The Bluestocking: All You Need to Know About Risk Assessments, Jazz Hands, Battenberg and Sourdough (But Were Afraid to Ask) - and gerbils. Lots and lots of gerbils.

[MyrtleLion]

Welcome to The Bluestocking, the perfectly overblown, gloriously chaotic all-women’s pub where you can have a bit of a lie down if you need it.

Expect serious debates on musicals, cake and knitting, and whimsical musings on women’s rights and why the world’s on fire (again), all under the calm supervision of our support staff: gerbils, capybaras, and the occasional quokka on secondment.

The alcohol won’t get you drunk, the pastries won’t make you fat, but the conversation will digress, and that’s the point.

Remember to namechange before posting if you’re sometimes someone else.

Sloth at the dinner table tree

The line from the Muppet's Christmas Carol, delivered by Scrooge himself, 'Fozziewigs rubber chicken factory', might be the funniest ever line in film.

Next door popped round at 6pm to let us know they're having their windows replaced today. The development where we live is 30 years old, so they're the fourth to have them done this year, and when I finally get a job, we'll have to have ours done.

But it's LOUD. Lots of banging and drilling. I have a call at 1pm so I'm hoping they'll have a lunch hour or I'll have to work out somewhere else to go.

I'm cross that we had less than a day's notice. And they'll probably still be working tomorrow when the antibiotics team call. 😢

Hello little cousin! I have a lovely leathery sole to share.

Hello all,
I'm here and ok, just dealing with stuff.
And waving at you all.

Glad you popped in Fuzzy, you're in our thoughts, you and DH💙

You know those 'rise and fall pendant lights' ?
[I had to google what they are actually called, not 'up-and-downy lights']
Well I think tea-rooms should have rise and fall pendant branches over each table, and a resident sloth on each, so that when a customer eats a crumpet but leaves the leathery base, the rise and fall pendant branch, plus sloth, can be gently lowered to just above the table, and the sloth can collect the yummy leathery crumpet sole. Zero waste, happy sloths, win-win

What a good idea!

Who fed gin to Rosy?

Don't know about Rosy I deffo need a gin. Walking with my dog this afternoon along a river bank. He had disappeared for a few moments and as we came round the corner we found him clinging to the river bank having fallen in😟. I think he'd been sniffing round the reeds at the rivers edge. I thought I was going to have to be heroic in order to pull him out but with a bit of encouragement he managed a swim a few meters to a point where we could get him out more easily.

That sounds really scary, FarriersGirl and I'm glad you didn't have to do anything heroic, and DD [dear doggy] got himself to a place where you could rescue him.

A drinks trolley laded with nothing but gin, all for you, is being wheeled your way by several bargerbils [they're only little, and it's a lorra lorra gin] even as we speak - you may hear the squeaking of the wheels already

Don't forget that Bluestocking alcoholic drinks are magic, so you can have as many gins as you like with only the good effects, so cheers! and we'll all raise a glass with you to DD🐶

Fuzzy, that video of Rosy is adorable. She looks like she's headbutting a stationary coconut - but hey haven't we all headbutted a stationary coconut after a few gins too many? 🙃

@FarriersGirl dogs do daft shit, and some lack common sense.

I walked Brains and Batshit over a sluice once, with floodwater roaring through it. Brains, generally bold but also sensible, stayed firmly on the side with a concrete wall and cast dubious looks at the surging water
Batshit, neurotic but foolish, insisted in standing peering over the edge, commenting on how thrilling it all looked.

There are Reasons why Batshit is sometimes on-lead when Brains isn't.

FarriersGirl yikes! I'm so glad your dog is ok. How frightening.

https://edition.cnn.com/2025/11/24/science/raccoons-urban-trash-domestication-shorter-snouts
I don't think they're quite Bluestocking worthy yet, but it appears raccoons are making a bid to join the staff! The title doesn't make it clear, but one of the early signs of domestication is looking cuter.

Brucie is normally quite sensible and not fond of a swim so just a misjudged edge. His face when I saw him was quiet panic - <rescue me mum>. Just to add to the drama I was wearing my brand new winter coat [first outing] It has been suitably christened. Thank you for the gin trolley Marie I am busy working my working my way through it <hic>

Don't worry @FarriersGirl , there's plenty more. (recycled image)

Love it 😂

When I was young the dog we had that jumped off a sea wall at Blackpool, possibly Lytham. Tbf, the wall was only a couple of feet high where we were walking but there was a drop of at least 15ft down to the sand on the otherside. We saw him disappear, ears flapping, tail helicoptering. Then silence. We didn't want to look. When we peeked over the wall he was stood on the sand, waiting for us. Possibly to plummet down and join him. He'd bloodied his chin, but his legs and joints were fine. Collies are supposed to be intelligent. He was a lovely dog. Not the brightest.

You just caused a flashback to 35 years ago. And nearly to the exact day 35 years ago as well.

Thursday 22nd November 1990 I was in the middle of hanging out of a customers upstairs front bedroom window fitting the new window frames when it came on the radio Maggie Thatcher had quit.

Happy day!

End of flashback.

She must have been playing with my neighbours goat. He found the goat drunk from fallen apples in the orchard the other day.

Neighbour's child fell into fast flowing river with steep banks, so mother nearly drowned trying to save him, then attempted to explain to him the enormity of what had almost happened... "Think of poor daddy: He would have come home and there would have been no Christopher, and no mummy. Whatever would daddy do without us ?" ... To which, Christopher replied "He would just have to get his own tea"

My first dachshund was a dapper chap who never put a foot wrong as he trotted along.
The second one we realised was a klutz when shortly after we got him, when he was about a year old he fell about 10ft down over a small hedge at the top of a sunken garden into a rose bed. Shouts from below of ‘he’s all right!’ reassured us as we found a more conventional way down to retrieve him, none the worse for his tumble.
Once he tried to drink from the canal and slithered in - well, I guess that could happen to any dog. But on another occasion we were visiting the Rococo Gardens near Gloucester - a big pond had a perfect green covering of duckweed which he mistook for a bouncy green lawn and leapt onto it. He emerged rather green and slimy but fortunately they also have a lovely clear spring-fed plunge pool which we threw him into. If he’d ever had a sense of dignity it would have been damaged but fortunately he didn’t.

😀 Not quite the response Christopher's mother was expecting!

no surprise to those of us who’ve been on MN a while though!😂

I love all the dog stories, like mistaking a duckweed-covered pond for a lawn - in fairness, that was a reasonable thing to assume, it was a flat green thing, wasn't it?
I especially like them because they all have happy endings.
And I just knew that Batshit would make an appearance

That's a great story logiccalls! Children can be so unsentimental and pragmatic at times