The Bluestocking - your local women's pub, warm, friendly, and not at all unusual in any way.

[MarieDeGournay]

Welcome to The Bluestocking, the welcome is warm, the conversation is wide-ranging, the food and drink are delicious but magically free from anything they need to be free from, and the bar staff are highly-trained, professional, efficient and very friendly gerbils.

These ones do it for love and, I’m told, their families have done it for the same love down the generations. There are fishermen who go out in boats early morning, as their main job. This night time stuff is more of a passion.

No, I’m not. And I like the smugglers idea very much! Smugglers….hmmm.

I've been swimming. Never one to shy away.

Here's a nice one for your next thread
The Bluestocking - Weatherspoon's have put in a bid

Amazing.

I would just like to point out that it is due to my comment that these multiple threads were resurrected. Errol finished the job
Sad that the Bunbury thread is not around anymore | Mumsnet

I'd have been here earlier but I got stuck in the queue outside.

I see Gubbins was tasked with making the badges. She really needs to spend more time in lessons other than triangle practice.

Anyway I passed the feminist credentials check and the Half-wit IQ test. Can a bar gerbil bring me a a full cooked English breakfast and a pot of tea in way of celebration.

I'll be sat in the corner reading the newspapers.

<opens up latest copy of the Beano>

Morning all. I was working until stupid o'clock on a document that I have to have finished writing by the end of the week so I've woken up really late because my brain couldn't get to sleep. I'm still in my jamas with a coffee. Since I got nowhere near finishing yesterday, it's going to be me and said document all day today. What I really want to do is go and visit my baby granddaughter and her parents who live about 40 mins drive away. I haven't seen them for a fortnight.

On a different note, years ago I lived with a family whose primary-aged children had a good climbing tree in the garden. They called it The Sulking Tree. When ever one of the children was seriously out of sorts they would go and sit in that tree for a while and sulk or cry or mutter to themselves or whatever until they'd worked it out of their system. It worked very well. I wonder whether The Bluestocking's garden (or whatever the outdoors bit is called now) might find one useful. There could be a comfy cushion wedged in a flat bit in the branches and a useful ledge created to balance a cup/glass/tankard. 🙂

I'm imagining a resurrected Mick Collins stomping into present day Dublin and complaining the citizens are doing it Wrong. All human societies change shape, all the time. It's one of the things emigrants find hard, they can never go back. You might just well settle down with your mug of green stuff and enjoy the entertainment, here are the Bluestocking Arms women's pub.

Though, really, it's more of an Inn.

Hmmmmm

We like it like this, @highame - it’s a bit of happiness in an increasingly difficult and scary world. Feel free to start an entirely serious and jape free thread of your own, if you aren’t happy with the Bluestocking.

Did I say I didn't want fun. The Bluestocking was one of the wittiest places. I am griping about the lack of respect. We are standing on the shoulders of giants so the least we can do is pay attention, and even do a little research. Too much to ask?

I think of it as more of an Inn too @DeanElderberry

Or possibly a tavern.

Hmm. We may need to start training the gerbils how to "spring" someone from the Clink, at short notice.

FFs it wasn't that long ago, End of 2024. Do you think that us somehow akin to my mother e.g. wanting us wear big bloomers to put boys off 😂

Well - it certainly doesn’t feel as if you are enjoying the Bluestocking as it is now, @highame. We like it and enjoy it this way - and personally, I feel it has a good balance between serious and light hearted.

Good idea!

I think the only way these smugglers would get caught is if the authorities stood and waiting for them to climb back up the cliff with their spoils. They wouldn’t give chase by going down the dark cliffs themselves. We could be equally well served by training the gerbils to head them off from the cliff tops. If there’s enough of them (and there are) I think cohorts of gerbils crawling all over the authorities would cause them to run, shrieking. Especially if they were disguised as ghostly entities. Or rats.

Thank you so much for your input. I do not agree with any of your comments but I appreciate you making them. Your drawbridges are up and wagons have been circled. Your justifications for the downgrade have little depth, inhm (though humble part of my apparel).

So, what about The Bluestocking - come along to Crucible day, it'll be fun!

Hello highame, I thought you had gone.

I admit I haven't been a Bluestockinger since The Year Dot so sorry, I'm not getting all the references - I just know if as a place mostly of fun but also of great support when needed, and I know I was warmly welcomed by the existing Stockingers when I eventually worked up the courage to push the big blue door open and walk in.

Do you think it has lost something over the years? Maybe so, I only know it as it is now and I like it well. There's still a comfy chair and a pint of CdeM here, but only if you feel it's where you'd like to be.

I love the 'we' being thrown about. Well done (that's me copying the odd patronising comment)

I must go now, I have much to do but it's been fun. The next time I drop in, I'll try and be a little bit disruptive

I think we may need to specify in future that this is the Bluestocking Arms, the women's inn for female customers only, chaps keep out. Because you know, even if men know that Bluestockings are by definition female, that would not only not stop them crashing the place, it would probably make some of them feel honour-bound to crash it and put us in our place.

@highame, maybe you haven't noticed the men speaking their branes all over the FWR discussions but in my halfwitted (I suspect what you really meant was unladylike) opinion any manner of tautology, repetition, and redundancy is justified to make the point.

Pubs do change over time, of course, as locals move away and new regulars adopt it.

When I came to the sea, I tried two pubs when someone was with me. They were my top two preferences from asking around. They were each good pubs in their own way, but they didn’t feel quite right for me. Then I found the secret fishermen’s pub and I feel very at home there.

But I’m not sure I’d have tried to turn the first two pubs into what I wanted them to be. Or shared my dissatisfaction with the customers not being a good fit with my needs. Although, maybe I’d have joined in with the conversations and tried to influence things over time if they were the only two pubs here and I wanted to make some friends. If not, I’d just have finished my first pint and kept looking. Which is what I did.

Well, I feel quite ruffled by all the wind that's flying about. It was so strong out there that I had to catch two gerbils as they flew past. I've sent them for a lie down.

Hot chocolate please bargerbil and I think I'll join @RandomHypatia in a full, cooked breakfast.

It's 12.39, but fortunately there's a sign over the bar that says
BREKFEST SARVED AL DAY 😄

I’d like a full cooked breakfast too now you’ve mentioned it. But in real life, it might have to be some sort of omelette.

Out of curiosity for a Bluestocking time before the current reincarnation I did a search.

I give you a thread title from 12 years ago:

Feminist pub no 12: The Bluestocking Returns, this time with goats!

The gerbils, having spent many an hour riding goats round the paddock whilst practising their acrobatics routines definitely concur they were literally standing on the shoulders of giants.

For me personally I arrived on this thread the other day literally clinging onto the shoulders of a giant wombat.