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

https://www.emilydemolly.com/products/waiting-for-the-sun
I bought this recently, Android.

Your lovely mum sounds very like my lovely MiL who refused a family party for her 70th, but arranged a house-party for her 80th for the whole family (21 in all, including 4 very young GGSs).

So lots of wonderful memories, but they can never make up for the absence of those we loved so much. Sadly birthdays and other anniversaries just bring that home to us.

Oooh! Is it easy to get all the bits as even as that? And do they peel off? I have trouble with anything bigger than micro to medium sized glitter, though I covet it.

My work canteen sells Tunnocks teacakes and caramel bars. I've resisted so far as I fear if I buy one once in going to want to buy one every day I'm on site. I'm also quite messy at eating them and I normally try to give the impression of being a mature and sensible adult when I'm there. Face and clothes covered in chocolate and other sticky stuff doesn't do that.
Now sitting in living room wishing I had a crate of Tunnocks products.

Right bar gerbils, please may I have one each of every Tunnocks products you have, and a glass of water - the best drink for when you want to consume huge quantities of sweet stuff.

Also, does anyone else read "bargerbils" as barger-bils? I do it every time even though I know exactly what it says!

Thank you for inviting us to raise a glass to your amazing Mum. She sounds wonderful.

The Terry Pratchett quote is very similar to my paternal DGF's view. He said that you kept one foot on this earth as long as somebody can remember anything, no matter how small, about you and tells it to somebody else.

Haven't tried it yet, I suspect it's going to be a pig to apply evenly, and even worse to remove!

https://rainbow-connection.co.uk/products/ace-of-cups-ships-end-april
@ifIwerenotanandroid I'm also considering this one, although the younger Master Magpie challenged me to get out all my "oil slick" polishes and justify why I need that many. He might have a point.

In other news, DH produced the first steak and kidney pudding of the year for dinner. A pudding bowl lined with suet pastry, filled with shin beef and ox kidney and other stuff to create gravy, more suet pastry on the top and then steamed for as long as it needed to be steamed. God, his mum taught him well!

You chose well there!

I chose him because he is as cute as ninepence, as funny as fuck and never took the piss out of my Dorze' accent because his is twice as thick. His ability to cook the food that I like is a happy bonus.

I’ve been out for the evening, so belatedly raising a glass to Norma and her mother

…irl decaf coffee with a good spoonful of cocoa in it.

Night out was a very interesting talk in a church hall from a very enthusiastic and knowledgeable WWT reserve manager.
One nugget of information you may enjoy is that when bitterns first start breeding at a site their productivity is high, but as numbers of males increases it tends to decline because they spend too much time booming at each other instead of getting down to business.

Ooooh again! I have a linear (?) holo but it's a dull pink & so not as covetable as that one.

The answer for Master Magpie (the cheeky pup!) is surely, "I want them, I can afford them & they make me happy." Then paint his toenails while he's asleep.💅

@PastaAllaNorma missing your mum is horrible.

Mine's been gone for three and a half decades and her absence still sometimes winds me completely. I had no idea that what she had was likely to be imminently fatal until a couple of days before she died. She was a wonderful parent, and it sounds as if your mum was too.

Glass (of port) raised for them both.

I had a zoom committee meeting this evening. The chairman has a wonderful Suffolk accent. Most of the time I barely notice it, because I'm so used to it, but nothing beats it.

The slow death of regional accents is a sad loss that doesn't get a lot of airtime.

Thank you to all of the generous Bluestockings.

I was doing my best to be stoic in the face of this anniversary and you gave me the perfect excuse to emote a wee bit.
I thank you from the bottom of my heart.

I have a shitty bone selfish mum, who never fails to hurt me. @PastaAllaNorma So I raise a glass to a lovely mum

something i strive to be and grandma too.

i wish i knew what it is to have such a lovely mother, but i do not and soldier on.

I wish I could describe my mum as lovely, but I can't quite. She was a good mum as far as she could manage to be, but her primary interest was always my dad rather than me. As an adult, given her background and what happened to her as a young woman, I can actually understand why she felt that way, and she was kind, dutiful and caring towards me so I have no complaints. However, we weren't at all close, though more so after my dad died. By that time I was married and living a long way from home though, so it had limited opportunities to show itself as she didn't drive so we saw her maybe twice a year when she would come down on the train.

I'm with you there. The effort that my teachers put into eradicating my native accent failed at first contact with 'commonly spoken English' at uni. I really hate the spread of Estuary English. It's like watching an invasive species taking over and destroying a native environment.

I used to be embarrassed by my accent but now I see it as part of who I am.

I love accents, I find them mysterious - why do they say that in this place and something different in that place?

My Irish accent is explicable because Hiberno-English is strongly influenced by the language we used to speak - the famous Irish pronunciation of 'film' as 'fill-um' is because in the Irish Gaelic language, adjacent consonants are usually separated by a vowel sound, with the lovely name of 'the helping vowel'.

But why do people 30 miles down the road from me speak with a different accent given that they come from the same linguistic background?

I think local accents are becoming cool again, there's hope yet

That's the best advertisement for heterosexuality I've come across in a long time, Jane😂
I'm still not buying, though😉

G'night to all, a peaceful sleep, especially for you Pasta.
Nice calm undemanding dreams all round, please, Dream Gerbils

Cheers to your lovey mum!

Sadly mine isn't as lovely and we haven't messaged since New Year's Day or spoken since just before Christmas when we met up with the rest of the family. I know she loves means I love her, but I don't particularly like her.

I am as fortunate as JanesLittleGirl that my DH (known to all as the Walrus) is a most marvellous man and I feel very blessed that he's in my life. Ten years together now and three years married in a couple of weeks.

Because I was born in India when we came back to England when I was five I sounded Anglo-Indian, which sounds slightly Welsh coming from a little white girl, and because we lived in Hull and my mum didn’t want me to pick up the local accent, I was sent to elocution lessons. I don’t think it made much difference to be honest - my dad had a Yorkshire accent but my mom was a Londoner without a real London accent so I grew up with bog-standard fairly accentless speech. My elocution teacher taught through poetry though, and that was definitely one of the things that pointed me in that direction.

I sound northern unless I don't know you, then I'm perfectly RP.

We had another storm overnight and everywhere is flooded. Glad I live on a hill. Hurrah for Wellington boots.

It’s foul here today - cold, rainy and windy. So of course this is the day we’re booked to have our electric consumer unit changed and so expect to be without power for hours. We’re overheating the house at the moment and have some thermoses filled. Not sure how long the UPS box will power the router for and the phone signal here is crap so I may be offline for some time… I might actually get down to reading a book.