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!

Btw, did y'all see that the Baroness is getting married again?

https://www.thetimes.com/article/3e02fb5a-577e-4dcd-9763-620cbd379226?shareToken=b4db02ec8dace73f2849db343481cd18

I love this, said by Emma:

"The only purpose of marriage is to make the other person happier than they would be if you weren’t there."

💘

I thought I'd try some AI art again... actual photo:

Don't tell anyone, but the gerbils have been organising an Easter Egg Hunt.

They're still at it! Steady on, girls, I think that might be too many eggs!

I’m sure they know not to leave proper chocolate anywhere Colin and the other dogs can get hold of it.

I'm equally sure the chocolate at the Bluestocking is safe for dogs, quokkas, etc.

Or was that in the nature of a Public Information Post?

Anyway, the gerbils have moved on...

You’re right of course, the Bluestocking toxin and intoxicant nullification field will apply. They also won’t be as sick as, well, dogs, if they snaffle up their own bodyweight.

This photo is superb. Really captures the essence of theatre-going when it goes bad.

Intrigued by the experiences of @CautiousLurker01 and @ifIwerenotanandroid following their respective theatre trips to see The Master Builder and the new improved My Master Builder, I jogged my memory by reading a bit about Ibsen's play and found that it's regarded as "inscrutably obscure" even by its most ardent critics.

I like this discovery. There's something about the theatre that makes people want to go even when they know think it's going to be absolutely awful.

argumentativeoldgit.wordpress.com/2019/04/07/the-master-builder-by-henrik-ibsen/

Happy Easter everyone!

I'm just watching an item on the news about Corgi Racing. It's almost as weird as some of the Bluestocking happenings. And quite cute!

@inkymoose having read your like I am now realising I ought to have read Ibsen's play first LOL… and may now understand how/why I went through a BA and MA in Eng lit without ever reading/watching or studying Ibsen!!

The re-write was obviously intended to address the huge flaws in the original: ie rather than suggesting a paedophilial relationship between the builder and the young Hilde, it was very post-MeToo with Hilde being a 30yr old woman who had had an infatuation with Solgar at university when 20 where he was her college prof. It is unclear whether it was mutual, whether he in any way encouraged it and abused his position as teacher/star architect, as (like the original) he doesn’t recognise her fully when she arrives in Act 1. The wife is also not the passive woman of the Ibsen version but a rather machiavellian manipulator of events who has previously destroyed Hilde’s career (academically, she was kicked out of the architecture programme at uni) and even ‘today’ is trying to goad her husband into having a sexual relationship with Hilde because she resented his [unacted upon] infatuation of ten years earlier when they had lost a child through his neglect and obsession with his career.

It was really very confusing, as it was hard to understand that he had actually done anything wrong (ie he had not acted on any attraction that wife and Hilde claimed he had had and which he had to be continually reminded of) and yet the wife and Hilde’s lives had been shaped by the fantasy of this attraction. It seemed to be referencing power imbalances - but then the whole play undermines the notion of him even having any power/position of privilege at all and thus the women being victims of it. The wife had multiple affairs in the prior ten years, is apparently infatuated with a young sexy protege, has secretly prepared divorce papers, and is the owner of a publishing empire so threatens to sabotage Hide’s publishing career/novel… but everything is still his fault? So, in essence, I don’t think this play was any more coherent than Ibsen’s original. As a woman in the seat in front of us said: 2 and a half hours of her life she’ll never get back!

DH and I used to take the DC to the local theatre sometimes when they were about 12+.

Once during thr interval we got our drinks and looked at each other and said, 'What do you think of it so far?'
'Unconvincing.'
'Stupid costumes.'
'Historically inaccurate because they couldn't be bothered.'
'Boring.'
'Too much faffing around.'
'Dreading the next half.'

And then someone said, 'You know, we could just go home.'

We looked at each other. We went home. The relief!

@EdithStourton I think we fell victim to the ‘if we watch to the end, it will make sense’, rather like the way we watched Severance to the end of season 1 and then, no no fricking sensible reason at all, watched season 2. Still no fucking idea what’s going on or what it’s meant to be about other than the evils of capitalistic companies and the way they ‘own’ us during the work day. Even that, I’m unsure about.

Think the moral of last nights trip is: drink more wine, eat more tunnocks, and stay home cuddling the dogs 🤣

I was at home last night, wine, dogs to cuddle. Just no Tunnocks.

But I have an Easter egg this morning.

Happy Easter, everyone!

Happy Easter all.

I'd better get up - I don't need to get dressed, because I already did that at 5 when I got up for the dawn Mass in the old graveyard near the lake, which was lovely as always, except the drizzle attracted midges, so that as the light increased we were all rubbing them off our faces and out of our hair. But good ceremony, lovely birdsong, lots of bats. I got a little bottle of holy water - must bless the cats.

Anyhow, got home before 6.30, made a pot of tea and went back to bed.

Happy Easter Deano. Do you think the midges were well blessed too?
We're off to morning church- which involves full immersion baptisms (eek- never been to one of those before) and Confirmation. And the Bishop. We will be taking snacks!

Happy Easter. Yes, even to the midges.

Mmmm.

Mmmmm.

Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

Happy Easter. 🐣🐰🍫

I'll be in in a bit, I'm just eating my body weight in Easter eggs babysitting the little gerbils on their Easter egg hunt.

Happy Easter everyone. My teens are still in bed, so going to let them lie in while I eat all the chocolate!!

I don't actually have any Easter chocolate here, but then I'm still working my way through the Christmas chocolate and biscuits!

If the midges got blessed in passing, and then ate a bit of the blood of the people who got blessed, and were then, in turn, eaten by the bats returning to roost, the old church wall must be full of triply holy pipistrelles. A bit like vitamin A in bear livers.

Total immersion baptism sounds fun, and a visiting bishop always brings out Strong Views in some people for good or ill. The next village over had an adult baptism (ordinary non-immersive), first time in living memory, much excitement and I gather that the celebrations in the hall went on far into the night.

I have no eggs but have located and eaten some left-over chocolate, though sadly some of it was so left-over that it had actually gone off! Who knew that could happen?

I’ve attended some full immersion baptisms. For at least one the pastor sensibly wore waders.

"Gone-off chocolate", Dean? What is this concept?

I used to attend a very evangelical Baptist church, and had a full-immersion baptism, @ErrolTheDragon. There was a tiny swimming pool under the dais at the front of the church, and for baptisms, they took the dais away, and filled the pool. I had to wear a white dress, if I recall correctly.

I have rather fallen out with church-going, since 2000, when my dad died, but I still believe in God.