The Bluestocking Women’s Pub - Where Everybody Knows Your Username

[MarieDeGournay]

Welcome to the Bluestocking Arms, the home of good company, excellent drinks and delicious cakes which magically have no irksome contents like gluten or sugar or calories or the kind of alcohol that causes problems - but you wouldn't know

Food and drink are served by a keen staff of gerbils, and other animals such as capybaras, quokkas, etc., also fulfil vital roles, while looking cute AF.

New Bluestockingers always welcome.

I've been out all day. Sorry I wasn't around to help with the move. Did the pygmy hogs make it safely?

Could I try a glass of the praury? Sounds interesting.

The buses round mine have gone all TfL! You get a posh woman, definitely not local, asking you to 'alight' when you get to the bus depot! Although I think 'alight' has lovely vibes. All dainty, in a long, cotton frock (possibly embroidered or printed with sprigs of something). A gentleman might take your gloved hand to steady you as you step down. Assuming that it's not immediately preceeded with 'set' that is. That gives entirely different vibes 🔥.

😂No, I meant over-familiar for someone I'd never heard of!

Greetings all.

Pausing to remember Swashy's son and the pain that she and her daughter are going through. I extend my love and hope for safe landings.

Today was wonderful until a colleague from Boston decided to ask a question be a twat over something that had sat on his desk for 3 hours and then raise it just as I finished work. Thanks mate. I really needed a back and forth with you throughout my entire evening.

Anyway, enough of my pity party. Please may I have a large horse's neck followed by a large horse's neck and some chocolate?

There are times that I really hate septics. But then I can withdraw to the Bluestocking and all is well again.

Don't tell her, Pike!😄
I haven't worked out who you are yet, I'm not good at picking up on clues, so you will just be the Woman of Mystery, who walked into Bluestocking and asked the bar-gerbil for a whiskey, ginger ale on the side. And don't be stingy, baby.

Welcome to ThisPithyJoker and Turbochook !

Male anythings are not welcome in the Bluestocking, even lovely support hamsters - except for Colin the Dachshund - oh no - see what happens? You let one in and suddenly it's not a single sex space any more😏
I think the best thing to do is to declare that your hamster is in fact female - look, if we can have toast with no gluten and cakes with no calories, anything is possible!
She looks very cute, what's her name?

Ah, I think I've worked you out. But google says: Epiphany, really.

Epiphany from my favourite-ever musical, Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd? Glad to be associated with that.

If a Cambridge college can allow a dog to live there by classifying it as “a Very Large Cat”, then I don’t think we should have any trouble welcoming in @ThisPithyJoker ’s hamster

by adopting Marie’s suggestion - “I think the best thing to do is to declare that your hamster is in fact female.”

The Bluestocking is like a reverse Monaincha, where it has been known for centuries that " No woman, nor any animal of the female sex, could ever enter the larger island without instant death. This has been often proved by dogs and cats, and other animals, of the female sex, which, having been carried over for sake of the experiment, immediately expired. It is an extraordinary fact, that while male birds perch on the bushes on all parts of the island in great numbers, the female birds with whom they pair, fly back, avoiding the island from some natural instinct of its qualities, as if it were infested with the plague." but where I myself have actually been both female and not expired on several occasions.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monaincha_Church

https://roaringwaterjournal.com/2020/02/16/irish-romanesque-3-monaincha-the-isle-of-the-living/

I feel somebody needs to put in a word for our hard-working gerbil workforce. I've dropped in for a morning coffee and there's a certain amount of disgruntled muttering and some very emphatic thumping down of kitchen and bar items.

Geain says we’re a bunch of whiskerless freaks if we think that suddenly it's cute for a male hamster to saunter into their workplace and that everything is fine because some hairless ape (sorry @ThisPithyJoker ) has vouched for him.

She’s particularly incensed by the suggestion that he might lend a hand. She’s heard far too many stories passed down by relatives who were in domestic service about the kind of creatures who like to invite themselves ‘downstairs’.

On top of that she’s worried that if The Bluestocking decides to allow volunteers in the kitchens and behind the bar then a lot of gerbil jobs will be at risk. More muttering about the extra work and nuisance involved in supervising clueless amateurs.

