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!

Isn't there a possibility of white going completely transparent when it gets wet? In the, admittedly unlikely, event of me getting a full immersion baptism, I'm wearing a wetsuit. A dry suit, although tempting, imo would defeat the object. A diving suit would be hilarious, therefore completely inappropriate.

Raised very strict evangelical Catholic (yes that is a thing).

Realised at about 14 that God didn't exist. But still had to attend church and renewal days until I left home.

Came out to my parents as a humanist when I was 24. Which was very scary.

Became a humanist celebrant in 2013 but stopped six years later because my job was a lot but conducted my brother's humanist funeral in February last year because he asked me to.

Always happy to lower the tone, me!😃

This extract from The Master Builder:

BROVIK: Am I to depart this life so poor?
SOLNESS [appears to be struggling with himself; at length he says quietly, but firmly]: You will have to depart this life as best you can.
BROVIK: Well, so be it. [He walks away.]
SOLNESS [going after him, almost despairingly]: But I can’t do otherwise, you see! I am the way I am, after all!

reminds me of that black and white Walker's crisps ad with Gary Lineker and Ulrika Jonsson..

Sorry I can't find it online; maybe some of you remember it?
Black and white, in Swedish, with subtitles and subtexts, made me laugh every time, when the subtitles have her saying 'I feel something significant has passed between us tonight' as he leaves, and outside the door GL produces a stolen bag of crisps from behind his back and says in a strong Midlands? accent
'She's not wrong there!'.

I laughed every single time, but I'm easily amused like that...
I suspect I'd keep thinking of that Walker's crisps ad if I was watching the play - not the ideal response to Ibsen's art..

It seems a weird thing to write but that was a lovely thing to be able to do for your brother @MyrtleLion in the circumstances although I can imagine the responsibility you may have felt while dealing with your grief

I've never seen or read Ibsen but I've seen lots of send ups of that sort of thing. They're often hilarious. A friend got me, fella and sprogs free tickets to The Jungle Book at a new theatre in Manchester. It was the most boring show I have ever sat through. Like AI had been asked to put on the Jungle Book but in the style of Beckett. All the dialogue was Kipling as far as I knew. There were lots of little kids there. Surprisingly I don't recall them kicking off much so perhaps they liked it, or fell asleep. I should have been suspicious that it was a freebie. Talking about it afterwards my friend admitted she'd seen a previous production by this director and she knew how turgid he was. She lucky we're still talking 😃

Eta this is a Guardian review

https://archive.ph/HMqmG

It's brought it all back! I'd forgotten how dreadful the sound was.

It seems a weird thing to write but that was a lovely thing to be able to do for your brother in the circumstances although I can imagine the responsibility you may have felt while dealing with your grief

Thank you. It was really lovely, but it also brought out a lot of family issues. My DM was in a lot of grief and lashed out at me in a way that one of my other brothers said was beyond normal grief.

I'm so glad you were able to do that, Myrtle. I conducted my DM's funeral (albeit not as a professional, and also not religious in any way) but I couldn’t ever have let anyone else do it.

Also - the Baroness is getting married again

Just saw this - OMG, I know her future husband (very slightly) 😱

(a) We didn't know!

(b) You mean there's GOOD theatre?? I saw a stunning King Lear once, & something with Judy Dench (God bless her) which passed an evening but I felt it could just as easily have been a TV programme. And I've sat through some right bilge as well.

@ifIwerenotanandroid I have seen some amazing theatre: Anthony Hopkins and Judy Dench in Antony & Cleopatra, Anthony again the same week as King Lear and also, same summer Miranda Richardson in The Changeling - all at the NT decades ago when you could afford a ticket without remortgaging your home or selling a kidney. Last year I saw Johnny Lee Miller in ‘A Mirror’ - he/it was bloody brilliant, as was Dominic West in View from a Bridge. And then there was Hills of California which made me sob.

But last night, as talented as the main cast was, it was bilge 😭 Am now doubly glad I gave The Tempest with Sigourney Weaver as Prospero a wide swerve.

£200 for a London theatre ticket, for a play? Is that usual? I am well out of touch.

