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.

Thoughts and prayers, Boily, thoughts and prayers... 💙

I don't know - it came with the house! 😁

You bought a starship to live in didn't you?

I wish I had a resistance force field. The only thing of that kind in this house is the tractor beam chocolate seems to come equipped with.

Well, I thought it was a 1980s bungalow, but when I moved in all sorts of things started to happen. If you press one of the buttons in the kitchen, the roof opens and something like a moon rocket appears from under the floorboards. I asked my solicitor to check with the former owner, a Mr Wallis, what this was for, but he seems to have disappeared since moving. Shame, he had such a lovely dog..... name of Gromit

Santa brought us a Velvetiser a couple of years ago. It does a great job, even with skimmed milk.

@Magpiecomplex, well done! I think if I stood on the scales right now I would have put on 4 lbs since yesterday. I have been comfort eating all day supposedly to help me get through finishing writing my Difficult Document. Needless to say the document has not been finished but the comfort eating has been thorough and effortless.

@AuntieMsDamsonCrumble, how lucky.😀I'm currently renovating a house and I bet my builders forgot to check for random force fields when they were ripping everything out. If I'd had one it would have gone in one of the skips. Bother.

I think I found MN in 2022/3 and it was the trans stuff that brought me here. The earliest posts I've found of mine so far on the Bluestocking threads under any of the names I recognise or remember were in the summer of 2024. There was a lot of building and decorating work going on in the pub premises and gardens that summer. After the data scraping fiasco I decided to delete my MN account and so I've lost the online list of names that I had in use at the time. I don't think MN had banned socks then and lots of us were using multiple names on the Aston threads.

I've loved returning here after my long absence, asking for a hug and getting one straight away (Beetle, you know who you are) and feeling that I've never been away. It sums up the magic of this place. Thanks all.😀

been on MN since about 2021

landed here via legal matters spotted FWR and dove in got a few batterings and was directed to reading materials I would not have otherwise have known about

and made an informed decision what I think i

to @Taztoy I hope you are okay, and feel safe here.

moved the hoglette and grand hoglettes from A to B today

packing up yesterday and this morning from 6am

unpacking from 12am

inter dispersed with walking baby in the freezing cold and rocking to sleep

my back has gone

lovely new shiny house with the desirable living kitchen

no internet so typing on my phone so my grammar diction and spelling will be worse than usual

plus I have had a few wines

everyone in bed too early for me so here catching up

off for more wine ….

DGD (the one who used to be a seaman) used to produce a drink that he called Kai. It was a very rich cocoa with the consistency of custard. He said that it had to be thick to stop you spilling it at sea. It was heaven in a mug but, sadly, the recipe died with him.

reckon it would have been a cross between choc mousse and hot choc? Sounds divine!!

I'm loving all your 'origin' stories, I'm glad we all found the Bluey, and each other💙

I don't know if this is like what Taz means, but sometime I feel anxious when topics move really fast and maybe somebody has said something very serious a couple of pages back, and I don't want them to feel they've been forgotten about.
I also worry a bit about Stockingers who haven't posted for a while, I hope they are OK and I hope they know they are missed - I was so glad when Inky re-appeared, for instance - and currently there's Sionnach 👋

Having an anonymous presence in a virtual space should allow me to be totally different from how I am in real life, it's funny that I can't stop being me, even when I'm being Marie in the Bluestocking🙄

Mostly of course I just relish the chat and the wit and the support and the pictures of gerbils and quokkas that are so cute they make Beatrix Potter look like Francis Bacon - and the learning opportunities e.g. butyric acid!

I googled butyric acid - of course I did, how could I resist? and according to Wiki:
It is found in animal fat and plant oils, bovine milk, papaya, breast milk, butter, parmesan cheese, body odor, and vomit.

It gets around a lot, doesn't it??

Great research but it doesn't answer the question of why anyone would think that it improves the taste of chocolate. There is clearly more that divides us than just a common language. See also the American view of cheese.

Very true. Not to mention tea in the form of a poor quality tea bag alongside a cup of warm water😒
The first time I tasted Hershey's chocolate, I thought it tasted like it had been partially through somebody's upper digestive tract, before being ejected upwards😝Now I know it was the butyric acid!

Much will be forgiven them, though, for Reece's Peanut Butter Cups 😛

It's g'night from me time, so g'night everybody, wishing you all a peaceful night's sleep and dreams that do not involve being employed as a chocolate bar quality control taster at Hershey's🌛

sometime I feel anxious when topics move really fast and maybe somebody has said something very serious a couple of pages back, and I don't want them to feel they've been forgotten about.

You are so lovely @MarieDeGournay

Isn't she?
Joining in with the Marie Appreciation Society ❤️🥰

It is generally not a good idea to make a dry martini with lemon juice from a bottle dated 2021, and olives in a jar that haven't been opened for... a while.

I had to have a Baileys to get over it.

Oh dear, Myrtle, I hope that took away the taste. I think I'd have had a second Baileys, just to be sure.

Shhh…after that ordeal she was doubtless shaken so hopefully not stirred yet this morning.

Marie, you are indeed lovely.... but Reece's peanut butter cups...
🤢🤮🤢

💤

I love the pictures in The Bluestocking local women's pub (I also like using the full name at the moment ☺️) and this one of you is very cute @Boiledbeetle but I especially spotting the little treats AI adds - so lovely that two gerbils were trying to bring you a cuppa and very sweet that the gerbil playing the triangle was being so quiet she didn't even have the little metal stick 😄

Lovely for Gubbins that she has a proper triangle at least, but I note that her pals not only failed to give her the stick (there must be a technical word for it) they have not even brought any metal teaspoons into the room.

That cat is being very well behaved, neither crushing anyone beneath its furry weight nor positioning itself halfway up the bed forcing its sleeping companion out to the extreme edge.

Does it give catetiquette tuition?

Hugs and drinks to anyone who needs them.
I think <checks notes> I started in 2013 after looking for advice and someone to moan with about breastfeeding issues. Keeping a 6lb human alive when it can't speak, sit up or regulate it's own temperature is remarkably hard.

I stayed for the humour and the sheer amount of information on politics and feminism. Yes: it's an anomynous forum, but you can also find someone who knows the answer, has done the work or point to the research. I do jump on the sex & gender boards, but I can't wait for the day when trans ideology is not A Thing anymore.
We've had to use so much time, energy and money on maintaining women's basic rights when maternity services are in a mess, DV has gone up and prosecuting rapists is an afterthought.

Anyway, it's a Saturday and I'm ordering a coffee with a baileys from the gerbils. You are all a bad influence on my diet.

Have a man in. He’s made some alcove shelves and is fitting them. It’s a very crooked cottage, so the angles will be challenging.