The Bluestocking: To the moon and back gerbil style.

[Boiledbeetle]

Previous thread of chat and general madness below

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5506124-the-bluestocking-womens-pub-spring-is-sprunging-and-mns-name-generator-can-do-one

Women: from an orderly queue at the bar or take a seat and grab a passing gerbil.

Men: turn left at the end of the road, keep walking until you find the Staunch Ally.

Bar gerbil a full fat coke please and a packet of Scampi Fries please.

I will make a point of only eating one portion at a time.

Can't guarantee that they won't be one portion straight after the other though.

I'll get a gerbil to keep topping up your pint. By the time the fifth gerbil has stopped at your table you'll be found dancing on the table.

Of course if you'd like less gerbil table visits Germonleen can bring you the dunbonnay in a larger glass

Mussels are amazing. I love them.

All human life is on MN, including the nitwits.

What's the cocktail that's made with dubonnay? You know...the famous one, that I'm probably misremembering and is probably made with something else. Like domestos. Glenda would still drink it.

A rusty nail?

FEWER!!

I'll be in Pedantry Corner if anybody wants me.

Sorry, force of habit.

😁

A Rusty Nail is made with drambuie, not dubonnay or domestos.

Bar Gerbil! Could I have a rusty nail please? What do you mean 'ask a capybara'?

I took a break from the Bluey so I didn't read this till now. I admit I was very upset because usually it's so friendly here and I was kind-of blindsided, my guard was down and I thought I didn't need to have my guard up in the Bluey, ever.
I hadn't realised how much it would get to me but it did. Silly really, cos it's something somebody I don't know said to me in a virtual pub staffed by rodents..!

I'm sorry I left so quickly, because that means I missed your apology, if I'd stayed a bit longer I'd have felt better sooner.

Thank you for the perfect apology, the 'no ifs or buts' kind, and I'm happy to accept it and move on.

No mussels for me either please, but if we're on the cocktails, then I'll start with a mojito please and thank you. My favourite cocktail bar here has closed down. There are lots of other cocktail bars in town but they're all wanky ones that do things like "eau de gerbil with locally picked random thing you've never heard of mixed with "some other made up thing* and creme fraiche with a soupcon of Drambuie and Hennessy 1883" and they never do 241. I hate having to Google ingredients before ordering a drink.

I have never drunk a cocktail. I see no reason to start now.

I was going out yesterday evening just as the bouillabaise was being served, so I daresay it has all been polished off by Beetle. Ah well. The rhubarb custard creams sound yummy too.

Good to see that you are recovering well Cake and were able to support your friend at her sister's funeral

And welcome Popery. Yesterday evening was fairly quiet in the Bluestocking but I hope you were able to find a cosy corner and recover from the stormy waters of the other threads.

I'm on hospital duty again today. My relative has recovered from the episode last week but is still undergoing tests to derermine the cause and has been called for an MRI scan today, the earlier CT scan having shown nothing of concern. We were surprised, it being a bank holiday, but grateful the wait wasn't longer.

Some of them are very nice. Friends of ours declared a Cocktail Hour during one of the lockdowns, and found that they got rather keen on the idea.

Lockdown spawned some odd things. A dog walking acquaintance of mine drove his dog to a quieter playing field for a run. He was accosted by a pair of coppers. Copper 1 demanded, Why had he driven? Wasn't he aware that this was against the rules?
He said he thought he was 100% compliant, it was somewhere he went to quite often in normal times, and the place closest to home was a heaving mass of adults, overwrought children and cockapoo puppies, so it had seemed reasonable to come here. And he hadn't time to walk the mile and a half, he was WFH.
Copper 2 said he thought that sounded fair enough.
Copper 1 said no, he thought it was in contravention of Section something, Subsection something else.
No, said Copper 2, he'd done a course on Zoom, and there was an exemption under Section whatever
As Copper 1 drew breath, the dogwalker said, Look, I have to get home to work, can I just give Walter his walk while you arg- er, discuss this, I'll be back in half an hour. You can take the car's registration to get hold of me if necessary.

Two minutes later, the coppers had gone.

I was never much of a drinker apart from the odd glass of wine, but I've given that up too these days. I think my taste buds have changed over the years and I no longer enjoy it. I might have a Baileys or Tia Maria after dinner but that's about it. I much prefer a lime and soda.

I did used to enjoy cocktails in my younger days, although I think even I would have drawn the line at anything containing 'eau de gerbil'😁

I don't think it will ever be possible to impose a lockdown like that one again, too many of us are questioning the rationality of a lot of the rules. We're also seeing the long term damage, not just in children who lost normal socialisation and schooling, but also adults. The people who were so rattled that they still haven't emerged from their self-imposed hermit existence. Two of our local funerals this winter were from people who stopped going out (to church, pub, shops, events) during Covid - friends and neighbours could still talk to them at a distance or on the phone, but something had been broken.

