Bluestocking Women’s Pub - it’s Maytime!

[ErrolTheDragon]

Welcome to any women who want the company of women!

Thats it really….ok so this place is staffed by gerbils with the occasional quokka or capybara but it functions like a friendly pub where you don’t have to know what’s going on all the time.
The drinks don’t intoxicate and the food is delicious yet healthy so please do come in.

Well, depending on what exactly the ‘spirit’ is - in the U.K. the alcohols available from the chemists are emphatically not drinkable! The point of students consuming ‘spectroscopic ethanol’ (spec eth) is that it’s the type of lab alcohol which has the least other organic compounds in it. ‘absolute ethanol’, for instance, is a type which shouldn’t contain any water but will have other organics, sometimes deliberately denatured and should therefore not be consumed.

I was just assuming people wouldn't actually buy denatured ethanol for drinking😮
Denatured ethanol is so much cheaper because you don't have to pay alcohol duty on it. You can get an alcohol license for non-denatured ethanol (we have one for 50 L/year) which exempts you from paying alcohol duty on it but I wouldn't go through the process again now having been through it once. I rather pay the money than doing that again.

you’d hope, but retail chemists shops (I.e. pharmacies) simply don’t sell alcohol pure enough to drink in the UK and I don’t know why they would anywhere else.

Thankfully WearyOldWoman survived her encounter with Russian booze.

I prefer this to the "Your parents are dreadful selfish boomers. They have clearly retired on a gold plated pension, have a house worth zillions, and are mean, grabby and dont know how good they have it".

So very, very untrue for so many people on pensions, especially women.

Chemist walks into a bar and says
'I'll have an ethanol, please'
Barman says
' Spectroscopic, or does Sir have plans for the future?'

ok, ok, I won't give up the day job

When I was in Poland about 20 years ago the supermarket (it might even have been Tesco) in the shopping centre next to our hotel in Wroclaw had astoundingly high-alcohol spirits, some in rather small bottles. An English-speaking fellow shopper assured us it was for preserving fruit, not for drinking neat.

Rosy gave us a scare at tea time yesterday, gagging, and shaking and nodding her head, and frothing at the mouth, and squeaking (not her usual yell) and appearing unable either to eat or throw up. It went on for quite a while and although she was happy to be touched and cuddled (and the froth was white not pink) I was quite alarmed.

Then I remembered I had picked a few stalks of barley I spotted growing on the roadside and put them in the living room mid-afternoon. Sure enough, one of the heads has been thoroughly chomped. That would do it. And did.

I even phoned the vet, mainly in the hope he'd have some magic potion, but he said she'd probably be fine in the morning. And she is. Actually, the uneaten tea, and her supper, disappeared overnight, and I don't think Oscar ate it.

Cats are idiots.

Sometimes.

Unlike humans.

I'm so glad Rosy is all right this morning, Deano, that must have been a very scary experience and a worrying night.
I didn't know cats and barley don't go well together...neither do cats, obviously!

I didn't know, but when I was trying to work out what had happened I remembered her enthusiasm for chewing my flower arrangements and put two and two together. I'm quite careful about toxic stuff, it had not occurred to me to worry about harsh and scratchy stuff.

Idk about the ‘unlike humans’. When I was a child, barley sugar sweets were quite common so I figured that barley must be nice and sweet and chewed some. I don’t think I actually swallowed but it was memorably unpleasant.😂

Especially given that animals - not sure about cats but dogs for sure - will actively seek out and eat goose grass.

Afternoon, all!

Deano, so glad your cat seems to be doing okay! I had a cat who would eat (or try to) anything, so had to be vigilant. I wish they could tell us what's wrong!

The past few days have been busy, busy - lots of house hunting and other stuff to deal with, but I have been following along as best I can.

One thing that has always irritated me, is that I can't buy isopropyl alcohol here in a pharmacy. It was always my go-to for things like wound or earring sterilization, but it's illegal to sell (or illegal to buy?) for the average consumer in the UK so have to make do with surgical spirits, which is NOT the same thing! Can't stand the smell of it, and the residue it leaves behind, but what can you do?

Haven't found a house yet (getting frustrated), but I'm intrigued to find out that Gosie's story now includes tractors! Yesterday in the Big City, I actually saw a bright green John Deere (with forklift in front, and a trailer in back with a mini-crane), driving down a fairly busy, cross-town, residential street.. Splendid!

We have been worrying about one of our dogs, who was only eating half of her meals - she is a Labrador, and they never lose their appetites unless they are really ill. But dh has got to the bottom of the problem - apparently the other dog was wolfing down her food then barging the Lab out of the way and finishing her meal too - and she had got so used to it that she was just eating half, and leaving the rest for her bully to eat!

We are feeding them separately for the moment, but poor Elsie is having to be encouraged to finish her own food, because she doesn’t think she is allowed any more. And Bella is looking rather portly because she has been eating too much every day - and she was supposed to be on a diet anyway. She is sulking because she is only getting her own food now.

My relatives in former Yugoslavia make their own rakija, but they know what they're doing.

I didn't risk drink any more after that first glass.

I don't know whether it's still the case, but in Tito's time, the sljivovica on sale was - I was told - often actually made by villagers who then sold it on to the distributors.

I had a a cousin who is a technical teacher. He supplements his income by making various types of rakija for the local pubs. There's a family recipe - he was taught by his grandfather, my grandfather's brother. However, he tweaked it by filtering it to remove the traditional brown colour, since people now prefer clear spirits.

I still have a couple of bottles stashed away here.

In Bavaria (at least in Lower Frankonia) distilling rights (Brennrecht) pass from parent to child (used to be from father to son in reality, but now there are more women involved). My cousin Hans inherited his still and the right to distill his own and other people's spirits from his father. I think the idea behind it is that the expertise is passed on as well. My father used to ferment our surplus cherries and apples (separately) in big wooden barrels and then Hans would turn them into Schnapps. You can aquire Brennrecht but it's not easy.

I have a job interview!

Online a week tomorrow.

Good luck, Myrtle the cheerbils are rehearsing even as we speak

Good luck, Myrtle!

You’ll have all of us thinking of you, to supplement the cheerbils’ efforts. ❤️

Good luck Myrtle!

Excellent!

Good luck @MyrtleLion

Oh, good luck, Myrtle!
Great news!