I have a feeling that today will be a great day to order anything whose preparation requires a very sharp knife…

Does the Bluestocking do rooms upstairs?
I have just "woken" up rather stiff and painful after a rather sleepless night where my 6 year old climbed into my bed, I evicted myself because there's not enough room without being extremely uncomfortable into his bed, which due to the mountain of cuddly toys is almost, but not quite, as uncomfortable. He then woke up early, discovered I wasn't in my bed and followed me to his 🤦‍♀️
If the gerbils could make me up a room with a king-size bed all to myself and a big Do Not Disturb sign on the door for tonight that would be incredibly appreciated!

jbiscuits, yes rooms available for exactly the reasons you need one. Fill yer boots!

And I am worried about the gerbils revolting. Maybe they all need a day off and a Gerbil Gala to rebalance themselves?

here you go

I gather from the characteristically garbled gerbil grumbling that the key issue is volunteers in their space. I feel for them, but do also wonder is there something going on that they don't want an outsider to see? I'd find it reassuring if Giant wombat and the Quokkas could do a recce, we don't want the g-gang cooking anything untoward.

Bing has suddenly decided it wants me to sign in, so my brief foray into AI images may be over.

Gosh, I think I love him.

And who knew that the president of the RHS is called Keith Weed?

Bloody marvellous reading on a wet Tuesday morning.

Edited to add: clearly neither the Japanese ambassador nor Mr Weed are allowed into the Bluestocking, so we are holding a small reception outside under the awning where they can enjoy their caramel wafers and our admiring glances.

"KEITH WEED" - that is brilliant.

Although there was a urologist on the telly a week or so ago called Dr Burns-Cox. 🫣

In an extraordinary turn of events, on taking Nibbles the hamster to the vet for the snip this morning, it turns out 'he' is in fact 'she'. That solves one problem. Now if I can convince her to avoid inciting a union protest by trying to get involved in pub affairs, service can resume as normal and none of us have to go thirsty!

Yay Nibbles! Well done, girl!

Excellent news, dilemma solved.

I used to subscribe to the New Scientist, which was responsible for developing the idea of Nominative Determinism in its Feedback column. It goes beyond the concept of an aptonym (one which is appropriate but non causally) to the notion that people may be drawn to occupations which fit their name.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nominativedeterminism

Good Nibbles.

By the way, bad Geain, with that ' whiskerless freak' and 'hairless ape' talk. She clearly needs the 'don't be speciesist, all of us are lovely in our own way' HR training day. If they arranged a Zoom presentation Puggles could join us from down under and point out that having if bills and fur, laying eggs, and eating batteries, are all welcome, being a baldy ape is okay too.

It would be great if Wombat described her personal anatomically distinct feature (no, she needn't demonstrate it), then followed it with Lamingtons for tea.

Now that's great news! Ideological dilemma solved by biological reality😄
So Ms Hamster needs a first name - I think we're going to have fund with this - I start the ball rolling with HYPATIA.

jbiscuits - the placated gerbils are preparing one of Bluestocking's luxury suites for you, the one reserved for mothers who have been kicked out of their bed - sometimes literally as in 'Keep your feet still Geordie hinny' - by their dear offspring whose heat-seeking homing instinct makes sure that they can unerringly find you wherever you have fled😦

The sign on the door doesn't say all that, of course, the door isn't big enough. Tonight the sign will just say JBISCUITS' ROOM - DO NOT DISTURB

We should introduce Nibbles to Lady Nibbles, our esteemed hamster judge. She became interested in the law when Tesco* subbed me a Supreme Court after they'd run out of hamster food.

*they were very good at collecting them and refunding me, although it took a few hours hence my hamster having her head turned

Do all hamsters have the surname "Nibbles"?

OH FOR HEAVEN'S SAKE MNHQ JUST GIVE US BACK THE 😂EMOJI, OK?

I could have responded to this with the 'thanks' clapping emoji - terribly terribly restrained -
'I say Cake old thing, that was raaather funny'

Or the 'agree' one which suggests I thought the same thing-
'Yeah that was funny Cake but I could have said exactly the same thing, so you're not very original, are you?'

Or the over-effusive 'heart' one -
'Oh Cake, I love you so much, you are absolutely the most wonderfully funny person ever!'

The laughter emoji was exactly what I needed😡