The Bluestocking Women’s Pub: definitely full of ludicrous halfwits who refuse to get a grip (with unionised gerbils)

[MyrtleLion]

Welcome to The Bluestocking: convivial by design, opinionated in the best way, generously stocked with excellent food and drink that complies with whatever it’s meant to comply with, and any calories, gluten or alcohol are entirely virtual.

Staffed by impeccably trained, unfailingly polite gerbils who run a tight bar with plenty of enthusiasm and good intentions. Quick with the drinks, but terrible spillers spellers and liable to turn an idle thought on existential existence into a full blown musical with Busby Berkeley routines. You have been warned.

All women welcome, just in case that isn't obvious. Men can go to The Staunch Ally round the corner.

Previous thread here: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5477133-the-bluestocking-your-local-womens-pub-warm-friendly-and-not-at-all-unusual-in-any-way

Thanks, @AuntieMsDamsonCrumble - we try to be mostly self sufficient with veg and soft fruit through the summer and early autumn. Hens and quail for eggs as well - so lots of food metres rather than miles.

We have apples, rhubarb, pears, quince, plums, strawberries, raspberries, black, red and white currants, blueberries and a very unproductive medlar.

Also a wild garlic patch that the hens keep in check from taking over. I love colcannon made with wild garlic.

Today it isn't actually raining, so I'm pruning fruit trees as long as my useless knees hold up.

Congratulations to @MyrtleLion on the knitting and @Britinme on the poetry reading!

Much love to the idea of St Brigid's day and the hope of spring 🌼

Amazing breadth in the bluestocking this weekend! I love the idea that it is now spring. Having your throat blessed, does that go along with the Irish gift for language, perhaps?
Glad your poetry reading was good, Brit.
@WearyAuldWummanI would love to have a pet Shetland pony who curled up in front of the fire ... and a fire ... shades of the banshees of Inisherin here ... but I would be a bit worried about where it did its poos.

I got sidetracked into childhood memories of St Blaise and Whitefriar St Church with my granny, and I didn't respond to all the other themes in posts, and I'm not going to manage to do them all justice now, so please accept this 💙in lieu

e.g. I didn't get around to saying 'congrats on the reading, Britinme'!

Many thanks to those who hoped that my lurgy would recede. I slept until 10:30 this morning when I was woken up by DD and a cup of tea. The long sleep, cuppa and a hot shower seem to have worked and I'm just a bit snuffly now. Nose is still bright red though.

I hope you get over the lurgy quickly. I've been feeling better at last after the thing I got in early December, and was reminded yesterday morning that at my neighbours' funerals in late December I didn't have the breath to say the final commendations (receive his/her soul and present him/her to God the Most High) and that this time I could, no problem.

Oh, and congratulations @Britinme .

Thank you so much!

I am pursuing an autism and ADHD diagnosis. My therapist suggested I might have ADHD which made no sense to me because I am often very focused but on looking into it, she had a point. She also had ADHD. I am hoping for some medication because that might curb my desire to interrupt and calm my racing thoughts.

I went for an autism diagnosis 15 years ago and was told I was borderline. But diagnosis in women has moved on. The difficulty is getting it together enough to find a provider...

I attach photos of the cardigan for your opinion. I think I used the wrong method because it could be flat, or did it on the wrong side.

The finished cardigan will fold in half way the yoke. I'm knitting the lower back section. Then I will pick up stitches on the front between the stitch markers on the bottom to knit the two front pieces.

This is what the cardigan is supposed to look like.

I've shared elsewhere on here that Mum had an uncle who couldn't cope with people who weren't close family members. He lived with my grandparents, but bought a field nearby and built a 'hut' (really a wee cottage complete with fireplace - probably illegal) and retreated there when visitors came.
He had a small group of pals who used to go there for card games and - latterly - a Shetland pony which curled up in front of the fire.

This is my idea of heaven.

ETA: Earthly heaven, I mean. Thanks for all the religious info, memories & musings: it's fascinating to a low church lapsed CofE. Honestly, the things you learn in this place. It's a sort of Radio 4 of the internet.

Well done on the reading, Brit. Keep going with the knitting, Myrtle, it looks lovely (though my heart belongs to the bunny booties). And if anyone knows where the blasted Sleep Gerbil is, please send it round tonight.

Just taken a loaf of soda bread out of the oven here. I don't have the patience for yeasted bread, so I channel my Irish forebears and make soda bread instead. I also find it easier to digest.
Very cute cardigan, Myrtle, and honestly the seam just looks like a decorative feature. The recipient won't know what it's "supposed" to look like.

Probably Batshit. B&B make a good choir between them.

Congrats to @Britinme - I'm very pleased that it went well.
And also congrats to @MyrtleLion for learning to knit so bloody quickly - love the shade of green for that little cardy. Oddly enough, I made a green cardy for a baby recently - a paler green. I used a really easy pattern.

