The Bluestocking: where conversation should supersede cards

[MyrtleLion]

The Blue Stockings Society was founded by women emphasising education and mutual cooperation. Men could attend as invited guests, but in this Women's Pub, they are only welcome to peer enviously through the windows.

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

All women welcome!

All tastes catered for.

All food containing calories will not increase waistlines.

All drink containing alcohol will not intoxicate beyond the mildy merry and slightly inhibited stage. Guaranteed no hangovers.

Don't mind the gerbils, hamster, capybaras, quokkas and other assorted rodents. They're all female, all staff and very accommodating...

Jeez boily you make me laugh

My school uniform colours were pea green and navy. Green blouses, navy skirts, and horror of horrors a blazer with green and navy stripes 🤢

Mine was inoffensive blues.
Primary was rather nice grey and lilacy purple.

Blessed with nontraumatic uniform (apart from gym, obv)

Oh christ! That sounds truly awful.

And yet i find myself having to ask what colour socks went with that?

I did have a pair of knee length pea green socks made from thick (? indestructible) nylon. But I've got a feeling they were for hockey.

So the likelihood is you could wear white or navy socks, or those lovely flesh coloured tights <shudder>

Were we at the same school? I also have shedloads.

@inkymoose: or those lovely flesh coloured tights
Tights? Tights? You young thing, it was socks all the way at my school. Tights came in later.

I went to the local girls’ grammar, in a not-prosperous town. For some reason, possibly with a new Headmistress, the school uniform changed from lots of navy to a specific shade of blue, referred to as (Name of School) Blue. It was similar to Wedgewood blue. So, we had skirts, cardigans/jumpers, double-gusseted PE knickers and PE skirts, all in this unusual shade of blue. It must have been pointlessly expensive when compared to navy.
The school tie and the ribbon on the blazer edges was diagonally striped School blue and navy.

We also had pork-pie shaped woollen hats, with a fine School blue cord sewn around. The hat also had a metal school badge - the same crest as the town - plus a woolly fringe, described by some as the gravy running down the pork pie. We had summer dresses which we could wear without blazers on hot days, but we still had to wear the woolly hats to and from school.

When I was in the sixth form I had a Saturday/ holiday job in the local school outfitters. School jumpers came in two qualities, wool and the more hard wearing, cheaper, wool and nylon. We got extra commission if we sold the 100% wool ones.

No uniform at my primary school, but secondary school had big standard navy blue - a gym slip with a white shirt under it and a school tie for Y7 and 8 (which were known as first year and second year then) and a pleated skirt with white shirt and tie thereafter. School blazer, which we were allowed to take off on hot days. I vaguely remember a pale blue and white gingham summer dress. No trousers for girls in those days. We did have a rather lovely pale blue sort of Grecian tunic for our dance classes though.

We also had blue science overalls which required embroidery of our names on the from.yoke- white, letters one inch high.
One girl had a particularly long name and she was forever known as " Deanna NameGoesTwiceAroundHerOverall".

Myrtle was yours a GPDST school?

My uniform was a particularly virulent pink shirt and navy skirt. Plus the mandatory royal blue PE skirt, gym knickers etc. Took me a long time to even consider wearing pink afterwards, and never in that particular shade!

I went to a comprehensive school in a rural area, newly created by amalgamating a grammar and a secondary mod.

Navy skirt and plain navy cardigan, white blouse, striped tie, my brothers wore navy jumper, black blazer with sew-on school badge, white shirt, grey trousers, striped tie. I did have to have a navy gaberdine mac as outer wear when I started, can't remember how long that rule lasted. Navy was swapped for grey for those few who went into the sixth form.

When I started we had inherited berets and caps, as it were, from the grammar, but nobody ever wore them, they lived in our satchels, and eventually they got canned.

The only thing I remember about PE kit is white Aertex shirts. No idea whether we wore shorts or PE skirts.

Seems we got off pretty lightly.

Very envious of your grecian style tunic @Britinme! When we did country dancing the girls had to wear navy knickers and white airtex shirts. Who dances in their knickers? The boys got to wear shorts.

@AsWithGlad now you mention it I'm not sure that we did have flesh coloured tights in secondary school. It might have been just socks. But in primary school, girls weren't supposed to wear trousers, and we did wear woolly tights.

Fascinating thinking about all those school uniforms. I don't think about my school days very often, so it's hard to rake anything approximating accurate memories out of my unwilling mind.

