The Bluestocking Pub: Infinite Cocktails, Questionable Logistics

[MyrtleLion]

Welcome to the nth iteration of the Bluestocking women’s pub, where gerbils are staff, the drinks are free, and alcohol has no effect except to get you to the sweet spot just before the drink you really shouldn’t have had.

Men can go to the Staunch Ally next door.

It’s OK if you don’t understand. Just assume everything is normal.

Previous thread is here:

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5523989-bluestocking-womens-pub-its-maytime

The family gathering sounds nice, Fuzzy, especially if your DD conducts the prayer part of it - such a lovely though sad last gesture of love.

If your ashes are scattered in the sea, maybe the family will look up to see one lone puffin circling slowly, dipping its wings in salute, and then flying away home.

I've no idea what will happen after I shuffle off the mortaler - no family, friends will probably also have passed on, old neighbours maybe? if there are any left.
I don't give it much thought, it'll sort itself out without any input from me

That's pretty much how I feel Fuzzy. I don't have any particular affinity for organised religion and see it as somehow apart from faith, which is a very personal thing to me.

So, I have decided to have a simple cremation, with my ashes scattered in nature. No wake, but some money left for my family to have a get-together on me later.

This poem by Pam Ayres (not one of her funny ones) says it for me, although I've opted for cremation rather than burial.

Woodland Burial

Don’t lay me in some gloomy churchyard shaded by a wall,
Where the dust of ancient bones has spread a dryness over all,
Lay me in some leafy loam where, sheltered from the cold,
Little seeds investigate and tender leaves unfold.
There kindly and affectionately, plant a native tree,
To grow resplendent before God and hold some part of me.
The roots will not disturb me as they wend their peaceful way,
To build the fine and bountiful, from closure and decay.
To seek their small requirements so that when their work is done,
I’ll be tall and standing strongly in the beauty of the sun.

I used to be a Humanist celebrant and did weddings, namings and funerals. As long as there was no God mentioned, you could have anything. I always included a spare for silent reflection so people could pray.

My last funeral but one was my brother in February 2024. I'm older now than he was, by two months.

We had the Muppets singing Time in a Bottle. It was lovely. This version has chickens doing something else at the end, so you can have a smile.

^^

Damson, that poem is so beautiful, thank you. I'd never read it before.
Organized religion is also not important to me (in fact, anathema to me, almost, having escaped from a very strict Protestant community, once I grew up and could make up my own mind about things - not Amish!), but faith is important to me.

Having now been to many, many funerals, and experienced the deaths of nearly everyone in my immediate family, with varying degrees of funeral, from celebration to deep mourning, I am still unsure about myself.

I believe that funerals are more important for the living than the dead, but I can't imagine there would be more than five people at mine (especially if I die in the UK), so have made instructions for simple cremation, then my remaining relatives can do what they like with my ashes.

I love that! I do miss the muppets, but it was never quite the same after Jim Henson died.

Glad I found you all again - these threads move so quickly that I find myself lost! and work has been so unrelentingly shite that I needed a couple of quiet weeks.

Aff to read the rest of the thread.

Hello again WW23!

Sorry to hear about work and hope it's calmed down now.

And in terms of funeral poems, there are two I like -

Gone from my sight
By ? (It seems to be attributed to at least 3 authors)

'I am standing upon the seashore. A ship, at my side,
spreads her white sails to the moving breeze and starts
for the blue ocean. She is an object of beauty and strength.
I stand and watch her until, at length, she hangs like a speck
of white cloud just where the sea and sky come to mingle with each other.

Then, someone at my side says, "There, she is gone."

Gone where?

Gone from my sight. That is all. She is just as large in mast,
hull and spar as she was when she left my side.
And, she is just as able to bear her load of living freight to her destined port.

Her diminished size is in me -- not in her.

And, just at the moment when someone says, "There, she is gone,"
there are other eyes watching her coming, and other voices
ready to take up the glad shout, "Here she comes!"

And that is dying...'

And the other, which I first read in the Anne of Green Gables series -

Crossing the Bar
By Alfred, Lord Tennyson

'Sunset and evening star,
And one clear call for me!
And may there be no moaning of the bar,
When I put out to sea.

But such a tide as moving seems asleep,
Too full for sound and foam,
When that which drew from out the boundless deep
Turns again home.

Twilight and evening bell,
And after that the dark!
And may there be no sadness of farewell,
When I embark;

For tho' from out our bourne of Time and Place
The flood may bear me far,
I hope to see my Pilot face to face
When I have crost the bar.'

Thise are both beautiful poems.

This is my favourite.