I've had to send back the yarn I recently bought - the cheaper option - because it was horribly scratchy. So it will have to be the pricier version after all...

After all the chat about autism/ADHD I just did an online quiz. I didn't get as far as getting the report (I'm too tight to shell out £1.95 and don't want to give them all my info when they slipped the ££ at the last moment) but I suspect have strong elements of ADHD.

I looked at some of the questions and thought, 'What? Some people don't find that difficult?' or 'Yes, I used to really struggle with that, but I have put strategies in place to resolve it'. I have defined locations for all the important things, I make myself file papers regularly, I keep a detailed to-do list.

I'm a terrible fidget and dislike random noise when trying to focus.

But I can hyper-focus and lose track of time for hours. I can sit down to work, get stuck in, and suddenly come to three hours later.

Now that I no longer feel like my head is full of rice pudding, I have caught up with the thread. Congratulations to @Britinme for the poetry reading. That must have felt amazing. Also, thanks for the stuff about St Brigid and St Blaise. I abandoned Catholicism before my first Communion as I couldn't cope with the 'body of Christ, blood of Christ' bit but I love the way that it keeps traditions and folklore alive.

Excellent work on the cardigan!

Yes, girls tend to be overlooked for diagnosis unless they have very obvious difficulties.

We had one pupil where the parents had recognised the autism, thanks to family experience, but the diagnosis didn't happen until the girl was about 13. She was "high-functioning" but used to get overwhelmed and would seek refuge in the girls' toilets. (Yet another example of women's facilities being used as a safe space.)

That sounds very familiar.

When I was a kid, the only room in the house with heat was the living room. I'd bury my head in a book and be oblivious to the rest of the world in spite of the tv blaring in the corner.

I was constantly being told to get my head out of books and go out and play...

I don't know why this is the case, but I have a very 'buzzy' mind, I'm always thinking about several things at once, and I know I can read something with apparent care and attention, and then be incapable of recalling any details within minutes😒

So I have a strategy to deal with that: I get myself to repeat a couple of facts I have learnt, to reinforce them in my memory.

With mixed results:

Recently I listed to a podcast about Haile Selassie and put the question to myself:
what information have you retained about the life of Haile Selassie?

The answer:
when he was in exile in Bath, he had a dog called Lulu
🙄

That's class trivia, though. All credit to you 😄

This is TMI, but at one point I was on Clomipramine for the OCD - obsessive ruminations.

I do not recommend. I put on an enormous amount of weight and yes - the drug did do the needful, but it did it too well: it totally mucked up my ability to concentrate and I forgot my foreign languages. It took a good while for my knowledge or Russian to reassert itself, for example. (One day - a long while after coming off the stuff - I realised that I could understand Russian again.)

Fortunately, it had only mucked up acquired language rather than native language, so I could still manage Scots and English... [Yes, I know that all language is 'acquired' but I think you get what I mean.]

Another thing I don't recommend - caffeine tablets.

When I was in my first year at uni, I had my first Russian exam coming up. One of the girls on our hall floor recommended caffeine tablets to improve concentration...(Available at a chemist's in Byre's Road.)

I can't recall how many I took, but when I finally went to bed at 2 in the morning, I couldn't get to sleep because Stalin kept shouting in Russian in my ear. (Yes, I knew that it was auditory hallucination. It really didn't help. Also, Stalin was a Georgian and his spoken Russian wasn't the best.)

Right. Speaking of OCD, I'm away to take the car for a short run to see whether her bottom falls off. Fingers crossed.

I've never taken caffeine tablets and I certainly don't intend to start after reading your post! I'm fairly cautious with the real stuff actually and have trained myself to enjoy decaf. After a fashion.

Made me laugh out loud that imaginary Stalin's Georgianness made it difficult to understand his shouted Russian. Kudos to you for learning Russian, goodness gracious!

I had a bit of an accident at lunch time - I managed to drop a cocktail beetroot into my knitting bag, onto a whole ball of the cream yarn I’m using to knit a baby blanket. I’ve had to unwind and discard about a quarter of a ball - thankfully it was not expensive, and I can get more, if I need it.

Launching beetroot around the place was not on today’s to-do list!

Oh no, of all the veg to go astray, it would be a beetroot, wouldn’t it?

aieeeeeeeeeeeee!

😧

My 24yo son has ADHD and has meds after a nearly 3 year wait. He finds caffeine makes him sleepy, which is apparently quite common for some people with ADHD - caffeine interacts differently and calms them.

I have done a bit in the garden, now having Earl Grey in my very expensive cup and saucer (I only own the one, but it is lovely) with a slice of the orange and almond cake I made yesterday.