The Bluestocking - Best Pub on the Internet

[EdithStourton]

Welcome to the Bluestocking women's pub. Excellent (if sometimes wilful) gerbil bar staff, varied cocktails, splendid cakes, cracking Sunday roasts...

Voted Best Pub for the umpteenth thread running, join us for conversation about tractors, units of measurement, films, wildlife, and even, sometimes, women's rights.

Just keep Glenda off the gin.

Any men, you can trot along to the Staunch Ally just up the road.

I gave up on BT about 30 years ago. I can't remember why I'd rung them now but I got the most horrendous gobfull from the man who answered the phone their end.

I can remember putting the phone down in complete shock and was still at the what just happened phase when the phone rang and it was the man's manager, obviously been monitoring the calls, who couldn't stop apologising for what he'd just heard come out of that man's mouth.

I moved house shortly after and went with the local cable provider.

BT won't talk to me. Mr Magpie's name is on the bill, and they will not talk to anyone other than him. Suits me, to be honest.

British Gas are the ones I won't touch with a bargepole. Appalling service, making up legislation to explain their inability to do anything sensibly, and a total lack of belief that they might possibly be accountable to their customers (or indeed anyone lower down the pecking order than one's choice of supreme being).

Hey Sionnach, send us a postcard wontcha?😄
Sly fox sneaks on to cargo ship in Southampton and arrives in New York

E.On or whatever they call themselves are useless.
So useless that I changed supplier, and when they rang me up to ask in forlorn tones why I was abandoning them, I told them, very clearly.

The gerbils have fed me pineapple upside-down cake for my afternoon tea, my evening meal (I'm avoiding fights about dinner/tea/supper) and my mid-evening snack.

I have declined to pre-book a last tempting slice for breakfast, despite a certain amount of pressure from Gillian. She can be quite... intimidating. And she doesn't like Grünhilde, who has taken down all the surplus signs behind the bar (including Gillian's one about Glenda), and is even less keen on Gerlinde.

She'd incite a riot, but is having problems winning the other gerbils over. They don't like being bossed about.

Gillian can come and stay with me again. She finds the puffling burrow quite calming. I feel sorry for her. She just wants to feel seen, but can't work out the right way to do it. She must have a special talent somewhere.

Are you sure? I hear she's a monster for sand eels...

I feel Gillian would be more suited to a job where she could work from home and not have to deal with other members of staff or the general public.

We should make her CEO of the Bluestocking!

British Gas phoned me up to ask why I was leaving them and when I told them (politely ) they told me to F off. I wonder if that puts me, or if it’s part of their script?

I haven’t had pineapple upside down cake this century. Do the gerbils add glacé cherries?

@MyrtleLion I'm so sorry to hear about your experience. It's often hard to follow somebody on the phone when they have a strong accent, and on top of all the other confusion that must have been the last straw. Hugs and sympathies to you.

Fella was sorting out our car insurance once. He'd found a cheaper provider for me and rang to tell the previous company I wouldn't be renewing. They bloke on the line insisted on speaking to me. I took the call and told him it wasn't him, it was me, I'd found someone else. He tried to say something. I told him not to make any harder than it already was, it was over but we'd always have 2015 to 2016. I got a laugh out of it.

I so often miss the laugh reaction on this thread.

I had to inform British Gas Bereavement Services three times that DH had died.

The bills were originally in my name but someone at BG took it upon themselves to add his name without our permission. Then they said they had to speak to him to have his name taken off.

Yes, he was alive at that point but too deaf to cope with the telephone. Yes, I was his POA. I couldn't quite master the art of imitating a Doric male voice...

After he died, each person I spoke to extended their sympathies and then failed to fix the bills. I think the third attempt did it, but there might have been a fourth.

Ditto!

And Fuzzy, you're welcome to Gillian for a bit. But she'd be a terrible CEO, imagine the policies she'd try to push through.

I'm sorry for your experience, @WearyAuldWumman

I dont know what it is about huge corporations, but their customer service is so often completely incompetent - in your case, to the point of being unkind.

ETA service.
Not on the ball this morning.

Thanks @EdithStourton. I must stress that everyone that I spoke to was lovely...but as far as getting the job done was concerned....Eh dear.

Then there was the wifie from Fife Council registrar's who was very dismissive when I phoned because I needed an extra copy of my birth certificate.

I'd warned her that Dad had a peculiar [to British ears and eyes] forename and tried to get her to note the correct spelIing in case a mistake was made.

"It'll be exactly as is in the register..."

"I know, but I'm worried that someone will misread the handwriting. I've seen that happening with other family records."

She was annoyed and possibly offended.

Yup. The birth certificate changed Dad's forename. In the end, I emailed Edinburgh via their genealogy website and got a lovely email from a young man the next day. He'd checked the original entry and it was exactly as I'd suggested.

"Please phone the Fife registrar's office and tell them that they are required to send you a replacement for the one that you already received from them."

I got it.

Either someone in Fife didn't believe their own eyes or they'd taken it upon themselves to "correct" a mistake from 60 yrs previously.

In Dad's language, an "r" can be a "vocalic r", meaning that it also acts as a vowel...

The word for "fart" in his language is prdež - pirrr-dezh.

Dad was not called "Fart", I hasten to add.

She is. She likes to line them up in size order before supper.
I feel she might be a whizz with a spreadsheet.

As a relative newbie, I'm getting confused. Is Gillian a gerbil? Does she eat sand eels?

She is a gerbil, yes.

My friend's gerbil, Nutmeg, loved a bit of tuna, so Gillian pinching Puffling's sand eels is feasible.

@WearyAuldWumman I have had similar issues with family history (aside from some of it being strewn across a wide selection of countries).

I finally tracked down one ancestor in the records with a cry of triumph: forename completely mangled, surname partly mangled, but there was enough other data for me to be sure I had the right person.

the Internet informs me that gerbils are omnivores, and like foods such as insects and scrambled eggs, and can be susceptible to diabetes so it’s a good thing the BS cakes are harmless.
They do have vegetarian relations who need to be more careful about their diet
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fat_sand_rat

Dd had pet degus, which are like giant gerbils. They can't eat any fruit at all, and didn't much like vegetables. Kibble, oats and hay only.

It must be boring being a degu.

Thank you everyone. I had such a bad day yesterday and I have sent a complaint to them by email and via their rubbish complaints form.

Hopefully something will happen but I've agreed with the Walrus that if I haven't heard from them, I will phone disconnections on the 18th and properly threaten to disconnect which should elicit a better response.

I think things are getting on top of me and I need to get a job but can't get one. I really think it would be easier if they said I was crap. Hearing that I'm amazing but not quite right for them is somehow more demoralising.

I finally remembered the third/fourth thing I needed to get and it is toothpaste. Given that my toothpaste has been scrunched up all week as I eke every last bit out, the Walrus has agreed that he should have known that I needed more as it was next to his toothpaste. He has taken full responsibility for my forgetting and will pay some form of penance when I can think of it.

I was bitten by one once - friend was looking after a ‘class pet’ during school hols, it escaped its cage and I caught it. Fortuitously I’d had my tetanus booster the previous day.

Probably the most exciting event of its life.

I think a bunch of degus were found abandoned in some seaside dunes in the NW, probably Lytham. The locals probably still talk about it.

I wonder if people get them mixed up with big lizards, tegus, if they buy them sight unseen on Facebook. If they do it must be a shock when the beastie shows up.