We went to see Ewan McGregor in Guys and Dolls in good seats and would have paid a small fraction of that - but it was in 2005. I used to be good at getting bargain seat prices then.

It makes my local theatres seem very reasonable.

Sorry/not sorry for bringing a chap along to a women’s drinks event, I promise he won’t be staying long! Only he’s got a pair of those Sam Smith style inflatable boots and I thought some of you might find them (the boots, not Sam Smith) as amusing as I do!

https://m.youtube.com/shorts/JZyWy8fLezA

Also years ago, I was nearly in a professional touring production of The Master Builder years ago, when it came to a local theatre. They needed a couple of women to stand silently in the background in one scene, possibly for the lead female character to talk to.

I wasn’t cast, most probably because I was too fat for the costumes, but they did give me a pair of free tickets. I remember going and not understanding the play at all, even though I vaguely remembered studying Ibsen at college. This thread is making me feel better about that.

Yes - wanted to see Brian Cox in the Eugene O’Neill play. £286 per seat, unless you want to sit in the Gods behind a pillar. In which case why bother?

Theatre is very much targeted at tourists and those with more money than sense. You can get £10-20 tickets if you sign up to each theatre and watch for the 12noon emails on a Friday. But you have to be totally available any day the next week [ie retired or a student] and not fussy about seats … and very quick to click and buy. I’ve failed to secure anything that was a bargain this way but know of others who have been lucky.

Men are most welcome in The Staunch Ally, @TheUnusuallyQuerulentMxLauraBrown . Shall we pop over and see him outside there? It would be good to see those boots being walked in.

Also, on the subject of the boots, why? 😀

Live theatre can grab you in a way TV or film don’t.
We went to four shows during a trip to London in January. Booked late, tickets weren’t too extortionate..They were variable but we enjoyed them all. Fawlty towers was pure fun for people our age - I rarely laugh to the point of tears but the Major solemnly talking to the moose head absolutely had me.
cross sexed Coriolanus worked pretty well for me (within the daftness of the plot’) the ‘Britons’ were a mostly black matriarchy and none the worse for it.
elektra - well it’s not something I can imagine outside of a theatre.
And the Tempest - so Weaver was underwhelming but I was ok with that because the power and magic was emanating from Ariel. Played by a male ‘nonbinary’ actor - Ariel is an unsexed magical being. It worked for me.

I really like stage to screen - cheap, and we see it in a theatre rather than a cinema, I quite often feel like I’ve seen the real thing but all the seats are good!

Thank you, @CautiousLurker01 £10 - £20 is more in my price range.

I used to be on a mailing list for the London Coliseum, and went maybe half a dozen times pre-Covid on £25 tickets. I saw some operas I wouldn’t have watched otherwise, eg Jenufa from the second row of the stalls.

I see top price for The Great Gatsby there now is £279, although those tickets are reduced to £175.

I’d rather like to see the Great Gatsby… I have one kiddo heading off to uni in Sept (at effing last) and the other in the last year of A Levels and totally able to use the pathetically irregular offerings of a college bus service from Sept (he spent the last 2 weeks navigating himself around central london alone on AS Level revisions courses, so I feel my parenting job is done)… so I am totally bloody well going on the lists for cheap tickets next year. I am a student (technically), so can also get discounted tickets to some shows if I don’t mind a Thursday or a matinee.

At the Yvonne Arnaud for eg, I can get tickets for £10-13 on a Thursday. Going to try and catch James Dreyfus in ‘By Royal Appointment’ later this year and he’s promised I can buy him a beer afterwards and give him a hug!! 😍

I went to church this morning and was given a chocolate bunny lolly. As well as Communion. Not at the same time, for clarity.

Then I came home and did literally hours of weeding. DH and I then moved some furniture, then I walked the dogs. I am now, officially, knackered.

The last time I was in a theatre it was for Hello Dolly with Imelda Staunton, far more infra dig thsn Ibsen but much more fun. It was fabulous, she was brilliant - teeny tiny woman with a massive voice. Apparently also lovely in person.

