The Bluestocking Women’s Pub - The Return of Salad and the Lion

[MyrtleLion]

It’s been a while since I last saw everyone!

Welcome to everyone, regulars, lurkers, newly ventured in.

A place for women to discuss whatever takes their fancy, where the bar staff are attentive gerbils, Rosy the Red Panda is available for cuddles and all sweet things have no calories and all alcohol leaves the drinker slightly merry and hangover-free.

Previous thread is here:
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5326705-the-bluestocking-womens-pub-where-brains-can-exist-in-a-single-state

I’ve googled her now. In a section where each nun in her community wrote about themselves she put
I was brought up by parents who were academics and eccentrics
so I wasn’t misremembering.

I don’t follow all my former students this closely. She replied to a friend on FB so I became aware of her again. It may be more usual nowadays, or it might be a feature of the Order she belongs to, but she hasn’t changed her name.

One of my DC studied Philosophy at university: it was probably 30% - 50% of their course. Despite now working in the Arts they use my subject quite a lot and I imagine are/is no stranger to a spreadsheet.

@FuzzyPuffling you have a very tidy kitchen table <completely misses the point of the picture>

Sorry I’m late, I went to a non-Bluestocking ladies and ended up in the usual ridiculously long queue of 6’ tall muscular butch lesbians who I found completely indistinguishable from men. All this suddenly being required to tell the difference between the sexes at my age is really very hard. I need calorie free lemon drizzle cake to assist with this brainwork.

Thank you Igmum!

Sympathies @Igmum, it's always the way, isn't it. Can I suggest saving the cake until after you've been to the ladies, just thinking about the potential hygiene issues.

Seven children, house in the country with no plumbing?

Do you mean an outside lavatory? Surely there was a tap within the house? Or am I being over optimistic?

Maybe there was a tap in the house, but a friend who knew @AsWithGlad's student and visited said there wasn't even an earth closet, it was a vanish into the bushes set up.

As a person whose parents both spent their earliest years in houses without indoor plumbing I found that an offensive middle-class affectation, but no doubt PG and EA had some moral justification for it. As opposed to a public health justification.

@DeanElderberry such strong feelings!
Who are PG and EA?
I spent a couple of years living in a place with no indoor plumbing, in the countryside. Consequently I absolutely love running hot water coming out of a tap. I'm careful with it though.
I decided the children in the previous image needed a new roof on their shack cottage.

Seven children, according to both parents’ Wikipedia entries, but they lived in a university city. The initials are correct, but perhaps it’s best if we don’t identify them further.

I can’t remember the exact road but can narrow it down to two which are parallel and close together. Coincidentally, I expect, they are both just round the corner from the Community house in which my former student now lives.

Deano, how old was your friend when she visited? If I remember correctly, my student was the youngest child so the family may have moved out of the city when she left school.

My friend was in college with your student and visited the unplumbed house at some time during their undergrad years. Maybe it was a weekend house rather than a permanent residence, which makes it a little less grim. I'm still not charmed by the concept.

My friend's mother had been at college with the woman philosopher who she described as very intellectually intimidating, which since pal's mother was pretty dam' clever herself - picked to work on de-coding at Bletchley during the war - was quite something.

I think we’re eavesdropping on a rather tantalising conversation between Glad and Deano in a corner of the pub, about some mutual acquaintances Inky.

Ah I understand what you were saying now. It was a middle-class affectation to have no plumbing in the house. Yes.

I am quite blurry today. Mentally vague. I am ostensibly preparing for my operation later this week, although I'm not. I am wandering about not finishing anything. I'm distracted, I am trying to be sensible and organised ha ha ha ha ha ha, and achieving almost nothing.

When I am in this state I take everything extremely literally, and also find myself reading terrible news stories, shocking and awful, even though I don't watch the news on the TV I still read it online. Another form of distraction I suppose. Really, eating cake is a better form of distraction, but I need the real Bluestocking in order not to gain many, many pounds.

Thanks Errol!

Like me yesterday, I was doing a Thing in the afternoon that I should have been reading up on, so I crawled round and round the bedroom all morning picking up scraps of tissue, and packages for recycling, and clumps of cat hair, and all manner of dreadful stuff instead.

And the Thing went fine anyway, and I found several coins, three 'lost' earrings and several earring backs, so all was well.

I have to do another 'Thing' this evening, so maybe I'll clean the kitchen.

