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

It's an Ulster thing, I'm not sure how widespread but not just Belfast, and non-sectarian as far as I understand. It is very unlike the rest of the country, where funerals are a great day out with not a moment to be wasted.

One to ask undertakers about, they'd know how to map it.

It always seemed to me a very weird local thing, and I could never figure out why, and I've never heard of an explanation for it. It's just something I noticed down the years.

Maybe it's a thing in Scotland? I wouldn't know.

I know what I'm having for dinner today, and happy to gorge myself on pancakes tomorrow, but had forgotten I'll need to do something, probably lentil pie, as a fast dish on Wednesday.

By a triumph of bad organization I also have to go out (in the car) after dinner tomorrow so my last drinking day before Lent will involve not drinking.

Bah!

My experience of many funerals is that they often turn into surprisingly jolly occasions.

I'm not even drinking on the last drinking day either. I got myself a bottle of Toki (I've never quite been sure about Japanese whisky, and I keep thinking I should try it again before I come to a conclusion, which probably tells you something) but anyway, I'm at the end of the bottle.

I have friends who do the Black Fast. Not for me, I'm afraid.

I heard of it first from my Belfast Methodist pal, and later asked Donegal and Monaghan colleagues, both Catholic, both surprised anyone would expect women at the graveside, which in turn astounded all the Connacht, Leinster and Munster colleagues.

That was about 20 years ago.

Think of the fun the Ulsterwomen miss out on.

Or not. Image search of the day Michael Stone visited Milltown cemetery in 1988 shows a few women, but they had their own political and social context.

Yes, I've never heard of it happening elsewhere.

Funerals are 'a great day out', they are a great way to meet up with old friends or neighbours who moved away, or slightly estranged family members.
In rural Ireland they are also a Happy Hunting Ground for the local politicians and candidates to show their faces and prove how they have not forgotten their roots😒

Because funerals in Ireland take place very soon after the death has occurred, they are also a very important show of support to the bereaved family when you are feeling most grief-stricken.
Having a succession of people coming up to you, shaking your hand and saying the ritual 'I'm sorry for your trouble' can be a little bit wearing, but it reminds you that you are not alone.

I've never been to a funeral here where there wasn't laughter - it's not considered inappropriate at all to tell a funny story about the departed, and make the mourners laugh, knowing that the departed would have enjoyed the story and laughed themselves

Women and also children are definitely at the graveside in my Catholic part of Lower Frankonia. When my Dad died my children were 3 years and 10 month and there was never a question about them being there. My family would have thought I'd gone mad if I wouldn't have taken them.

Now our German teacher didn't tell us anything about that. I wonder why....?

Was it a male teacher?

I always quite like funerals because I get a chance to meet rural relatives who I haven't seen in many years, and who always have an interesting story or two.

I keep meaning to ask about the pigs. My grandfather was a farmer in his youth, long before I was born, and he must have had Large Ulster White pigs. They're an extinct breed now, like Cumberland pigs, known for extremely fatty bacon, which is why you can't get a real Cumberland sausage now, only a Cumberland style sausage.

Sometimes I hear about that winter when the Moyola burst its banks and my old granda had to carry the pigs out on his back, and that's what decided him not to be a farmer. If they were Large Ulster Whites, I can't blame him, for from the pictures I've seen they were enormous.

No, a young woman. It could be she'd never heard of it herself, since she was from the north-east of England and kept stressing the connections between the NE and both northern Germany and the Netherlands where dialect was concerned.

My grandmother, born to Kerry parents, didn't attend the cremation of her husband. I stayed with her to keep her company until everyone got back for the wake.

I've just got back home, we've been Oop North for senior Master Magpie's birthday all weekend. Very nice to spend some time with him. The diet has not been observed 😂

I didn't know you had roots in 'The Kingdom', Magpie.
I wonder if she didn't attend the cremation because it was frowned upon in Ireland for a long time - not necessarily by the catholic church, which OKed it in the 1960s, but it was felt to be unusual and somehow not quite right for a long time, until quite recently.

I'm glad you had a nice time with Master Magpie, and as for the diet - as your ancestors might have said 'Yerra gerril shure ye can make up for it later, when god made time he made plenty of it ..'

Cremations I know as a more recent thing. And then there's the matter of having family from all counties of Ulster but not of the rest of Ireland.

Sometimes it feels like making contacts in an old spy novel.

"Didn't I see you at Sadie's funeral?"

"You did aye."

"Who's that pushing Harold around?"

"That's my dad."

Which leads into a whole other conversation, and... had Len Deighton been Irish, his books would have been twice the length.

Yes, Kerry for one grandmother and the Isle of Mull for the other - I have green eyes, dark hair and a total inability to tan except for the freckles!

100% English here- at least since the Norman invasion.

I hate funerals. My parents funerals were miserable, my granddaughter's was appalling. I don't want a funeral, and don't want to host one for my DH either.
Load of hangers-on blagging an expensive sandwich. No chance.

I can see the Isle of Mull from my window. It's currently a dark outline against the last bit of light from the sun that set a while ago.

I'm catching up the thread.

My husband - God rest him - would not allow me to do his ironing for him. I think that it was genuinely because he didn't want me to do be doing that for him on top of my job, but I do have a niggling feeling that my being really bad at ironing shirts might have had something to do with it...

He had been a short-term regular in the army, so could do them perfectly.

reflects

Maybe I needed the input of an irate sergeant in order to perfect my ironing skills.

It used to be that women in (Protestant) Scotland didn't go to the graveside. That was gone in Fife, by the time that I was a teenager, but still existed in parts of Aberdeenshire.

My husband told me that only the men in the family attended his mother's funeral in Crathie in the 1970s. (Aberdeenshire Council later mislaid her, but that's another story.)

ETA Actually, when my elderly neighbour died in the 1980s, the older women in his family (including his wife) didn't go to the funeral service. That was Fife.

In my family's part of former Yugo, the women all attend...the rule is that you then wear mourning for a year.

Some of the other traditions have recently been stomped on by the Orthodox Church as being unChristian. eg, when I were a lass there were certain days of the year you'd have picnics on family graves and you'd leave a sweetie or a cigarette when you visited.

Now, it's candles only.

That makes sense to me. I've never traced any of my folks back to Scotland, but most of them would have been Border Scots by their names. The rituals around death probably last longer than anything else.

Errol, children's funerals are by definition appalling. You have my sympathy - that must have been horrendous.

We had to go to a teenager's funeral a few years ago - sudden accidental death. When you can remember the bright-eyed baby, it's just terrible.

My mum's side of the family are from South Wales, and they had the same tradition of no women or children at the graveside, although it has become more common for women to go to the grave now. They also had an open coffin in the front room before the funeral which was a bit of a shock to me when I turned up for mum's funeral. I think that was the first funeral I'd been to so I had no idea what to expect.

There was a thread a few weeks back asking how many funerals people had been to. Lots of middle aged English people saying 9 or 10 over their lifetime. Lots of Irish people saying at least 9 or 10 a year. I know some people who would go to a couple of funerals a week.

And not for refreshments, which are usually a family only thing, after the burial..