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.

Gerbils - a pot of tea and a massive cream bun please.

A cream bun about the size of the wonderful Myrtle cake? would that do? I'll just round up a few dozen gerbils to bring it over to you😄

Make that two. I'll join you, while in reality I'm about to have a late, light lunch. 😥

TWO massive cream buns the size of the Myrtle cake?
Um... I'll have a word with the gerbils😧

It's alright, Marie, we can share.

Phew!

I can only manage a paw, thank you.

One each, silly! Normal size for me, actually, I want to leave room for a slice of Myrtle.

May I recommend some music for the bar this evening? Try googling 'TIK Katsapy' & pick a live version on YouTube if you don't have the music apps (my fave is the one without English subtitles). Betcha can't keep still! Slava Ukraini!

I've just caught sight of a thread entitled "knitted vests over ditsy tops?" and my mind immediately went to the itchy woolen garments with buttons at the shoulder that my grandmother used to make us when we were children. They were designed to be worn under our normal clothes in the winter to "keep our kidneys from the cold". Showing my age I think 🙄

I thought we had an ejector chair a staunch alley for any man declaring himself a feminist

I thought our men friends from the Staunch Ally are welcome at the stable yard to view performances or bask in the sun with refreshments, but that the thresholds are equipped with testosterone-sensitive triggers that eject them sharpish if they try to get indoors. It's why Colin always uses the cat&dachs flap.

And we know that gentleman gerbils have occasionally sneaked in with predictable consequences.

I thought it was spelled Wetherspoon's or just 'Spoon's. I like the odd tautology and the Bluestocking is pretty odd. Though some do really bug me so I can sympathise. Having a bit of a vent can be cathartic.

I think a sulking tree is an excellent idea. There are willows overhanging the river with cushions beneath the boughs when the weather is nice but they're for relaxing on. I suspect we'll have a large oak, suitable for climbing, somewhere in the grounds. I've despatched a capybara to find one well away from the pigs and the goats. The last thing you need when sulking is a bunch of them taking the piss. I think it should have a waterproof box containing paper and writing materials. Sometimes putting down whatever is bothering you can also be cathartic. You can then fold it into a paper aeroplane and send it off. I think even the gerbils will be sensitive enough to not read any they come across.

Perhaps not sulking. There's all sorts of reasons for needing time alone to think and reset.

Flouncer's Corner needs more flounces. Is there such a thing as flouncy bunting?

I need a big slice of apple cake and a brew.

They definitely weren't gentlemen!

... or a woman, or gender critical. It would have to be a big chair because those guys always come with a big, "BUT...".😉

no, cads and rotters

Fuzzy: Flouncer's Corner needs more flounces. Is there such a thing as flouncy bunting?

Well, the AI tried, but it looks more like a washing line or an early Cath Kidston fan convention.

I also asked it for a garden full of sulking gerbils but it wouldn't make them cross their arms, which seems essential to me.

Cads & otters? Or do they all have first names starting with 'R', i.e. Mr R.Otter.

Definitely cream buns weather. Actually, I'd like a proper palmiere, with cream and jam. Not had one in decades.

I had those too, because I had what was understood at the time to be 'a weak chest' which needed lots of layers..
The wool was very soft, and undyed - the colour of Dominican nuns' habits.

Or cricket outfits - one of the things I love about the Indian cricket team it that they have kept the off-white version of whites, whereas a lot of teams wear unnaturally brilliant white whites. These Things Matter.

I think them 'uns over on the other thread mean 'slipovers', don't they?
They're called something else too, but the word escapes me ..

edited to say that we had a slightly different approach to keeping the kidneys from getting cold: shoes. If you went around in your stocking feet you were risking 'getting a chill in your kidneys'.
Either silly, or early reflexology😁

Sounds like a homemade liberty bodice, but more itchy.

I wore an ordinary cotton vest under the knitted one, so it wasn't too itchy. And the wool was very soft, I think it was probably lambswool.

Glad to hear about the cotton vest under the knitted one, Marie. I had truly terrible eczema as a small child.which was exacerbated by contact with wool. Cue lots of long-sleeved blouses to keep me un-itchy in the cardigans my grandmother knitted for all us girls.

I can see now why the gerbils were arguing and flouncing over bunting!

I am allergic to wool in some circs - hey maybe that's why I was such a sickly child, I was allergic to the vests they were putting on me to protect my 'weak chest'!

I was allergic to those old rough wool blankets, which is what we had pre-duvets, but nobody knew about allergies in those days, so I was probably put to bed under wool blankets when suffering badly from an allergy to wool blankets🙄

They were called a tank top when I were a lass.