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

The gamekeeper's grandson is currently wavering between Otley and Writtle. Give him a couple of years, and he'll be traipsing around tractor shows in his Schoffel gilet.

You are getting on very quickly, Myrtle, with your knitting. M1R and M1L is quite an advanced technique. If you don’t mind something less symmetrical you can always use just one method or the other, or even knit into the back and front of the next stitch.

Well done also for spotting you had gone wrong. The more knitting you do the quicker you’ll see these things. I expect you already recognise what it should look like.

My dad was very present as a parent, even in the 50s and 60s. My mum recalled the women of the locality commenting on his pram-pushing abilities. And not always favourably- he was seen as a one-off!

He didn't cook, but read to us, taught us poetry, helped me with Latin and parsing sentences, and was interested in absolutely everything, from football to medicine.

Schoffel gilet, bad mullet and tan workboots. I know the type well! Indecently short Canterbury shorts as soon as the daffs are flowering.

Everything in the Bluestocking might as well be in code to me at the moment. I have no idea what any of it means. 😕
Back to my burrow.

@FuzzyPuffling I see Android's got at you too.

Lucet - now I know what it is - thank you, a new word!
Using it looks mesmerising on youtube.

I now also know what a holotype is: it's a baby shearwater pulled out of a puffin burrow by a sciencey type 😄 only kidding I know it is the first material of a taxon.

It reminded me of a lemma [learnt just the other day] in linguistics, but only vaguely.

By the time I got to a decent school that taught physics, still unusual in girls' schools in that distant past, I had missed the earlier years and wasn't allowed join the class, to my profound sorrow - I had been hoovering up science books since I was little and really really wanted to do physics.
I wonder what my life would have been like if they'd let me do physics ...

I caught up a bit by doing electronic-y stuff later on, and that made my inner disappointed 13-year-old would-be scientist feel a lot better

Proving that I am a true science nerd, lemma only reminds me of plasmalemma.

My mum taught my dad to cook after she came home from hospital where she'd had a lengthy stay.

I'd stayed with my aunt and uncle during the week, but was back home with Dad at weekends. (Dad was a coal miner and did shift work.)

Mum asked me what we'd been eating. "Dog meat!"

Actually, it was Grant's Mince from a tin and Smash from a packet. There was a Tupperware offer - one dish if you sent off 4 packets.

Mum came home to umpteen boxes of free Tupperware. I believe she gave most of them away...at least, that's what she told me. I only needed to get one stamp, one envelope and one sheet of paper from Dad to order them all. Goodness knows what they thought in the relevant office!

@FuzzyPuffling and @EdithStourton - my Dad could cook because he went to university and had to learn. Mum couldn't cook because her mum was the only one in the kitchen. It took a long while for the balance to shift.

Dad was rigid and insisted on following every instruction to the letter. Mum was more instinctive but had no sense of smell and therefore a very dulled sense of taste.

@AsWithGlad , I did O and A levels during a teacher's strike. We had one term of English Language and Literature teaching at O level and every other term for the first 4 terms of A level. I totally understand the frustration of not having any teacher.

It was rubbish.

Your dad sounds a bit like my dad, Fuzzy - if a pram needed to be pushed or a child fed, he just did it.
He also darned socks, did some cooking, and some washing [hand washing] if something had to be clean quickly.
He was good at those things because he had to do them when he was in the army - I think it's funny that he could do all those non-macho things because he had been a soldier!
He also loved poetry.

He had a miserable, abusive childhood himself, and rather than continuing the 'cycle of abuse', he relished having a family of his own, and the opportunity to give his children the secure childhood he never had.

@Magpiecomplex wrote: Wish I'd had a bit more breadth now, but I enjoyed them.

Many, including me, think that’s the most important thing.

It can be less fun if you have to take a subject because you need it to qualify for the next stage of your life, especially if you don’t really want that but your family does.

Very true, Glad. I am lucky enough to have parents who didn't bat an eyelid at a daughter doing maths and physical sciences, and who assumed that all their children would go to university. They weren't terribly supportive in other ways, I don't remember either of them ever telling me they were proud of me, but they never tried to persuade me to do more feminine subjects.

Lemma - I know that as a Maths word. 😀

An almost in-law of mine is very keen on plasma. It’s Physics so I get lost early on in any explanation I’ve found online.

@PastaAllaNorma , I was at home with children during the teachers’ strike ( no maternity leave in those days). I had one child at school but it just meant I had to bring her home for lunch as there was no cover. I hadn’t realised it meant pupils missed lessons, and for so long.

Hurray for these practical ex-army dads. I suppose mine was like that too. I can’t imagine he would have gone into the army had he not been the right age during WW2, though.

Loving the reminiscences of school days. I don't remember mine with much affection, but managed to get A levels in English, Geography & and French - a rather random selection as I had no idea what career path I wanted to take at that point, so just did my favourite subjects.

My dad was another who learned domestic skills in the army & could turn his hand to most things, although his idea of cooking was to throw everything into a pot and boil it ferociously. His forte was ironing, but he used to drive me mad when he ironed knife-sharp creases into my jeans!

A 24 year old French man caused the evacuation of a hospital in Toulouse after he was admitted and the object that he needed removing from his anus turned out to be a WW1 German artillery shell. Eldest sprog (yes I shared this with her) didn't think this was possible. So I told her blokes are weird and with enough vaseline and the right "go get 'em" attitude you'd be surprised what they'd manage to fit up there. I suspect if it wasn't for the high explosive the doctors wouldn't even have bothered with a signature Gallic shrug.

Having moved here from Canada where teachers only went on strike during the holidays, so as not to disrupt the pupils, it was absolutely go smacking that we just weren't taught at all.

Very strange times.

i can’t quite get my head round what teachers going on strike during the holidays would entail

Signing off for the night, wishing everybody a good sleep - please note, Sleep Gerbils! and acceptable dreams - sorry Dream Gerbils but the one last night about trying unsuccessfully to find an address in New York when I had no idea why I was in New York was borderline😠

Rocky, Raquel and Rigoberta Racoon are very grateful their new home in the Bluestocking trees, and they say g'night too🌛

I can’t make sense of teachers only striking in the holidays, either. Here we/they do planning, room reorganisation and so on, but it would still have to be done when you’re back at work. I suppose they could not go to INSET courses (training days) which are supposed to be useful but aren’t always.

@lcakethereforeIam , sharp intake of breath! Perhaps it was done to him rather than being self-administered?

There are lots of things I don’t understand in this world.

Wishing everyone good sleep, too, and gentle dreams with no puzzling journeys.

Morning all. Has Boily spent so much time in the shower that she's slipped down the plughole?

One of my aunts married a man who grew up near her in one of the little pockets of ex (UK) servicemen's housing dotted around Ireland. He was in the Royal navy, and felt strongly that since she had to do all the housework and childcare while he was at sea, when he was home on leave he should take over and give her a break. I never tasted his signature dish, the Dublin coddle he cooked every Saturday - it isn't quite 'throw everything into a pot and boil it ferociously' - more of a simmer. Remove the potatoes and it's proper medieval food.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coddle

Good morning!

I’d not heard of coddle; it’s not unlike our supper last night taken from a Hugh Fernly Whatshisname cookbook - sausage and lentil stew with celeriac and carrots, no newfangled potatoes, lots of herbs and some mustard. I suppose in medieval Britain and Ireland our pulses would have more likely been peas or beans than lentils
On a recent visit to the Walker Art gallery, DH completed his cultural education by having a bowl of scouse for lunch in their cafe - another of these dishes that tastes better than it looks.