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.

So if the nostrils are the intake... where is....😧

Thank you for the explanation of your username, Android, I like it!

Now if Woley is around - all OK with you, Woley? I think you haven't been around for a wee while but [a] maybe I'm wrong and [b] that's grand as long as you're OK
So Woley - that username? There's a lot of it!😄

Clarifying other obscure usernames would be fun too!

With apologies to the original artist

I was originally a Strumpet. But wanted to be an animal and someone suggested a lion. Which I love. And the Walrus is so-called because of the username he has on the interweb at The Staunch Ally.

I would refer to DSD as The Girl in The Tower, for that is how we refer to her at home (she loves it), but it's very long to type out.

I thought about suggesting reducing The Girl in the Tower (which is lovely and poetic) to its initials for brevity, then rapidly realised what a dreadful idea that was.

I much prefer Paul Kidby's illustrations to Josh Kirby's. Although their names are so alike I think Sir Pterry just turned the page of his Big Directory of Illustrators and considered it done.

TGIIT 🤣🤣🤣

I feel very boring with my username. I change it sometimes but I do like alliteration, sometimes feel frantic and I like the name Francesca.
That's my very boring summary

PS I have tried to get into the Discworld series as a friend recommended the books. I've tried hard but can't get into them 😟
Though I do love dragons

Usual advice is don’t start with the earliest few.

I’ve come across so many dachshunds called Frank or Frankie that I think I’ve subconsciously been thinking you’re one of Colin’s more energetic lady friends😂

Thanks Errol- one is Guards, Guards?

(Not so energetic though, re Colin's friends)

I read The Colour of Magic and thought that Pratchett was not for me. Then, one glorious Christmas day, DH gave me Maskerade.

That was me hooked.

Weird Sisters is the 4th book I think. It's where he really gets into his stride.

I was hooked back in the late 80s when I heard an episode of Equal Rites (Women's Hour's Book of the Week) as I was driving home one spring afternoon. I was so amused and intrigued that I went back into work the next day (I was a public librarian) and put in a request for the book. By the time DH, DD and I had finished it we were unshakeable Pratchett fans and started to build up the family collection. It took DS, then away at university, a bit longer, but only until he was home for the summer holidays and had nothing of his own to read...

DH and I love his children's books too and I've finally completed our collection with the wonderful Maurice and his Educated Rodents. The man was a genius.

I got the Tiffany Aching audiobooks from the library over Christmas while I was wrapping and cooking. They were a lot of fun. I'd missed them first time around when they came out.

I used to get a signed copy of the new Pratchett in hardback every Christmas for my little brother. Terry did so many book signings he used to joke than an unsigned copy was worth more because of the novelty value.

In the '90s, one of my senior pupils was writing her Higher English coursework about Pratchett. She wrote to him, asking where he got his ideas.

God bless the man, he wrote back.

DH and I loved the earlier audiobook versions read by Nigel Planer. They were pre-CD, so big multi-cassette packs which we borrowed from the library for long journeys. I am quite proud of the fact that I read The Wee Free Men to all three grandsons in two separate summer holidays, the two older ones first, then their younger cousin a few years later. They were very tolerant of my appalling attempts at a Scottish accent. For someone who read modern languages at university I have a very poor ear for accents. 😬

I still find it hilarious that Pratchett got off with the Wee Free Men glossary. He was a very naughty man.

"I am pished = I am tired." Aye. Right.

😂😂

I’m sure I’m still missing many of his jokes. I’m on a slow re-read at the moment, and it was only by chance that I twigged why the feuding families were named the Selachii and the Venturi after I noticed the taxonomic name of a non-mammalian antibody structure. Otoh Llamedos was obvious having done Under Milk Wood for O level.

I spent ages trying to work out the Slavic etymology in some names...cos 'sto' means 100 in most Slavic languages.

Then I discovered (somehow) that Sto lat was just 'Ta lots' backwards. There was I thinking that it was '100 Years' or the like. As for Sto Helit...

Agreed. Go straight for the witches.

Can't abide Terry Pratchett.
Give me a shout when the discussion has moved on! 😀

I have never read any Pratchett. I do sometimes think I should give it a go but there are so many good books to be read in the world. Having said that, I'm currently just coming to the end of the first famous 5 book for a bit of nostalgia!

My name on here was from one Christmas when I was decorating the tree. That's it. I have sometimes gone with StarryCat just to have an animal persona on here.

I haven't read a Pratchett for years, but have enjoyed all the ones I have consumed.

One of the DC is fond of referencing Pratchett as though alluding to a great sage or philosopher. 'Of course, Pratchett said that...'

I tried and failed twice with discworld as a teenager. Then when I was an adult I forced myself to read the first 2 books in one weekend and I was hooked. The witches and Sam vimes books were my favourites. The Tiffany aching ones were a bit different and I'm looking forward to my son being old enough for them

Now you mention it - you were a starry cat in an image the other day, I think one of my brain cells may have thought 'ChristmasStars? a cat? StarryCat?' but it didn't go any further than that.
Thank you, now I can tell that brain cell that yes, it was right, they are the same😄