a truck being used by the Long Range Desert Group during WWII. They were meant to be uber efficient etc etc, but look at the high standard of Man Packing. 'Yes, just chuck it in the back, Stan! If we need the wireless in a hurry I'm sure we'll find it in no time!'

NORKGATE AT THE WOMEN'S TOUR DE FRANCE!
several teams at the Tour de France Femmes had voiced concerns of rivals wearing oversized bras stuffed with padding to create a “chest fairing.”

Some of you who have impressive norkage may be regretting that you didn't know when making your career plans that your 'chest fairing' might have given you the edge in cycle racing!🚴😁

I thought it might mean that the first chest over the line won, like horses’ noses, but then I looked it up.

There have to be some advantages to being large-norked!

I have plenty of natural ‘chest fairing’ and I’ve never thought it was an advantage in any circumstance. I’ve looked up what it means and how it gives racing cyclists an advantage, and I’m still confused. How can it help aerodynamically? From the article I read men have been banned from having front pockets in their tops, especially as they were filling them with snacks they couldn’t easily access when riding.

Like many others of my generous build who never wears anything with a high neck, the area under the bra cup at the top can act as a useful, secure place to carry keys and phone. And snacks, if wrapped.

Cyclists accused of ‘faking larger bra size’ at Tour de France Femmes
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/cycling/2026/08/04/female-cyclists-accused-fake-larger-bra-size-tour-de-france/

Comments predictable but some are quite funny. Well they made me titter.

Did anyone else read ‘Are you there God? It’s me, Margaret?’ as a kid. There’s scope for a whole new version here.

‘I must, I must, I must increase my bust… to win the cycling championship!!!!!’

I can honestly say it had never occurred to me. Sadly I think my competitive cycling days are well behind me never started. The norks completely screw up my buoyancy though - in a swimming situation my chest fairing is an active problem. Thus I swim backstroke, and try not to notice the number of men watching the apparently self-propelled norks carving through the water somewhat in the manner of the shark in Jaws and his/her/its dorsal fin. Does anyone know what sex that shark was?