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!

Perhaps the Godly would say pagans have gods and goddesses rather than a God or Godess?

I think it was established, possibly at the first Council of Nicaea, that one was on a tricycle sucking an icicle.

Well done Beetle.

Think of well-filled bookshelves as extra insulation, @Britinme.

I really hope I can reacquire the habit of reading now I’m retired (today is my official last day but I’m on holiday!).

Happy retirement Errol.

Yes, tend to call it mid-term though.

I can be of no assistance. Not one of the 1000 items was a book.

I can send my sister over to assist though. She once waited until I had just got out of hospital after an operation and whilst I was completely incapacitated halved (slight exaggeration, more like reduced by 40ish percent) my book collection whilst I sat there and protested loudly!

To be fair she did stick to getting rid of the knackered and the dross!

Where does one fall in the godless pagan to devout follower if one does not put up any decorations to begin with?

Asking for a friend?

Actually I lie some items were cook books and some were colouring books. But I class neither category as a book book!

So teachers get a bank holiday plus mid-term? I’d heard teachers’ conditions were good there.

(And inferred it from a teacher friend I used to know who seemed settled, got a headship here and went back there to work.)

How do I bring myself to part with books I may never re-read but were really good books?
@Britinme I think the secret is to pass them on to someone you think will enjoy them. Then you're just letting them go to a second lease of life, rather than properly getting rid of them. That's how I see it anyway!

That would be a great suggestion but I literally don’t have enough people in my life to do that with. I suspect they’ll end up going to Goodwill or the Salvation Army, which is undoubtedly what my children will do with them when I die.

Beetles don’t have to abide by human traditions. Also, God is rumoured to be fond of beetles but it isn’t clear if the converse applies.

Frankenstein was great. Now watching cosy crime, waiting for 11.30 when I can finish the Thai Sweet Chilli Crisps.

I have to fast for two hours before taking my antibiotics and an hour afterwards. I eat at 11am then eat at 3pm and 6.30pm. I can't eat between meals or I won't be hungry for dinner. So I then eat Christmas snacks till 8.30pm. Crisps and chocolate, but as I've just had dinner, I'm not always hungry. So I only have a small window to eat all the Christmas goodies. 😭

Good to hear! This beetle was christened Roman Catholic, but that's as far as my religious leanings go as we never actually went to church. In truth I was only christened so that my mother could use it as a way to piss off my protestant grandmother.

You could try a news years resolution of choosing a book a week (would one a day be too ruthless?) and drop it off at a charity shop/ park bench/ hospital etc so it's out of the house.

Not that I'm becoming evangelical at all about new years resolutions or anything (this will be the first year, ever, that I manage the whole year), but if you do I highly recommend taking photos as it really has helped me being able to see just how much I've got rid of, AND not missed in the slightest!

Wow! Honoured to be hanging on your tree amongst such illustrious company

Yes, February mid-term can vary in length though. Secondary schools get a week off. Primary get two days (the Thurs and Friday). Some schools then use their ‘discretionary’ days to extend this to a week off, but some don’t and use the days elsewhere in the year. It varies from school to school.

(ETA My teacher friend works in poor conditions in that there’s not enough special ed support. She is quite desperate for additional support which is repeatedly refused. Both students and teachers are being failed. I say this as the mother as a child with additional needs who was very let down by the system in Ireland. Can’t speak for the situation in the UK. I know this thread isn’t the appropriate place, but just wanted to correct the impression that things here are all good.)

Thanks for all of this. I’d thought the person I knew was happy here, having just got a primary school headship, when I saw she was going back to Ireland. She’d spoken so much about her classes here. Perhaps going back was always her long-term plan.

I don’t know that there’s enough special ed support here, either. I think it depends where you are. There’s vastly increased need for it, though.
Small private (but mostly state funded) special schools seem to be springing up all around where I live, judging by their adverts for staff. Their students really can’t be accommodated in mainstream, though, as things are.

It's the teeth that caught my attention. Perhaps I am used to the extra claw feature? but the teeth seem to be pushing credulity too far - although I have also seen pics of Beetle with teeth.

When they also declared that it was a taxi, not a bus...

😱
I hadn't noticed those. Blame the fog of cold virus swirling about me.

I've just finished off a Terry's mint orange as second breakfast. I love Christmas and I'm loving it more this year as, come 2026, I will be on a mission to lose weight and eat better. I might even start running again.

And I must declutter a bit as well. I've weeded my books over the past few years but still have too many. I need a 1 in 2 out rule for a bit - which means ditching 10, as I'd bought 2 earlier in December and have been given another 3 for Christmas.

I need to channel the declutterong skills of Boily and stop faffing....

Evangelists pretending to sell fish is quite a tall order!

Quite a few Bluestockingers needing help from Dr Badger, or from some of her medical team - hope you all start feeling much better soon

So the poor old Magi get to relax for ONE WHOLE DAY till the 7th, after all that travelling, field and fountain, moor and mountain, and then they get stuffed into a box for another year?

I still think they get a raw deal, Deano, and I wouldn't mind a bit if they were ahistorically and anachronistically placed in the crib shortly after 25th.
Besides, they have the nicest outfits in the stable, and nice outfits outweigh historical accuracy. Shallow? moi?

Ah, books. I have braced myself to get rid of some of mine on the basis that if I leave them till I shuffle off the mortaller, they'll probably get dumped in the house clearance - I have no family to go through my things with care.

So I gritted my teeth and have found two book sellers who specialise in specific areas and who have taken quite a few of my books, and they'll be bought by people who share my interests and who will be as thrilled as I was to discover some precious old book in a second hand bookshop.
Except they'll pay multiples of what I bought them for😉

I'm planning to have the more 'generalist' dealer back in the New Year and I'm going to let him loose at my bookshelves, he can pick out what he'd like to buy, and if I really can't part with a book, I'll say no. But the presumption will be that I'll let them go.

That's the plan, anyway we'll see how it goes😏

Happy retirement, Errol, it's a wonderful time for people who are never bored and have more plans than free time to carry them out, and I suspect that describes us Stockingers pretty well
Enjoy!

Poor Myrtle. I well remember juggling the fasting before and after taking the antibiotics with having meals at anything like reasonable times for DH, but at least that was in ordinary time, not the Christmas season. When do you finally stop taking them?