The Bluestocking - where Spring has sprung and the grass is riz.

[SDTGisAnEvilWolefGenius]

Welcome all. Can the gerbils please ensure that all the Tunnocks products are safely stowed in the capacious larder, and perhaps the quokkas could be responsible for counting everyone onto the bus and back off at the new thread - many thanks!

Night, @MarieDeGournay, sleep well, sweet dreams.

And to all Stocking visitors.

Can a female be a villain all her life?

All my Stocking companions have never been villains and thieves

Totes. All blameless, unimpeachable, immaculate, in a state of perfect grace, every single one of us😇

Even the one trying to poke a box of Tunnocks that oops 'fell off the back of a lorry' back under the bed, with one of her several legs..

I was in two minds about whether to put this here, or on Style and Beauty, but we all know pockets are a feminist issue, so here won.

I bought a nightdress recently. Long, comfortable, very pretty. And with pockets. Pockets are definitively a GOOD THING, but I was lying in bed this morning wondering what on earth one is supposed to put in pockets in a nightie? Door keys and phone seems unnecessary, not to mention uncomfortable. I suppose a dainty little pocket handkerchief might be the answer, except I use tissues.

So, question to the floor: are pockets always a good thing, and what would you put in pockets in a nightie?

I'd have to trawl back through the many Bluestocking threads to verify this, but I thought you were one of the 'I only wear Chanel No. 5 in bed' brigade😄

Pockets in nighties hmmm🤔Don't wear nighties myself - nor Chanel No. 5, for that matter.

Well,
Firstly it is useful to have a tissue to hand instead of having to scrabble about on the bedside table for one in the dark.

Secondly, perhaps the designer is working on the assumption that the wearer will sometimes walk around in their nightie before and after horizontality, and the pocket could contain a phone, or earphones/buds, a book review carefully cut out of the paper to be read later at leisure, or an envelope picked up from the floor near the letterbox.

Thirdly, it could contain an emery board in case there is a little piece of nail catching horribly on the sheet😱

Fourthly, pockets are wonderful and every item of women's clothing should have them, full stop. If even nighties get swept up in that Universal Law, if that's the only way to guarantee that women get pockets, well sorry, you just have to live with the conundrum of pockets in your nightie, for the greater good.😄

All good points, Marie. I don't wear Chanel No 5 either, and to be honest the effects of children, gravity and time mean that the dreadnorks tend to make individual bids for freedom if they aren't contained in some way.

Pockets are definitely only to be used when slobbing about in said nighty. Emptied before retiring to bed, otherwise likely to be lumpy in the night.

'That brave vibration each way free', you mean
Whenas in silks my Julia goes,
Then, then (methinks) how sweetly flows
That liquefaction of her clothes.

Next, when I cast mine eyes, and see
That brave vibration each way free,
O how that glittering taketh me!

By Robert Herrick , I should have added.

A man with an eye for the ladies, it appears! 🤣

I have a pocket in my nightie to keep my Chanel Number 5 in.
Tunnocks tend to get squished and melt,
The latter is not a good look if I have a funny turn and require an ambulance.

Pockets are a good thing, but norkage means breast pockets are really not usable. Ever.

Mostly, in bed I wear cotton pyjamas marketed for men. They have a breast pocket. I have no idea why.

Anything that can go in a breast pocket can be tucked under a pillow.

I avoid strong scents at night because they'd keep me awake, the exception being a bit of lavender oil, which can promote sleep.

I agree squished Tunnocks would not be a good look, but on the other hand, it might be a convenient snack to keep your blood sugar up while waiting for the ambulance?

I have pockets in my pyjamas. I love them. Even just for tucking my hands in. But I have been known to have breakfast downstairs in my pjs and they help to hold my phone while I take down the previous evening's used glasses and empty bottle.

Our living room is on the first floor so we take up glasses and bottle in the evening then I bring them down the following morning. We are not drinking in bed! As I always say, bedrooms are for two things, neither of which involve TVs or wine glasses.

This is the man who wrote an ode to the nipples on Julia’s breasts, comparing them to strawberries drowned in cream.

This might be heresy, but I’m not sure that I want pockets in nightwear. I’d probably put too much in them, and then they’d be uncomfortable when I rolled over onto them in my sleep.

I would have suggested a chatelaine, which could be placed on the bedside table during sleep and put on when rising, but most dictionary definitions seem to say it’s a series of chains or a belt you can attach things to rather than including the pouch itself. I do not want to think of either of those things near a bed.

Aha. Found it. Good old Wikipedia and Lucy Locket.
“Historically, the term "pocket" referred to a pouch worn around the waist by women in the 17th to 19th centuries.“

Yum!😛
That other man of the cloth, John Donne, wrote a similarly scorching 'To His Mistress Going to Bed'
To His Mistress Going to Bed | The Poetry Foundation

As I said before, for Donne, being a bit of lad and a man of the cloth were consecutive, but for Herrick they were gloriously concurrent

Do you keep your Chanel Number 5 in a special soft pouch? The normal bottle has rather hard edged corners, which I don’t want near my ample norkage during sleep.

I've just found a website with what claims to be almost all of Herrick's poems. He must have had a lot of free time, and spent most of it thinking about women!

Every now and then a sentence crops up here that, if taken out of context, is so random it's priceless!😄

Today's winner [so far anyway] is <drumroll> <opens envelope clumsily> ...
AsWithGlad!
for her sentence
'Do you keep your Chanel Number 5 in a special soft pouch?'
😂

Herrick ended up a clergyman in a small parish in ..Devon, I think, and didn't have much to do church-wise, so he had lots of time for frivolous verse!

He also had pets. I made a note of their names when I read them in a biography a while back - he had a cat, a hen, a goose, a spaniel called Tracy and a sparrow called Phil😆

I have finished MN. Oh, except I haven't. I haven't checked Trending. I'll be here for another hour.

At least.

@MarieDeGournay another excellent potential username there - ASparrowCalledPhil 🤣

Herrick also had a “housekeeper” who lived with him all his life but I don’t think her name was Julia.

I loved Donne’s early poems, written when he was indeed a bit of a lad, but am less taken with his later religious stuff. I still know “The Good Morrow” off by heart and large chunks of “The Sunne Rising” as well as “On his Mistress going to bed”. I rather wish I hadn’t read his biography and could have kept this rather romantic image of him:
https://images.app.goo.gl/e7avhrQVLiLJuwNB6