The Bluestocking Women's Pub, in which we wait excitedly for the next instalment of Gosie's adventures. Gosie, Glass and the Gerbils' Dilemma.

[AsWithGlad]

Previous thread
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5559589-the-bluestocking-womens-pub-in-which-gosie-returns-to-the-trail?page=1

Welcome to The Bluestocking, the best (perhaps only) online women's pub. Nothing in the food or drink can harm you, everything is served by a very enthusiastic crew of gerbils, and any curious menfolk are welcome at the Staunch Ally down the road.

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Wow - have to admit we were suckered into buying for GPs after G-Force hit the cinemas and HAD to have the longhaired, cute n cuddly variety, but even I can’t fathom the need for a hotel n groomer!

We couldn’t keep ours sadly as I nearly died every time I cleaned them out - huge allergic reaction and asthma attacks resulting in paramedics, oxygen tanks and steroid inhalers and hospitalisation once before I realised it was the weekly hutch clean precipitating it. Kids were well over the novelty by then and I have an absolutely wonderful friend who rehomed them for me in her garden. I may have been secretly relieved, if I am honest, because I’d risk death to keep Cooper and Murphy.

@AnonyMumAuDHD Cooper and Murphy - Interstellar?

My goodness I think your last comment nails it.

Catching up - not sure what happened to yesterday PM, but here I am now anyway!
Before even reading the latest Gosie, I want to send love and support to AnonyMumAuDHD. As is often the case with me, nothing very useful to say, there are so many other Stockingers and MNers in general with much more experience and wisdom to share. But the love and support is heartfelt💙

That's hilarious and very true.

I have a friend who is probably 'Tom'. He gardens for very well-to-do people: trims their yew trees, helps to select the roses, maintains their fabulous compost heaps and so on. Go to an Open Garden where he works and it's all topiary and 8 foot deep herbaceous borders and immaculate greenhouses. Never mind the perfect lawn and not a dead leaf in sight.

I must ask him if any of 'his' gardens has ever appeared in a lifestyle, Homes and Gardens type of mag, and if so, did he feature.

A dear friend of mine, who died fairly recently, had a doctorate and lectured all over the country on her specialist subject, and wrote papers and books about it, burned out and became a gardener. She was much happier after that.

Betting? i see those on the sports channels DH watches all the time. I think they should be bloody banned as even kids watch those, and the very presence on those channels subconsciously normalises betting to young people.

One day it will be like banning smoking ads in Formula 1. Can't wait.

Have you not seen Grooming and Gajra's salon? The gerbils love it. I think Gimbal, Griffin and Graphic may need it by the end of the week...

"A clean gerbil is a happy gerbil"

So true.

In that case, if we are the gerbils’ home for Rest, Recuperation and Retirement, then it shows their warm, caring and giving nature that they want to wait on us. It pleases them. The unlimited seeds are just a bonus.

We are not imposing on them, which is a reassuring way to think about it.

Agree. DD lives in the Vale of York between Leeds and York and it's very flat and arable, with huge skies and deep ditches along the roads to help with flooding

I particularly like the “Bath and Blow Dry” option in the salon.

Thanks so much for this, Myrtle. A beautiful bit of writing and SO funny. 😂

Just noticed you mentioned bromide in the coffee ... went down small rabbit-hole and discovered that it's a myth that bromide reduces sex drive/makes men impotent, but it has been used, as a happy accident, to control epileptic seizures.

It wouldn't be much good as a bumping-off chemical, though

OMG. I thought I'd drop in & see what the chat was about today, & somehow I landed on page 7 & it's absolute carnage.

I mean, I wanted a cosy escape from the State of the Country 😱 over on X - a quiet pub/tea room atmos, nice coffee, virtual (& therefore virtuous) chocolatey cream cakes, a few animals about the place, some old friends - only to find those old friends swapping horror stories & medical stuff. I have a very visual imagination & am now running down the corridor away from page 7, towards page 29, hoping things are back to normal there. Or rather, here. Gerbils on a trapeze, capybaras being fired out of a cannon, that sort of thing.

Edited because I couldn't spell chocolate. I never can. I guess I'm always too busy ripping the wrapper off to notice the spelling.

Oh, I LOVE the gerbil salon! That's what I've needed. Lovely artwork, Myrts.

Love the article on posh gardening ladies, too. I follow one on X & every post elicits two reactions from me: admiration of the photograph, plus a slightly curled lip & a 🙄.

If it helps, I've just done my toenails - I've come over all girly! Obviously the picture is not me...

Someone commented that it would be easier to believe in a divine plan if slugs ate bindweed.

Can I ask our resident scientists, gardeners & wildlife enthusiasts: does anything eat slugs? So often I've come across a reference in a book to 'the gardener's friend' on the grounds that a badger, say, or perhaps a slow worm, eats up all your slugs for you, so be nice to them. Having had numerous badgers & slow worms in my garden, I've never seen a single one of them touch a slug. And neither does anything else, except perhaps my DH's size 11 boot.

I had a brain-damaged tortie cat who used to eat odd things like a cockchafer beetle (sorry, Beloved BB) & immediately regret it. But I think even she drew the line at slugs.

Ooooooooooooooooooooooooooh!

😍

Hedgehogs do, but only if there's nothing better.

I have seen blackbirds eat very small slugs with evident distaste and frantic beak wiping. There’s some evidence that leopard slugs eat smaller slugs but the jury seems to be out. Our hedgehogs are currently eating tinned dog food and I don’t really want to have to tell them that from now on it’s Slugs à la Mode or nothing.

Trigger warning for anyone who really doesn't like slugs...

Closest I can come to gerbil plushies… ready knitted I assume but there’s got to be a better knitting pattern out there, though, surely?