Anyhow, my cocktail of tealeaves, boiling water, and full fat milk, cooled for an hour while I faff around online, awaits. Stirred, not shaken.

I had a cocktail two weeks ago at the Palmi (the Palmerston in Edi which dd and I both love excessively) which had Cynar in it. It was delicious, not sweet at all, but it was one of their specials and now I can find neither the name or the other ingredients. It was a late dinner after traveling and I had not eaten since mid morning and by about the second sip I felt quite tipsy.

I'm still completely undecided about lockdowns and I'm a microbiologist/molecular biologist/biochemist, maybe that is why I have no firm stand. I think the way it was implemented was terrible and over the top but we actually really didn't know how the virus would evolve and how long a vaccine would take. I wish the inquiry would have focused on the science, epidemiology and how a state can and should react to a threat like this rather than who was rude to who on WhatsApp. Although, the next epidemic will come with its own specifics and might be very different to this one.

During lockdown we had to shield, due to DH's cancer. He got lots of Govt text messages basically saying "if you go out you'll die". We we not "allowed" to go beyond our garden for 4 months.
We had real difficulties getting food for the first 3 weeks ( remote location). Eventually we got a " Boris box" of basic food once a week. The oranges were covered in green mould and the tiny bottles of shower gel would strip paint. There was nothing for non meat eaters. And I hate Fray Bentos pies.

It had, and has, long term implications for our mental health.

It had, and has, long term implications for our mental health.

For many of us. I'm thinking about it all more now than I have done up to now - it's taken that long.

Wow that's terrible. My MIL was all alone for ages and we had to battle with Tesco to let us send her deliveries because she was miles from us and had nobody to get shopping for her.

More cheerful thought, I'm going to make a loaf of porridge bread, and have some of it with a great big breakfast on Sunday when I get back from the dawn mass (in town, not in our usual country graveyard, because two of the usual priests are on the sick list).

I think the shocking thing was how unprepared we (and elsewhere too) were. I mean, it's not like pandemics being unheard of before Covid.
There are other areas where we are completely unprepared. We currently produce less than 5% of the insulin required in the country. If we get cut of from global supply for whatever reason that will be disastrous for people with diabetes. I haven't dared look into our thyroxin production, it's probably not any better.

Cops in our town were rational during Covid - I was never asked why I was driving to a town supermarket well beyond the 5k limit, there was no restriction on what I could buy, I'm sure if I'd gone out with the dog for a walk in the hills no-one would have stopped us. I'm so sad reading about what @FuzzyPuffling and family were put through.

But we took it so seriously - in theory people over 70 weren't meant to go out at all; I remember being quite shocked at a friend in Limerick saying very firmly that she was going to continue her long daily walks round the city because if she didn't her osteoporosis would kill her. She was in the right.

I remember queueing up outside the local supermarket with 100s of other people, we were all socially distanced but the wind was blowing right down the line. I thought this is an airborne virus, this is ridiculous. But, tbf, I don't know how they could have done it differently.

Fella's mum started going a bit strange then and a couple of years later was diagnosed with Alzheimer's. She's still going through hundreds of sponge dish cleaners and gallons of hand-wash. It definitely traumatised her, she was convinced Covid was going to kill fella's dad. The Alzheimer's seems to have eased that for her but she's still buying all these sponges. I honestly don't know what she does with them all.

There's a pair of crows on the little birch tree outside my living room window yanking away at it and pulling off twigs. There's probably a fair number of broken twigs on the ground around it that they could just pick up. Especially after yesterday's weather. Crows are intelligent birds. There must be a reason why they put the work in to get fresh twigs. Perhaps because they'll be flexible?

I would like to offer a sincere apology to the traditionalist and devout Christians at the Bluey.

I tried to bake Hot Cross Buns yesterday as is only right. I used Mary Berry's recipe which stipulates the dough needs to have two proves then form into buns and prove again. This takes ages.

Unfortunately the kitchen was too cold for the dough to rise properly before dinner time.

So I am baking them now, after a slower, cooler rise. I appreciate Easter Saturday is NOT the correct day for these spiced delights, but I did try.

If I am culturally appropriating baked goods, I do try and do it properly (my Purim cookies are pretty awesome) . Sorry, Bluestockings!

Cake, have you seen the Twitter account of Shit Nests By Pigeons?

We have nests of crows, jackdaws, magpies, wrens, blue tits and pigeons. All the others are marvels, the pigeons manage about 6 sticks and declare it a job done.