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!

I know what you mean, Swash, about this being a space somewhere between reality and not. The concern we show for each other in difficult times is real...but it is being expressed by beetles and pirates to lionesses and ...things
I also feel there's genuine admiration for each other's wit and imagination, and I really like that.

I nearly came in looking for a vat of G&T and cuddles with Rosy on Sunday because I had an upsetting time with a very old friend, we go right back to college.

I didn't post anything about it, because it would take so long to explain the reasons why it was so upsetting, that I decided no - I'll pop into the Bluestocking and see what fun and games my fellow Stockingers are up to, and be cheered up by that.

Now I've said that much, I feel compelled to continue explaining myself, sorry to go on and on..

The problem is that - as you may have guessed - I am not actually a very young leather-clad punk angel with black wings. I was in a car accident years ago. I was lucky to not to be seriously injured; but it left after-effects which have affected my physical health, and my communication and comprehension - I have difficulty finding words sometimes and I have lost the ability to grasp meaning quickly from things like spreadsheets or train timetables, which I used to be able to do in a flash. I even have to have a few goes at re-folding maps now😟

I had to give up my very demanding but much-loved job. I haven't been able to flit between France and the US and Ireland and England like I used to. I have since acquired a number of other health problems - none serious-serious fortunately - which further limit my activities.

But all this is invisible. My friends only see me when I'm well enough to socialise, and they act like there's nothing wrong with me.

I tried on Sunday to open up to my old friend about how my life has been very different, and very difficult, for the past decade or so, and it's never going to be any better, and I'm not who I used to be... I suppose I was asking for support and understanding of how my life is now; I've always been hopeless at asking for support, but I've worked hard at allowing myself to appear vulnerable.

She put up an impenetrable force-field against hearing that - everybody has aches and pains, I have a bad knee, I have this, I have that, yes I get that too, wear and tear, we're all getting older... Nothing to see here, move along...

It completely shut me down. It put the tin lid on the possibility of getting support and understanding from my closest friends, and I was very upset.

So I popped in here and there you all were and we had fun and exchanged witticisms and funny images, and it felt better.

I enjoy the surrealness of the Bluestocking and its wonderful regulars so much that I don't usually bring reality in - I hope you don't mind me having done so at such length this time.

I'll go back to being Marie once I've posted this

Wow @MarieDeGournay! Thank you for sharing this part of your life. What a set of challenges you have come through.

I’m sorry about your friend. That must have hurt. I hope it was a misguided attempt on her part to make you feel better in some complicated way (I know…. but I imagine it hurts even more to imagine she was more simply dismissing you).

I know what you mean about the magical world of the Blue Stocking. It is a little like a Narnia that I can enter through the phone in my pocket. Bonkers and brilliant. I think the pictures help 😊.

When I was a kid I had a recurring dream that I would go to a magical land and play with the same people there every night. That’s just come into my mind. And here we are; talking animals, magical creatures and unusual others. Isn’t the internet wonderful (sometimes)!

Gosh @mariedegiurney I’m very sorry to hear you’ve had such challenges. May I give you a big hug for handling them with such aplomb. You totally are a leather clad punk angel with black wings.
the committee tales made me laugh and thinking of terry pratchett s lord vetinari who would get rid of tiresome people by getting them to form a committee which would keep them busy and out of his way , I do love a terry pratchett.
Which is why I love that you and swashbucked love the bonkers magical world of the blue stocking, I really do too. And I really love the pictures, they bring it alive.
Like you, I desperately wanted to go to a magical land and play with the same creatures, like narnia and later hitchikers guide, where there would be adventures and a wonderful sense of comradeship and humour and caring. And here we are, ‘somewhere between reality and not’
butterbeers all round !

That sicks like a Dyson, as the saying goes. Just so utterly disheartening. I really hope your talents are spotted soon.

@MarieDeGournay life is full of hurts and betrayals, i wonder if your friend loves and admired you for a strength and energy that she was not willing to let go of, when time passed and dynamics changed, she might be unable to adjust?

it is sad when that happens.

I have picked up on your thoughtful and sensitive attributes.

Funny that can happen when i cannot see, feel, smell or touch any of us but somehow have a sense of each person here.

Strange as it is.

<anyway straightens jumper, brushes back hair, sniffs a bit, cold comming on>

pint of gin please and one for Marie.

Marie, that must be incredibly tough: to have lost so much, and to find that someone you expected would understand doesn't want to think about it.

The best interpretation of your friend's response is that she was trying to make you feel better ('It's much the same for everyone') but obviously she wildly missed the mark.

I always have great respect for anyone who acquires a disability as an adult and just keeps on trucking. It must be so bloody tough, but at the same time the options are quite limited, so you just have to buckle up for the ride.

The Bluey is a great bolthole, real people, imaginary place, batshit happenings...

Thank you for those words and hugs, I've always been very bad at talking about, y'know, things🙄and thank you for reading what was hard to write.

