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!

Look out hedgie! That seemingly innocent dear little hedgehog statue is after your wine ....

I used to read the short stories in my Gran's ones. The covers were always lovely.

I think waiting rooms cleared out the magazines and Reader's Digests in COVID, sadly.

I think my son caught covid, flu, chicken pox and hand foot and mouth in hospital waiting rooms on different occasions during the COVID pandemic. I think waiting rooms in general are pretty filthy places.

After 3 days of not cooking dinner and having cheese and biscuits instead I'm wondering why we don't do this all the time.

Ah, I've remembered. Normally I to try to get vitamins in my diet. Oh well, it's Christmas.

My young niece has abandoned all food types other than chocolate. Pain au chocolat for breakfast is the closest she's got to eating real food in days.

Goodnight all. Long may the festivities continue.

Your camomile tea, modom
[recycled image]

Perfect, thank you!

I don't have to do anything or go anywhere today. Bliss.

<coughs>
<consumes strepsil>
Welcome to Pawse and Bratislava.

My cold abated enough yesterday for me to join several rounds of Uno. My family plays it like a martial art, but the final round came down to DD and me. It went on for ages with shouts of 'Uno!' followed by 'You bastard!' as a pick up 4 was dropped. We all laughed so much we ached.

I had to drink mulled wine and Muscat, and eat Christmas cake and Lindor, to allow me to recover.

Glad to hear you are improving enough to bring back your competitive spirit, Edith. The blend of medication sounds just about right.

My grandmother had to ban Monopoly being played at Christmas years ago, when it turned the mildest of characters into rampant Capitalists, who could argue for weeks whether a move was legal, or not! Oddly enough, the most fanatical player (my male cousin), who always bought up all the properties in Mayfair and Park Lane, ended up in the charity sector and is now channelling his skills to a better cause.

I aspire to your and your niece's dedication to Christmas eating @RandomHypatia. That's true commitment.

Morning all, hope everybody feels somewhere on the spectrum of 'ah not too bad all things considered, thanks very much'

I heard this song on the radio the other day. You can google it if you like, it's not the music or the performance that is great, it's the words that I love - he wrote it for his teenage daughter who was going through a hard time:

YOUR SURE HAND
Unravelling fairy-lights for the Christmas tree
On dark frosty nights, do you remember how we
Kept our patience up in tangled wire
Until the tree lit up and glowed like the fire?
We’ve not forgotten it was your sure hand
That freed the knots of the most ravelled strands.

Now you are seventeen, moving away,
Still in your tangled teens, what can we say?
We believe in you and we’ve no doubt
That all you are going through, you will work out.
We’ve not forgotten it was your sure hand
That freed the knots of the most ravelled strands.

Out in this twisting world when you’re confused
Think of the little girl who used
Ingenuity and care
To make a Christmas tree flare.
We’ve not forgotten it was your sure hand
That freed the knots of the most ravelled strands

[by Johnny Duhan, who tragically drowned in a swimming accident last year]

I had never realised that Maggie Smith was in Clash of the Titans.

She was Thetis in the Ray Harryhausen one.

We always played Monopoly on the floor when the DC were little and one of the dogs we had then (Barky) always wanted to join in. He was a big dog, and would join the circle, cuddling up to whichever child was most sympathetic, and then look very sad when the child began to loose.

The other dog (Bolshy, a Jack Russell) would be asleep by the fire, ignoring the idiot humans.

I'm still a bit under the weather but did eventually (Christmas eve) get a smaller and less elaborate crib set up and (Christmas day) similarly toned-down tree.

The crib does have a hedgehog family (the blobs in the middle) and a fox (extreme right) and the tree does have a blue stocking, a felt sloth, and a feline admirer/predator (bottom right).

I still have 4 daily tasks to do before I can say I stuck to my new years resolution, but today I have reached a wonderful total number of items leaving the house.

I've just finished collecting up 15 items today to go to the charity shop, which brings my total to...

That is amazing. Well done.

Thank you. I'm feeling very proud of myself right now!

The frightening bit is I still have way too much stuff.

Hopefully the tidy house without piles of crap everywhere will encourage me to keep going with the house decluttering next year.

Glad you're getting better, Deano, and that you manage to put up a bit of a show for Christmas, it would feel awful to not be able to do anything festive, and in fact you've done a lovely job with both crib and tree🎄
The Gospel story seems to have left out the arrival of a family of hedgehogs to worship in the stable, but it's likely that they were there, but were lost in translation😄
You have lovely things on your tree 💙

Well done Boily! A great achievement, you deserve the 🍾👏

The translation probably
leaves out the Boxing Day croquet match between the shepherds and the wise men where the hedgehogs were appropriated

My crib has a visiting polar bear.
The Holy family welcomes all creatures.

I have had polar bears in previous years but they stayed in their box this time. The penguin is doing new world duty as well as global south duty.

Any shepherds vs magi action will have to wait until the 6th, they're still away in the east with two camels and an elephant.

Well done Boily! That's actually inspirational. Looking at the stack of learned society journals on the table, next year one of my resolutions will be to read the damn things as they arrive!
Along with losing weight, as I am a rather portly magpie currently.

A Barbary Elephant?

Possibly not, since they're coming from the east, though who knows where the wise source their various beasts.

I did understand that sometimes it was one in a bus, one in a car, and one on a scooter tooting his hooter .

Maybe an Indian elephant? Apparently in BC there were also Syrian Elephants