Oh, and I had a little salad for lunch that included home grown lettuce, nasturtium (leaves and the first flower), pea shoots, three radishes and some radish leaves, nipplewort leaves, chive flowers and golden marjoram leaves.

Recommend.

Though I wish I'd included sorrel and some bistort flowers. Next time.

I have sort of finished another bit of marking. Only sort of, because half of the class either didn't bother handing the work in on time or did a thoroughly shoddy job of it, but I have marked everything available for marking on this assessment. Time to get up and stretch the legs, and refocus the eyes.

Inky you must be feeling concerned about the fast-approaching operation, even if you are being big and bwave about it on the outside, I'm sure you just wish the whole expletive-deleted situation in which you have to have surgery did not exist at all, and you didn't have to be big and bwave!😟

We're here to keep the collywobbles and the calories at bay as best as we can
What day is your op, so we can get the Cheerbils into training in good time?

You are the Magnificent Salad Queen, Deano!

I like a salad and I am very fond of leaves of various kinds. But I have not heard of or eaten nipplewort leaves or bistort flowers. Luckily I have come across sorrel, so I am not a complete ignoramus.

Now thanks to Google I know what nipplewort and bistort look like! I haven't got any of course. There might be some growing in the allotment wild bit but I don't have the motivation to go and have a look.

It is nice how clean and tidy the house can become when you have something else to do

The nipplewort is growing not 'like' but actually 'as' a weed all over my vegetable patch, and remembering that it is edible was great!

Bistort aka ‘snakeroot’… is that a salad or actually a potion?

FYI, I already posted this on another thread, so don’t get confused if you see it in two places.

I cut my thumb inside the skin fold where the nail meets flesh while book booking about eight days ago. Went to the pharmacy who said it needed antibiotics and draining (it’s located in a supermarket so also picked up some shorts for my holiday).

Drove to minor injuries unit and after a 90 minute wait was seen and told it’s a granuloma - an excess of blood vessels overreacting during healing. Silver nitrate sticks or steroid cream are the solution so I have to call the GP in the morning.

While there, a man came in who has dropped a 15kg weight on his foot on Sunday night at the gym. Foot came up black and purple and he went back to the gym this morning, but kept his leg up. (idiot). He then walked downstairs and his foot bent out of shape and he can’t walk on it.

I could see his foot wasn’t black and purple so I asked if it was cold. He said yes, and it was numb, he couldn’t feel anything at all. I said I thought he had a very serious injury and would likely end up at the city hospital a few miles away.

I was so concerned I mentioned it to the nurse who saw me and he was also concerned and said this man would be seen next- it’s first come first served there, with no triage.

At the very least he’s damaged his nerves and blood vessels, but I was concerned it was compartment syndrome and he might lose his foot.

He said hospitals freak him out. Why are men such wimps about it? He should have gone to A&E last night when he did it.

Myrtle my DH has a thing about hospitals too (was really happy when I opted to have a home birth with my youngest as a result).

He has no feeling in one of his thumbs as a result of not returning after stitching it up so has nerve damage (we were building/wiring up a dolls house for DD back in her girlie days). He is also walking around with a black thumb 9other hand) that he trapped in a door at work on Thursday, ignored because he was about to chair a meeting and currently cannot bend it properly. His argument is that he has broken most of his fingers and thumbs over the years playing cricket and he just taped it and carried on then too… 🤦🏽‍♀️

ETA, my DD only has to get a splinter and she is hysterical and fretting whether she needs to go to A&E/get antibiotics for a week afterwards…

Probably only Marie, and maybe Foxy, will understand this, but this evening's event, arranged weeks ago, is partly outdoors and we have Weather so I'm calling in last minute emergency help:

I am quite hospital avoidant, but I do go to the GP, who then sends me to the hospital sometimes.

DH avoids all medical people like the plague. He refuses to take painkillers: 'they have no effect on me', he says, as if he has unique biology immune to the blandishments of anti-inflammatories and opiods and aspirin.

Incidentally, I hate water-based gloss. I tried using some this afternoon and it was so monumentally shit that I am going to go and get what is now branded as 'exterior gloss' later in the week.

Your DH and mine must have been separated at birth, @EdithStourton. Mine would much rather make noble pained expressions and little noises of suffering than take painkillers. But then when he does finally crack he expects me to have every type of painkiller immediately to hand, regardless of where we are and the fact that I can't take half of them.