The Bluestocking Arms Women's Pub, where women make friends with Beetles, Androids, Cakes, Dragons, Hedgehogs and other women, where wit and wisdom flourish

[inkymoose]

Here at the Bluestocking there's a place for all women. A break from Reality, and many laughs and stories to share. Have your fill of Tunnocks bars and tea cakes, sing feminist anthems, drink as much beer or gin or hot chocolate as you desire. It won't make you fatter or drunken but oh, it's fun. Sit in the garden with our Lion resident or the Quokkas and Capybara. Express your opinions loudly in Pedantry Corner. Ask for whatever you fancy to be served by our obliging Gerbil staff. Come in, all women, welcome!

And it changes depending on the tourists.

Today it's the Japanese gerbils visiting Peak Woo.

Right, going to work on my novel as I have an annual monitoring thingy at uni in a few weeks and need to at least pretend I have done something in the last 6m. I have renamed one of my characters Dave and still working in a gravy centred scene. It’s domestic noir (strong on DV/marital discord), so I think I can be a teeny bit creative with a steaming jug of Bisto.

I hate to have to say this Lurky, but that's not Bisto!

Looks like toffee sauce, right?

I would've guessed caramel sauce.

oops, X post.

Just been reminded of the subplot in my novel (which was why I joined MN in the first place as one of my Prof’s mates did a post doc on how social media/online community shapes contemporary models of mothering, drawing on MN). My MC is persecuted on line on a MN equivalent by who turns out to be someone she knows… but is she also persecuting her in real life and if so, what are their motives?!!!

Just poured myself another marmalade G&T…

I do hope so.

@CautiousLurker01 Are we in your book?

That sauce looks like orange curd. I bet it would be lovely mixed with thickly whisked double cream and a tiny dash of Cointreau. Served in tiny glasses. With little almond biscuits.

Inspiring.

Not yet - would you like to be? It’s a crime novel centring a woman raising an autistic child (that was the hook for the PhD ctee. Seems, after much research, there are no intentionally/expressly autistic main characters in contemporary crime), in a coercively controlling marriage with a husband who is after her recent inheritance. Thanks to everything I’ve learned on MN, her grandmother left it in a trust so that DH cannot get it (‘cos, like, she knew what a b’stard he was) and now she is wondering if he is trying to drive her mad so that he can take control of the the trust and put much resented child into care… but is it him or her sexy builder, or the mother who abandoned her as a baby, or…

ooh. The gin is working!!

Surely there's room for a friendly beetle who has a tendency to steal food items

..and a philosophical cake?

So in the final scene, there will be a puppy. Could I call him Betel? Cos my autie character loves astronomy and he could be named for Betelgeuse…

I can live with that!

God, I will have no choice but to give you all a mention in my ‘credits’ on the thesis/novel at this rate. At the moment it just has my tutors, my DH and DCs … now it could have a cast of MN handles!!

Also on the gin.

First day back at work today after a week’s leave. It was a struggle. So I’ve poured myself a gin, which I don’t tend to do midweek. And I may have another. Have had chocolate too. And I may have more. I have plenty of gin and chocolate; it is just a matter of choice or discipline.

You can’t have me in your book because that’d be plagiarism and the wrong genre.
Colin had a slight ‘pick me’ look when you mentioned puppies.

So, did you know you can get chocolate flavoured gin? An NCT mate used to make flavoured vodkas (her garage business name available by DM) and the chocolate one, neat or poured over icecream was heavenly…

I have two spaniels (planning to buy half a dozen more when I will the Omaze Cotswold house with it 57 acres and stable block), so have been instructed by my DCs to get one or both into the book…

Just do a shout out to the patrons and staff in the pub!

Lurky, you can cheerfully leave me out of your book. My late dad was a writer and I hated reading his books ( i only read two) because they were full of throwaway observations of our family life.

Inevitable, I suppose.

I was useless at PE. I was the only girl in my primary school who couldn’t do a handstand, or stand up from sitting cross-legged on the floor without using my hands. And then senior school only added to the depths of my PE incompetence. Netball, hockey, gymnastics, athletics, tennis - there was no beginning to my sporting skills.

But as an adult I have come to realise that my skill lies in enthusiastic spectating. And I don’t have to get changed into nasty nylon shorts and t-shirt to do it,

I think when they say ‘write what you know’, some people take that literally. I’m drawing on ‘real life’ but obviously don’t expect to dig up a body under my foundations or possibly bludgeon my Dh to death with a wine cooler (though he has come home in a stinking mood tonight, so I may leave that on the table).

Oh, spoilers.

None of you will buy the book now. Or watch it when Netflix serialise it with Richard Armitage as the male lead (he’s in every Harlan Coban tv adaptation) who will definitely be dead unless my DH bucks up his ideas.

@CautiousLurker01

No, I didn’t know you could get chocolate gin. Interesting. I’d be willing to try it if somebody gave me a bottle, of course.