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

I read an article the other day that, fwoabw, St Brigid performed an abortion. A nun came to her and told her she was pregnant (nothing about how the child was conceived, I hate to think). St Brigid made the pregnancy painlessly go away.

Although I read it quite recently my lurgy is messing with my ability to concentrate, and I was much worse then, so it's all a bit of a blur. I think it was an interview with an Irish poet, artist, musician, possibly a maker of pies.

The senedd is handing out money to decolonise the Welsh cake. I'm faintly surprised the name Welsh cake isn't verboten, there has to be a Cymraeg alternative. They should pay for a bunch of Welsh speaking academics to have a meeting about it, then liaise with a bunch of Welsh NGOs to definitely find one...definitely.

Had a squabble discussion with my sprogs that Welsh rarebit was originally Welsh rabbit. It was a mocking reference to the perceived poverty of the Welsh people. Too poor to even eat rabbit. I'm not 100% sure though. I've definitely seen both used although not 'rabbit' for an age which makes me think I'm right, it's being memory holed.

My childhood home had silverfish aplenty. They couldn't eat the terrazzo floor. Marble is clearly beyond them!

I spoke too soon. The pattern I had is a variation and only talks about seams.

It looks impossible and I can't find it free online anywhere.

I will try and find a different pattern for something simple. I can't believe how easy it was to accidentally yarn over when just knitting and not realise for rows and rows. I have managed much more complicated patterns without making so many errors.

There’s an extensive discussion of the origins of the term ‘Welsh rabbit/rarebit’ on the wiki page - ‘rarebit’ seems to be a gentrified form of the original ‘rabbit’ joke.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welsh_rarebit

Sorry to hear you've fallen victim to that lurgy that seems to have cut a swathe through the Stockingers Hope you're much better soon.

I lost my footing in the thread a couple of days ago and had to issue a general 💙to anyone who needed it, things move quickly here, and there are often serious and deep matters spoken of in posts, that you [one] would like to respond to individually and supportively, in true Bluey style.

But lose your footing and 😬
That said, I think everyone here knows that the affectionate support is there anyway, even if not actually sent in response to every post.

Annyyhooooo, back to your post, which was v interesting but one word stood out:
holotype. Never heard of it! Love learning new words! Is it anything like a lemma, which I just learnt the other day?

Well that's my afternoon planned out - down an internet rabbit puffin hole😁

As if 'holotype' wasn't unknown enough, along came Cher with
In other news, I've just pulled the (very fine) yarn off my lucet

Lucet? I'll be word-hunting till teatime at this rate, because it's not just the meaning, it's the etymology too...😃

I love the phrase 'serve it away hot', although toast soaked in red wine seems rank. With or without cheese.

I always thought Welsh rarebit/rabbit was basically a cheesy sauce served on toast - when did red wine get involved? Though I agree it sounds rank.

Lucet? I'll be word-hunting till teatime at this rate, because it's not just the meaning, it's the etymology too...😃

Its etymology is pretty obscure. There is a theory that it's from French, a diminutive of the word for a pike - the fish not the long spear - but even that is uncertain.

I had to look up lucet.
Now I want one. I would use it, too. It wouldn't just sit uselessly in my basket of knitting and crochet gear.

After my 'SMALL boobed lady' mammogram a few weeks ago, I got the letter today. Given the year or so that we have had, I opened it with some trepidation and then breathed a sigh of relief - but also thought of Cake. May your current lurgy clear quickly, leaving you in full fitness for your treatment.

I decided I was sick of mud and took B&B for a walk where there are nice dry footpaths. I was feeling quite antisocial but unfortunately every other bugger had the same idea and within the first 10 minutes I saw 5 other people out with their dogs. I then managed to avoid other human beings for about half an hour, until we were almost back at the car, when I saw a bloke with 2 dogs. Oh bollocks, another human. Then I realised that it was the son of the local gamekeeper.

We stopped for a chat about our dogs, his adolescent son, his old dad etc. Brains knows him well and importuned for sausage (which she has had from him before, she doesn't forget) and was outraged when he turned out his pockets to demonstrate their emptiness.

Poor Brains. Such a disappointment,

Our walk today was enhanced by meeting first a beagle pup and then a young whippet - gorgeous, everybody’s friend but still at the stage where they’ve not quite learned they’re meant to be bipeds when greeting people so we’ve come back with little paw prints. I don’t care.

How have I never come across a lucet before? I've worked with yarn & fabric since I was about 6yo - never heard of it.

Well done with the mammo results, Edith, & 💙to Cake.

My dad used to make us Welsh rarebit - and for a really special treat, he’d put a soft poached egg on top - with tomato ketchup - delicious! One day, when mum was away, I was trying to get a mat out of the drawer in the dresser that hat mum’s best tablecloth in it, with my plateful of Welsh rarebit, poached egg and ketchup in the other hand, and I managed to tip the whole lot into the drawer!

Dad, bless him, got it all laundered, dried and ironed before mum got home - she was definitely the Scary Parent, and I wouldn’t have liked to have to explain the egg yolk, cheesy grease and ketchup stains. 😂

When I'm showing people a lucet I always ask whether they're familiar with French knitting, especially of the 4 nails hammered into a wooden cotton reel variety. Many do recollect that, even if they have to think for a bit first. If they haven't done it themselves, they've often seen an older relative doing it.

