The Bluestocking Women’s Pub: Where Clever Women Sit and Think, While Gerbils Run the Bar.

[MyrtleLion]

Come in. Yes, you’re in the right place. No, you don’t need to explain yourself.

Coats will be drycleaned before you depart. Bags won't be stolen because Gubbins will play her triangle. And you really don't want to hear it.

The gerbils run the bar.
They are small, brisk, and unionised.
One is polishing a glass with unnecessary seriousness.
Another is keeping the tab and will remember what you ordered last time.
There is a triangle involved. No one knows why. It keeps Gubbins happy.

Sit. Think. Drink. Join in.

The gerbils have it from here.

Previous thread...
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5481554-the-bluestocking-womens-pub-definitely-full-of-ludicrous-halfwits-who-refuse-to-get-a-grip-with-unionised-gerbils

"Have you ever lost your cheese in Norway?" is such a great conversation opener. I shall be using that one.

Wrt to bulb flowers, I bought two pots of tiny iris this week & put them in matching cache-pots indoors. They burst into flower at an astonishing speed (I guess it was the warmth) & are quite wonderful in their miniatureness. With those & a jug of daffs, it's springlike chez Android.

@MarieDeGournay wrote
I agree with Magpie that the brighter mornings are welcome - you can close the curtains and get cosy when the evenings are dark, but getting up in what seems to be the middle of the night is plain wrong!

Needing lights on my bike to go to work and to come home always seemed wrong

One of the many benefits of being retired is not having to get up in the middle of then night every day to go to work in the dark.

Yes. Even better than just not having to get up to go to work at all.

'Courage, mes braves' to all of you having to do so.
And also from me.

In the pub??

Do they keep them under the bar and bring them out on request?

😂

I ate far too much cheese a little earlier.
I can't say that in Norwegian.

Nor can B&B, but they got the rinds.

I can’t either, haven’t started on past tense yet.

Kitty likes cheese but she only gets the occasional small crumb.

Snowdrops only work for me when I plant them in the green. It's taken years for me to figure out that squirrels were eating the bulbs.

I also have two, but I think they're from the same bulb. 99% certain that they're February Gold.

I keep losing bulbs in that bed. snazzle frazzle Grey squirrels!

I gave up on Duolingo Gaelic some time ago. It kept telling me that Angus was wearing his underpants. I can't remember how to say it, but that's probably no great loss.

When I did "O" Grade Russian, we used the Penguin Book of Russian. One memorable exercise included "Unfortunately, my uncle is in hospital and my aunt is in prison." (You "lie" in hospital, but "sit" in prison, apparently. Or at least, you did in 1975.)

K sozhaleniyu, moy dyadya lezhit v bol'nitse, a moya tëtya sidit v tyur'me.

I'm glad Angus was wearing his underpants, considering the alternatives.

Especially if Owen happened to be wielding a parsnip in the vicinity.

Why oh why did they take away the 😂 response!

I grow mine under my olive trees and they multiply and pop up every year to flower on my birthday. They are such a treat.

I used to have a bed of Siberian iris at my old house and they were so beautiful - such an astonishingly vibrant shade of blue.

Blackbird started singing at 7.14.

It's very cold, I hope the birdies have the sense not to start nesting for another month.

The magnolia near is us coming into bud. That seems a little early.

Saying hello to Cake, hoping you are starting to feel more 'the ticket' as I believe the expression is - or is it 'more the item'? They both sound very PG Wodehouse.

Maybe the blackbird and the magnolia know something we don't, maybe the weather is going to improve, maybe the Long January is going to end eventually...

We have another yellow rain warning today in the east of Ireland, to be followed by 'an Arctic air mass' and ice warnings, but at least blue skies.
The weather forecaster tried to cheer us up by saying 'The cold snap will be of short duration' but I think the good news is that it will become warmer, and it will be raining again🙄

The gerbils are fed up with the rain, Galanthea had to swim through floods to get to work this morning!

[this is a real gerbil, it seems they are good swimmers in real life!]

@MarieDeGournay wrote this is a real gerbil, it seems they are good swimmers in real life!]

I am confused. That is a real gerbil: 🐹: does that mean ours are not-real?

That's not a gerbil, tail is completely wrong. It might be a coypu or a muskrat. I suspect gerbils can swim, the ones in the Bluestocking synchronised swimming team are very good at. In the wild they probably get little opportunity, having evolved to live in deserts, bar the odd flash flood. I believe they don't even need to drink. They've got amazing kidneys that extract all the water they need from their food.

Of course ours are real! And of course they have a synchronised swimming team.

Thank you Android for rescuing the error-strewn 'swimming gerbils' trope I started earlier and restoring clear, factual, science-based discourse to the topic.
Our gerbils swim, and they do so artistically. Lesser gerbils don't.
I hope I've cleared that up😄

That was Cake, Marie. I just couldn't resist the idea of a synchronised swimming team. I'm sure someone requested Buzby Berkley gerbils, a long time ago. I've checked some of my images, but I have so many that I can't find those. I remember it was difficult to get the AI (CoPilot?) to do it, at the time. Here's what gemini makes of it...

BB night is apparently very popular in the staff quarters. I swear they have better facilities than we do!

That was me. I'm never totally convinced AI has heard of Busby Berkeley.