The Bluestocking Women's Pub, where brains can exist in a single state

[Magpiecomplex]

Welcome all. The booze here is minimally intoxicating, the food is calorie free and the staff are warm and cuddly. And if the thread title sounds nonsensical, blame the guy Myrtle was listening to this evening!

<snigger>
thar reminds me, a while ago while listening to something about hedgehogs DH interrupted the usual quip ‘how do hedgehogs have sex’ - ‘carefully’ , with the even better response ‘consensually’.

Perhaps they could have the (anti-prickle) rug of consent.

That’s the exact one I was tempted to buy!! I love it. Am also looking at the clockwork marble run than crops up when you search model kits…

@CautiousLurker01 I should have said, your dogs are gorgeous.

Brains and Batshit are currently sunbathing. Indoors, because it's blowing a gale again here today, which defeats from the whole point of canine sunbathing - which is superheat yourself until steam comes out of your ears, and then get to your feet complaining that you are Too Bloody Hot, and totter off to find somewhere cool e.g. the kitchen tiles.

The Hedgehog can never be buggered at all!!

Just saw this, it shows that hedgehogs know there's more to life than romance

[that's the punchline from a joke about a breeding bull not being returned after a 'séjour' on a farm, and being found pulling a plough, with the farmer driving him on with 'Get on there ye boy ya, I'll show ya there's more to life than romance']

But the small hedgehog also has a special place in Estonia's cultural landscape.
The woodland animal is a minor character in the national epic, Kalevipoeg, a 19th-century epic poem by Friedrich Reinhold Kreutzwald, which is well known by the public.
In Canto XII, Kalevipoeg is besieged by enemies and tries to use a pile of planks he is carrying to beat them back. He is losing the fight until he hears a friendly voice from the bushes, which tells him to hit his opponents with the planks' edges instead of the flat sides.*
The hero listens to his newfound adviser and soon routs the blackguard.
Kalevipoeg then gives the creature a piece of his jacket in thanks, which is said to be how the hedgehog got its prickles. However, the cloth is slightly too small, which is why the hedgehog's tummy is not covered with spikes.
Why is Estonia's largest military exercise named after a hedgehog? | News | ERR

*I wonder is that the origin of 'thick as two short planks'?😄

This was my very first model from about five years ago. I became hooked.

Book nooks felt like a faff for the first one, but now they're my favourite.

LOVE a marble run, me. Especially a clockwork one!

Me too - loved those build your own marble runs that the kids had. Was so sad then they grew out of them!!

Anyone else watching the VE celebrations mainly because they know their parents/InLaws will be sitting at home watching… and still crying anyway?

Stephen?

I hope he doesn't poop on the pope.

there has been amazing footage of very interesting people over a hundred years old, all with posh accents.

My great uncle Wilf was a Chindit and spent two years in the jungle, he was a wreck of a man when he came back, died at 62.

so many men died its sad.

My parents served in WW2- dad in the army in the east, and mum in the land army and a munitions factory.
Neither spoke much about their years of service, and neither would have anything to do with " remembrance", so I tend to follow their lead.
It's not a popular stance- we're all supposed to be publicly grateful, but I saw the cost.

It is a difficult subject but i bucked against the whole anti poppy thing and i do always don a poppy

but i am a pacifist, and as a feminist i would say war is for men.

My paternal family took a pasting in WWII, and DH is from an army family, so we tend to mark these things.

War is always the result of politicians’ failures, IMHO. It’s why I’ve avoided exposing my kids to any of the army/navy/air cadets (we live in army/airforce country, so it’s been a challenge).

I think it’s easy to overlook that some people who were conscripted to fight during WW2 were badly affected by it for the rest of their lives. How can you be the same person after being expected to kill ‘the enemy’ and possibly kept prisoner for several years?

@AsWithGlad the increase in DVAWG was exponential - globally - after WW2 in particular but the UN now has done a large body of research on post-conflict DV. It was acknowledged, but not really discussed in the open in the 40’s and 50s but was evidenced in plays/films like ‘GasLight’ (James Mason 1941ish, I think, and where the term ‘gaslighting and the concept of coercive control has its roots). And it filtered into ‘film noir’ generally - an underlying darkness created by a generation of traumatised, damaged men and then the fallout for the families and wives who had to cope with their ‘heroes’ without any support from their communities. Add to this, the generation of children sent away as evacuees many of whom were abused or so young that when they came home they didn’t recognise their parents (and if their fathers survived, they were damaged and changed). That’s even before we get to the fact that women had kept the country running and were suddenly cast aside - and the resentment (saw a US study on this) from the returning men because they felt undermined by the fact women had done their work and now had inflated ideas of their rights.

WW2 was probably one of the single most impactful - and devastating - cultural events in human social history. I am not sure we aren’t still battling with the fallout and that it isn’t still key to why current culture wars are as vicious as they are?

Just to add… it’s why every town needs a real Bluestocking Arms. Gerbils optional.

Did she just say we're.................
OPTIONAL??😮

Patrick Stewart wrote and has spoken about his father. If he came back from the pub singing military songs they knew there was going to be violence.

Lol - thought they might want to set up a luxury place of their own without us old girls banging on all the time. 🤣

Note that I didn't use AI to get the image of an outraged gerbil - I just googled it and found an existing one!
I've never used AI, and I've always found that whatever weird notion I have in my head, somebody on the internet has already had it and has produced a readymade image I can nick
The classic example is when I googled 'angry squirrel' and got this😂

Love this image… that is actually a photo of me when I haven’t had my coffee and one of the kids thinks that maybe they can’t be arsed are too little unwell/tired to go into school. I have told them and DH off for posting pictures of me when I haven’t no makeup on…

The internet is home to a man who dresses and poses squirrels like this - which is great fun except they are dead😕
Still funny in a guilty sort of way😒

They reminded me of something I saw sometime somewhere - all I remembered was that it was in Co.Down.
Again, the internet was my friend - I googled 'stuffed squirrels stately home Co. Down' and found it: Castle Ward, built by the 1st Viscount Bangor [the g is pronounced, although knowing that crowd...😃]

It is owned by the National Trust, and on their website they don't seem to mention the existence of posed dead squirrels, it's probably too triggering - and for once, I'd agree!