A lucet produces a thinner cord, being 2 prongs instead of 4.

I meant they’re not supposed to be bipeds….i always highly praise pups who can keep four paws on the floor while saying hello.

Also never heard of a lucet before, but I now need one!
This morning's students, being second years, were the focused nascent industry professionals I expected. This afternoon's students (first years) seemed to have collectively decided to forego professionalism in favour of being difficult teens. I know it's tricky to manage the transition from school to work, and part of my job is helping them do that, but when the whole class reverts to being teenagers, I might occasionally let my exasperation show. I did manage to stick with the fasting today though.

Brillian mammo news Edith!

https://knowablemagazine.org/content/article/society/2026/recreating-the-smells-of-the-past
Interesting stuff! Not sure I want to smell like an Egyptian mummy though.

The epitome of Good Dadding.

My dad didn’t do much cooking apart from some reason being good at doing a pressed ox to tongue for special occasions. But he did all the laundry (in a twin tub so it was active work) and vacuuming, and also the bulk of the shopping (on his bike before we got a car). I didn’t realise that in the 60s/70s how egalitarian our house was compared to many - he and mum were both teachers. My older brothers learned to cook, iron and generally pull their weight; and flip side was no one batted an eyelid at me doing sciences (only girl who did physics a level, one other did double maths, and I was the only girl in my chemistry set…I didn’t wonder why at the time.)

When I moved to the UK in O level year, @ErrolTheDragon , I was one of 5 girls doing Physics O Level.

The teacher was an absolute bastard of a sexist dinosaur. He sat us girls at the back of the classroom and never answered us when we put our hands up with questions. In 1985.
Fecker.

I'd enjoyed physics until then. He got what he was after, I got the school librarian to write me notes excusing me from class and hung out there (she hated him too). I scraped a C and never troubled the sciences again.

Good Dadding indeed!

Perhaps this is the one area in which I have been unlucky, but neither my dad nor DH1 or DH2 were inclined to cook. I don't remember my dad ever doing more than making toast or a cup of tea. DH1 was great if you wanted steak or scrambled eggs (he made the best scrambled eggs) and DH2 makes great American-style pancakes, and also does fried eggs and bacon well, but left to himself would subsist on sandwiches.

Well, I found a lovely stripey cardigan pattern and knitted about 15 rows which took a couple of hours.

I was very proud of myself, even unpicking three rows because the ribbing had got out of order - well done, Myrtle, for spotting you started with a knit 2 purl 2 when you should have done purl 2 knit 2 - then went onto the meaty part with bigger needles.

I completely misread the m1-R and m1-L which are new ways of increasing, and had large holes in my cardigan which were not visible on the photos of the finished item. I went and watched a video (which I hate as I prefer to read), realised I'd done it wrong and went cursing back to the pattern convinced it said something it didn't say.

I have unravelled all the rows and I'm starting again. Grrrr.

But I'm learning new techniques, so it's not so bad. And I knitted another little hat, this time in green to match the cardigan.

@PastaAllaNorma . I went in a school trip to Russia just before my O level year. When we got off the train back in our home town we were told our Physics teacher had died.

Even all those years ago, they couldn’t get a replacement so we were without one for the last year. The lessons must have had a cover teacher but nobody attempted to teach us anything, apart from our Chemistry teacher teaching us about electricity in the lunch hour. Also, my text book mysteriously disappeared, to reappear when they were all handed in at the end of the year.

I can’t think why now, but I never mentioned this to my parents even though my Dad had been a Physics teacher before he was promoted. I just passed, too - grade 6.

Is no Physics teacher worse than a misogynistic sexist one?

I did not do A level Physics even though I was pretty idle, and Maths, F Maths and Physics was meant to be only 2 ½ A levels because of the overlap in syllabus content.

Instead I did English, and remember writing more essays as part of the final exam than the total over the previous two years, excluding the mock. I probably still can’t structure an essay. I certainly can’t analyse a text to A level standard. Again, I only just scraped a pass.

Most of the teachers were single women of a similar age, whose potential husbands probably died in WW2. I’ve read a history of the school, and what surprised me was how dedicated all the staff seemed and how devoted to teaching. ‘They would say that, wouldn’t they?’ They probably thought that, too.

My Dad didn’t cook, either, but he did wash up and prepare vegetables, probably having grown them first.

@AsWithGlad maths, further maths and physics is definitely more like 2½ A levels than 3. I added insult to injury and did chemistry too. Wish I'd had a bit more breadth now, but I enjoyed them.

Boo hiss to the sexist dinosaur, Norma. I had a teacher at English A level who could barely bring himself to look at the girls, and was entirely unable to address us by name, so if you avoided eye contact, you could doss about all lesson and never have to read a part in whatever play we were grinding through.

Myrtle, I have resigned myself to watching knitting videos, even though I have several books with lots of nice instructive pictures. I go for the middle aged ladies who use huge knitting needles and super-chunky yarn so that you can clearly see what is going on, and who proceed with patronising patience so that the slow-of-knitting can keep up.

My father could cook, but he was a lazy bugger so rarely bothered, and when he did he created vast amounts of fall-out for other people to clear up. After DM died he had to look after himself for a year or so, and managed this quite successfully, but speedily found himself a female friend, moved in with her, and let her cater for him until he died.