The Bluestocking Boxing Day sale: 1 gerbil for the price of 2

[Boiledbeetle]

Previous thread:

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5457910-the-bluestocking-next-stop-christmas

As the patrons, and gerbils, of The Bluestocking Pub sleep off their Christmas Day food and alcohol intake the capybaras will be getting paid double time to move the pub and contents to the new thread overnight.

All welcome, as long as you are a woman. The men have their own pub The Staunch Ally. It's just down the road, then turn left at the bridge.

You don't have to be mad to drink here but it most definitely helps.

Leave the real world behind and join us in the mayhem and surreal life of a pub staffed by gerbils. Where the food is always exactly what you ordered and the drinks don't give you a hangover the next day!

Lovely to see the fox in your garden @MarieDeGournay. I do love foxes.

Thanks everyone for all the lovely things you’ve said. Without getting too soppy or anything, I really think you have kept on saving my life.

In more everyday matters, I didn’t venture out in the snow for groceries and have cooked in a pan. (It’s mostly air fryer here now so I felt like Nigella.) Used up some disappointing chorizo Dr Swashy had brought with her. It was M&S chorizo so I must admit we had higher hopes for it.

I’ve also washed my hair in the bracket less shower. Didn’t fancy over the sink, Boiley, as I wanted to shower all of me and I feared I may not quite fit in it. It wasn’t that bad. The only way it made sense was to hold the shower head over my own head, imagining my hand as the shower bracket. That saved me changing my routine. Found a way to balance it for the times I needed two hands and all was well. I hope you’re more interested than I am writing this down because I have just bored myself rigid.

I have gin now so all is well.

That's hilarious, Boily! I didn't know if you'd invented that figure, or if it was a kit, so I've just tracked it down on amazon where apparently it's an educational toy with feline charm. 😂

How long did that take you?

I admire your DIY persistence with the shower, Swashy - our electric one failed last year & we got a man in. I thought it would be a few £100 to replace the motor, but no, it could only be done as a whole thing & it was £1000! 😱

I wasn't paying attention and was doing it in dim lighting so probably anywhere from half an hour to an hour.

I've got one made from much smaller pieces that I've had on the go for months that takes about half an hour just to do one layer as it takes ages finding the right pieces and trying to get them to bloody stick together.I

It's a good way to clear your head for a short while though.

I love that there’s rude Lego. Who knew?

OMG! That would cause me much pain.

Mine isn’t electric, it runs off the mains. I’m not keen on electric showers, but I’ve found this can cause heated debate. Like pineapple pizza or warm white v coloured Christmas lights.

I replaced my broken Mira shower with a Mira shower. And Mira showers do options. Buy just the shower. Or buy the shower and pay them a flat fee to come out and remove the old one, mend the broken elbow joint in the stud wall and fit the new one. £240.83 later and I no longer had a flooding bathroom and a shit shower but a dry floor and a wonderful shower!

That's why I do lego. Stress relief/mindfulness. I could feel I was getting close to burning out a couple of years ago, and it definitely helps.

I used to do jigsaws for the same reason. Then 17 years ago at Christmas I fostered a four month old kitten. He loved nothing better than sitting on the jigsaw pieces and walking off with a few pieces hidden in his fluffy tail. I'm still waiting for him to leave. One day I will be able to do the as yet not done jigsaw that I bought just before he arrived.

Last time I was in the fishermen’s pub, one of them brought over an iPad of a woman sitting at the table. It had videos on of all her Lego. It was unreal. She’d built a Christmas wonderland in her house and I can’t convey the hugeness of it. Electric lights and villages and train tracks. It filled her house. I’ve never seen anything like it.

That's why I crochet. These hobbies are very healthy.

I was at a model railway exhibition a few years ago and there was a huge Lego model of the main street in Dublin, O'Connell St, complete in every detail, with moving buses and trams - amazing!

I have mixed feelings about Lego - adults can do what they like with it, but for children I prefer the idea of blocks for making all sorts of things out of your own imagination, rather than building a Lego set that is already made to be something, you just have to put it together..

And let's face it, things doesn't actually look like their Lego models, they are very clunky versions of the originals.. bah humbug.

Sorry, Lego fans - should I get my coat and leave?

Valid points, Marie. Part of the enjoyment for me is seeing the inner workings and admiring how they've managed to produce a whatever-it-is from something which is so relentlessly rectilinear.

I didn’t understand Lego as a child. I only came across it in bottom infants. But in those days lego was just a green rectangular base and about three colours of bricks in a bucket. People seemed to make walls on top of the green grid and leave a gap for a door. But then what? I tried it once but just didn’t get it.

Despite later going into construction, when faced with just a box of Lego as a kid I was totally uninterested. Turns out I don't do imaginative play!

What wonderful news. I'm so pleased for you all.💕

I had one of those big boxes of green base plates and lots of 8 stud bricks in different colours. I mostly built houses too. Like Boily, I've never been great at imaginative play.

I can't tell you how relieved I am to find I am not the only one here crap at imaginative play. What a deprived childhood my children must have had. I can enter into the imaginative world of a book, no problemo, but this is why I used to write articles and non-fiction stuff, and now I write poetry, not fiction.

Ooh and in exciting 2026 news I have now had the galleys of my forthcoming book of poems, both contents and cover, and I believe it is going to print in the not too distant future. I hope to have it in my hot little hands by February.

Magpie and Boiled: no good at imaginative play, yet here we are! 🤣💙

I am a big fan of Lego. Had mostly the standard bricks as a child and enjoying having the budget for real sets as an adult. If there's any star wars fans who've watched the rebuild the galaxy series the Lego sets for these are good fun (Christmas brought my husband and I a dark falcon and an x wing and tie fighter than can be switched to a tie wing and x fighter). For non-star wars fans - I'm a bit weird and you probably wouldn't enjoy those Lego sets.

Lego technic and Meccano have been things I've done only as an adult (as a child I was told they were only for boys and forbidden from having them, even when I saved up the money myself). My now husband bought me a Meccano set for our first Christmas when we started dating after hearing about this. He also got me my first Lego technic set - I find it more interesting than standard Lego.

I haven't done a jigsaw in ages and am now considering doing one instead of cleaning our bathroom this evening. They definitely help me relax without getting bored.

Congratulations!

I didn’t have Lego as a child, but I used to make people out of pipe cleaners and bits of cloth for skirts and cloaks. Some of them had swords made from needles with a bead for a hilt…I don’t know if DM ever figured out why her larger needles kept disappearing.

we bought something of an excess of Lego and knex for DD - the latter is better, I think, for building interesting structures. Perhaps I should have a go with it.

Hypatia, I have a Lego Collector's Edition Super Star Destroyer. Just saying. 💙
My parents had read Dr Spock and only bought me "gender neutral" toys. So I had lego and toy cars, mostly.

And don't even get me started on "now children pretend you are a tree. Now swing your arms like they are branches swaying in the wind" cue one 4 year old beetle arms crossed "But I'm not a tree I don't want to be a tree. I'm not doing it."