I know what you mean about live theatre, @ErrolTheDragon . I used to go about once a month, when my health was better. There was a good spell when a close family member 😉 worked at our main professional theatre and got tickets for £10 if the show was very popular, and free if it wasn’t. I saw quite a few things I wouldn’t have gone to otherwise, and found something to appreciate in most of them.

(Yes, I do like a bargain.)

I had a year or two when I didn’t work on Thursdays, and would often go up to London and see a matinee and sometimes an evening show, too.

However, Facebook keeps showing me advertisements for live broadcasts in cinemas which look good, too, especially because you can see the faces of the actors very clearly.

Ariel sounds very well cast. It’s good to be staying in London so you don’t have to worry about dashing to the station to get the train home afterwards.

@CautiousLurker01 , good plan for next year! And congratulations to your DS for his transport navigation. Is he taking stand-alone AS exams this year, or are you just setting him up well for his A levels?

@EdithStourton , I’ve heard good things about Imelda Staunton in Hello Dolly. I’ve been in two productions of that, once as a minor principal and once as chorus plus a tiny comedy part as someone with a very few lines who is described by Dolly as wearing ‘buttercup yellow with baby pink shoes’. So I did. 😀

Here is a lovely interview with Imelda and her daughter, Bessie Carter, and it was a total surprise to me that Imelda is Bessie's mother.

https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2025/apr/13/imelda-staunton-bessie-carter-mother-daughter-mrs-warrens-profession

Tickets are £25 (restricted view) to £170...

We saw the Tempest at the RSC a couple of years ago, with Alex Kingston as Prospero. Very good indeed, but with that too, Ariel was particularly good.

@AsWithGlad he’s doing AS levels this year but then the full Alevels next year. Apparently it allows his tech college to weed out those that have no chance at A Levels and they can start a fresh batch of subjects the following year as pupils are entitled to stay in FT state ed until 19? None of the posher 6th forms do this, so we lucked out - he had a disaster in GCSEs (we now realise due to undiagnosed ADHD, along side his autism). It means that if he gets the A’s he’s now predicted we can ‘undo the damage’ of his GCSEs. In theory. He has worked his socks off and wants to study physics and astronomy, like his dad did.

His sister (the now largely desisted AuDHD teen) has managed to survive 2 terms of an Access to HE diploma, is on target for 100% distinctions, and looks to be going to a Russell group uni to study classics of all things, with a large side helping of film studies. Also worked bloody hard to reprieve her life after all the GI stuff. Am beyond proud of her too. In fact, despite the fact neither of them fell out of bed until after midday today, I think somehow - in spite of their bungling parents - they are getting there. 😍 Both kids miffed they didn’t get to see OB1 on stage, but hopefully I can find them another icon treading the boards this summer!

@CautiousLurker01 wrote : he’s doing AS levels this year but then the full Alevels next year. Apparently it allows his tech college to weed out those that have no chance at A Levels and they can start a fresh batch of subjects the following year as pupils are entitled to stay in FT state ed until 19?

I hadn’t heard of anywhere doing that, but it sounds like a good system for students in those circumstances. There’s no race to get through and out of post-16 education. I understand the AS papers taken in the y12 don’t count towards the final A level, though, unlike the modular exams available until recently which I was used to.

Congratulation to his sister. It sounds as if she’s on exactly the right path for her, and doing very well with it.

No, sadly the UCAS points of AS levels are overridden by the actual A Levels. Was a bit bemused to discover that they do the full A Levels next year. Am thinking I may ask whether, if he gets As in his AS Levels, he could just do A2s in y2. Strikes me as counter intuitive to make him sit both. But I am trying not to be one of those mothers… even though I am resigned to the fact that I am - and that’s probs why my fragile, clever and sensitive daughter is surgery- and PB-free with three years of study and mediterranean- based archeological field trips ahead of her. She may have thought many a time that I was a prize bitch, but that’s a mum’s job, isn’t it?

I’m not sure that A2s still exist. It’s AS or A level, as far as I know, which isn’t that far, but it’s true for the A level I teach. A2s were last examined in 2019.

But the wonderfully knowledgeable members of The Bluestocking may be able to correct me.