I’ve learned some things
by Ataol Behramoglu

I’ve learned some things from having lived:
If you’re alive, experience one thing with all your power
Your beloved should be worn out from being kissed
And you should drop exhausted from the smelling of a flower

A person can gaze at the sky for hours
Can gaze for hours at a bird, a child, the sea
To live on the earth is to become part of it
To strike down roots that won’t pull free

If you cling to anything, tightly hold a friend
Fight for something with every muscle, whole body, all your passion
And if you lay yourself for a time on the warm beach
Let yourself rest like a grain of sand, a leaf, a stone

To your utmost, listen to every beautiful song
As though filling all the self with sound and melody
One should plunge head-first into life
As one dives from a cliff into the emerald sea

Distant lands should draw you, people you don’t know
To read every book, know other’s lives, you should be burning
You shouldn’t exchange for anything the pleasure of a glass of water
No matter how much the joy, your life should be filled with yearning

You should know sorrow, honourably, with all your being
Because the pains, like joys, make a person grow
Your blood should mingle in the great circulation of life
And in your veins life’s endless fresh blood should flow

If you’re alive, experience largely,
Merge with rivers, mountains, cosmos
For what we call living is just a short passing of time
And life is a gift to those who love us

I’ve learned some things from having lived:
If you’re alive, experience largely, merge with rivers, heavens, cosmos
For what we call living is a gift given to life
And life is a gift bestowed upon us

I've always loved Crossing the Bar WW23. I found it in an anthology when I was in my twenties, but didn't immediately realise what it was about🙄

I also loved Anne of Green Gables.

Hello@Waitwhat23, lovely to meet you, I chose both of those for my father’s funeral, very fitting for a man who loved sailing.

Continuing the funeral topic I have been thinking about this lately having had a couple of very untimely deaths of friends this year.
I am leaning towards the Detectorists’ theme song.
Well it’s a hot Saturday early evening so bar gerbils would you please be kind enough to mix me a Dirty Dogma? But hold the anchovies.

I have brought strawberries from the garden so please help yourselves.

That must have been tough, Myrtle. Not an easy experience at all.

DM died relatively young and that has really focused my mind these past few years. I've begun to think that in some ways I've never really processed her death. At the time I had the options of falling apart, or picking myself up, mourning her, toughening up and carrying on into my adult life. I went for the latter. In retrospect, even though I still miss her, I moved on pretty quickly. There wasn't much of a choice.

As for funerals, I've moved about a fair bit but live in the district where I did most of my growing up. Big funerals are not unusual here, and it's not thought odd to go to support the living even if you didn't know the deceased (so e.g. you might go to the funeral of a friend's parent you'd never met). Funerals of bods like local farmers, long-standing parish/ district councillors, people active in the community, retired teachers etc are very well attended. A retired pub landlady died recently and the pub was packed for the wake.

If I survive DH, the DC will arrange it. I will leave instructions. I've been to enough funerals to have opinions.

I've finally got round to downloading the Merlin app! I'm disappointed it doesn't recognise a Spitfire, given the Merlin engine, but nobody is perfect.

I went to a sailor's funeral a few years ago. The choir master had suggested Never Weatherbeaten Sail, and it was perfect.

Oh, I really need to do that, thanks for the reminder! I heard some really unusual sounds coming from the direction of a Dunnock yesterday, and I'm not entirely sure that it wasn't a new bird for my garden, and not the Dunnock at all.

I've been an on-my-walks and in-the-garden birder for decades, and this was a completely new call, so need to see if I can id it! (hopefully not just a Dunnock being strangled by a cat)

There was a juvenile something being loudly monotonous in the garden yesterday and I was thrilled when Merlin told me it was a greenfinch. Twenty years ago they were everywhere but their numbers really dipped after the Trichomonas plague and it's great to have them breeding in the garden. But I'll stick to my strategy of having a 'messy' garden over the winter, full of edible wild things, and no bird table.

It’s brilliant Magpie but definitely imperfect. It adds a new dimension to every walk for me, I had no idea how many whitethroats, linnets and warblers we have here. As for yellowhammers you can’t throw a stone without hitting a yellowhammer. I don’t do that by the way.

If you leave it listening for a while at an open window early in the morning you might be surprised at what it picks up.

And you! And yes, very fitting for someone who loves sailing. I'm not a sailor but I can still feel the powerful draw of the sea and boats, as expressed in the poems.

The grey wagtail was one I have seen around, but wouldn't recognise from the song. Four different types of corvid, which was no surprise (crow, rook, magpie and jackdaw - I already knew there was a jackdaw and a magpie having an argument on the road!).

The magpies 'round 'ere like to play a game of "who can get closest to the cat and nip her tail without getting eaten" with next door's kitty. The magpies win every time. Poor kitty.

I'm currently on a latte with a generous glug of amaretto and some double cream on top. I may or may not have uttered a loud and enthusiastic 'aahh!' with some lip smacking in appreciation after my first sip.

I may have to ask the Guinea Pig snack servers to bring out some little bowls of Japanese rice crackers and honey roast peanuts...

Thank you! And no. It's likely to be hard for a few more weeks at least.

But it is what it is.

Gemini keeps putting superfluous men in the background of these pictures.

Anyway, one Dirty Dogma, hold the anchovies. It appears to be negatively priced!