I only attended uniform-ish schools for the last four years of my schooling, and they weren't bad. In both cases, the design of the uniforms had been a playground for one of the nuns, and they were not bad at all.

The best thing of all was that the first uniform included a tie, which was deeply thrilling for little gender-questioning me

It also meant that when my dear father, who wore a tie every single day, got Parkinsons and could no longer knot a tie, I was able to loosely knot some of his favourite ties every time I went home, and my mother was able to help him look 'properly turned out' which meant so much to him

When I was a child, he used to say 'You get the stick today' if we looked really nice and neat - meaning the swagger stick that was given to the best-turned-out soldier on parade, which excused him from the nastier jobs for that day. Thankfully nobody ever overheard and misunderstood 'You get the stick today'!

edited for infelicities of prose😄

Marie, what beautiful memories. X

I taught in a comprehensive school in a fairly downmarket area in the 70s and occasionally on a supply basis after I had my children, and one of the things I hated most was having to be a policeman about uniform - whether a navy V necked sweater had a pale blue stripe around the V or not for example. "Miss, my mum just bought this for me!" I really didn't care and ignored it as much as possible - this was not a wealthy area - but we were supposed to make an issue of what seemed quite trivial to me.

That, particularly "virulent pink", is the least attractive uniform I've read about.

For me you win the thread so far, if that's something to be glad of.

I worked part-time in an 11-16 comprehensive for a while in the early 80s. When I was on break duty I used to wander around the playground and the (girls) cloakrooms (not toilets!), keeping a general eye out and chatting to the students.

It was in about my third term there that I discovered they weren't supposed to be in the cloakrooms during break.

.

My school uniform was grey or black skirts (you were allowed black skirts in fifth form), white shirt, black jumper and black and yellow tie. Pretty inoffensive.

When I did my nurse training, we wore grass green dresses that zipped up the front, with starched white collars that buttoned into the dresses. I hated it - in my head, a nurse’s uniform should be blue, and we didn’t get to wear blue until we qualified, and I went straight into theatre from qualification, so lived in scrubs. I only got to wear my staff nurse’s uniform in the ward once - the day I picked it up, my ward sister told me to put it in for the rest of the day, even though I didn’t officially qualify until the next day.

@MarieDeGournay : The best thing of all was that the first uniform included a tie, which was deeply thrilling for little gender-questioning me

(the emoji is still there as I type but it doesn't appear in the Preview?)

Now, I have fairly strong opinions about girls wearing ties. When I joined my last school (1992) there were girls only in the sixth form.
All sixth formers, then and now, were meant to be in "smart business dress," which meant a shirt or open-necked white blouse, optional plain v necked jumper, dark jacket and trousers or skirt.

All the boys wore/wear a tie: which one might signify something (house or school colours, prefect etc) but I've never paid a great deal of attention to that.

Soon after I joined they started taking girls in the lower years, (which probably helped me to be appointed), and their uniform was discussed. There was a committee of staff members who proposed it should be the same as the lower-school boys', except with a distinctive pleated skirt instead of grey trousers. This meant it included a school tie.

I did object (there weren't many other female staff at the time, and I was part-time) but it went ahead probably because one of the younger female staff, who was on the committee, often wore a shirt and tie herself.

(As far as I know she was not at all gender-questioning but such things weren't on my radar 30 years ago. She was married, a rower, and left to spend the rest of her teaching career at a very famous boys public school).

Some years later the uniform was discussed again, and ties for girls were discontinued.

(In the summer term everyone can wear the school polo shirt, if they so choose.)

Very nice Bank Holiday. As has been evident from news reports over the weekend there's a very positive feeling about a holiday centred on women and on ancient tradition and on community and on putting a tough winter behind us and facing the future.

Snowdrops, making rush crosses, 'pilgrimage' to ancient holy site, blessings Catholic and Protestant, craft display, plenty of children with their parents, one delightful dog - and lovely if slightly windy weather.

And in the future we'll know that if ca 150 people furn up for the tea & cake bit instead of the 40 or 50 we initially expected, 3 litres of milk isn't enough.

Hooray for the GAA who said it was a community event and we could use their premises for free.

oh and little lambs, including black ones in one field.

Gosh but I'm knackered.

Since we can't currently post images, please imagine a cute little gerbil with a drinks trolley, @DeanElderberry, followed by another one with the hot chocolate bowser. Sounds like you have earned it!

That is a very odd colour combination for school uniform.

I'd add the AI creations but can't add images, I presume that's due to the overnight troll photo attack?