I know that people can mean well by saying 'I know what it's like, I had a really bad headache last week!' to someone who suffers from migraine😠

It's weird, I've just thought of two occasions where people who knew me before the accident got really upset when they saw me afterwards - not that I was visibly different, but I guess I was no longer their gay globetrotting academic friend, and they never adjusted to my wings being clipped..*

Isn't it lovely that we've found a [you can take the woman out of the academy, but you can't take the academic out of the woman] - liminal world?
Your childhood dream world, Swash - that's so sweet💖

Hugs back, and here's to more gerbil-populated fantasies

I just read your lovely post thank you Banned *- you picked up on the possibility that I represented something to my friends and then I couldn't any more..
That's a powerful read of a situation involving someone you don't know in real life - more Bluestocking magic at work. Now where's that gerbil with the G&Ts? x

Thank you Edith. x
I think I got so upset because this isn't the first friend who hasn't wanted to hear me - for all sorts of reasons, as others have pointed out, including because I've never been good at making myself heard, and I guess I ask for love and support on a frequency that earth-folk just can't hear.
A bit like a dog-whistle😂

Here you go 😊

You’re looking a bit Sinead O’Connor there @MarieDeGournay

Aw thanks, Swash, just what I needed!
I found my old punk angel image - very unrealistic: I mean, those wings are totally un-aerodynamic

It feels a little invidious to be forever (or even mostly!) an onlooker when such personal things are shared, when little reciprocal sharing is done. So in the spirit of Marie sharing her sad experiences, may I share that I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia about 10 years ago which has limited my life excessively. I also have arthritis so life is really curtailed. However, unlike Marie, I’m not good at holding onto old friends so although I can empathise with the limitations, I can’t with the hurt from old friends. Nevertheless, I offer a hug in the hope it’s taken as meant! Sympathy to Flowers too - awful to keep getting rejected. I follow these threads regularly but lurk in corners! Hope the comments are not out of place.

I can’t find the words to say what I want to so for now just

Nice to see you @Bowednotbroken

Get yourself settled in and enjoy hanging out with some new friends. 😊

Thank you Bowednotbroken - a great name!
Thank you for popping into the Bluestocking in person to share - we share a lot, actually. The hug is much appreciated, and I'm sending one back. x

Can I add my heartfelt thanks to you too @MarieDeGournay for your recent kind welcome to the wonderful Bluestocking and sorry to hear about the hurt. I too love the pictures, although I sadly do not know how to make any for myself!

I'm signing off now - it's been so good to be able to share.. y'know, things with you, and the responses have been really lovely, thank you all so much.
The Bluestocking is a place of many things, including ..y'know, things <shifts uncomfortably from foot to foot> like support and caring and stuff like that
There's a Joan Armatrading song, the title has just popped into my head
'Cool Blue Stole My Heart'.

It's been good, and I am very grateful, but it was also a bit draining, so I'm going to call it a night.

G'night all, and may the Dream Gerbils bring you specially sweet ones tonight

Goodnight Marie, and all the varied company of women.

Sorry to hear patron's tribulations. I thought a nice, special breakfast might cheer us all up tomorrow morning, so I've asked the gerbils to get to work.

Delicious breakfast breads & pastries are being baked through the night, & the breakfast room is being prepared.

Oh ifiwerenotanandroid, they are SO CUTE! First time in years I can go to sleep safe and secure knowing they are there, and will sort out any monsters. Thank you!

I see we still haven't managed to train Gomorrah (her parents wanted a yooneek name) out of standing in the serving dishes.

Apologies for being a poor host, it being my thread and all, but I'm currently project managing my employer's entry to a certain large and world famous garden show that's about to open, on top of my regular job, and as a fellow fibromyalgia sufferer (waves to @Bowednotbroken, it's 30 years for me) I'm just rolling out of bed, going to work, and rolling back in to bed at the moment. I slept all through last night, unusually, hence being clear minded enough to post.

Thank you for the comments and kind thoughts - take care all! X

Does anyone know where Rosy the red panda is, there's clearly a need for hugs all round.

You're reminding me of the time we had two weekend visitors at the family house, an old teaching pal of my mother's and a friend who had worked with me but at that stage was in a different job. I answered questions from the older friend, which touched on the horrendous bullying at the work and the way some of my immediate colleagues were excluding me, and how glad I was that others were being supportive. Older friend was sympathetic but brisk, said why did I care, they 'weren't intellectuals' or interesting people, and I had my own life.

At this, younger friend rushed off dramatically, locked herself in the only loo, and sobbed and wailed for HOURS AND HOURS (remember, parents, parents' friend, and me, in the house, so four other adults). Eventually she went to bed so we got on with dinner (and using the loo) with muttered conversations about neurotic young women, side anecdotes about sixth formers the teachers among us had known over the years, and a general feeling that my 'pal' at 30+ was old enough to know how to behave.

The next day we half expected to have to cope with the aftermath of a suicide attempt, but she was sunny and affable, explained she knew my persecutors and didn't like hearing them criticised (fair enough, she could have ignored instead of earwigging) but did want to be put on a bus back to Dublin asap instead of waiting and travelling on the late train with me. Not a problem. I think it was that rather 1960s 'not intellectual' observation that had grated most.

Fast forward nearly three decades, and she started sending me birthday cards, I don't know why. She's American, and had a return address on the envelopes. I ignored them. And then, after a few years of that, she asked my cousin, who she knows through work, was I all right and why I hadn't responded. I gave a very edited version of her making it clear she wasn't a friend at a time when I badly needed friends, and really not having anything in common any more.

Then there was the colleague in my more recent job, who I liked but didn't know that well, who after my mother's death started inviting me to join her for tea in a café in town and let me witter repetitively, and chatted about mutual interests, and generally eased me back into the outside world after a few years of very intense caring duties. She really is a friend. Mind you, although she then suggested we join the craft group (good) and the ladies' coffee morning (good), she is, I strongly suspect, partly responsible for getting me onto two committees (NOT GOOD) after I'd sworn never to be on one again, so even the best of friends can let you down.

s to everyone.

Wow, the gerbils have put on a spread this morning.

I'm, hopefully, seeing my sister later today. She's got several chronic health conditions that really affect her quality of life, with the accompanying poverty. She's lucky she has a council house, although she's always complaining about it 😃 I try to cheer her up, get her to look on the bright side. I'll try to listen better today.

@DeanElderberry Rosie is currently trying to monetise her cuteness. She says we can have a hug at mates rates. So everyone get their £5 note ready!