The Bluestocking, a unique location for daughters and sisters of earth, frost, feathers, fur, scales and spines

[AsWithGlad]

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, who enjoy doing this, and any curious menfolk are welcome at the Staunch Ally down the road.

Previous thread: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/feminism/5568996-the-bluestocking-pub-where-we-continue-to-read-about-gerbils-nobly-and-bravely-working-undercover-in-the-fen?page=1

We have three nights near Conwy, and then we’re heading towards Stratford on our way back to Hertfordshire. We’re hoping to take in Conwy Castle, Caernarfon Castle and the Blaenau Ffestiniog railway (DH likes trains!)

@AngleofRepose the TV news has been focused on 9/11 for a few days now so I think people over here, at least those old enough to be aware at the time, are certainly remembering. I was still in England then, but my DD was in the US that summer, travelling around with a friend after working as a camp counsellor for the summer. They were going to Disney in Florida that day. I was at work and I was having nightmares because it looked as if iconic American places were being attacked. In the end Disney closed the park and gave everyone a voucher for another free entry, but DD and her friend were miffed because that was the only day they could be there.

" and then the room went from sitting to moving without any standing up in between"

I wish I could do that, it's the standing up that's the killer!

One of the best episodes yet, Myrtle, full of quotable gems, including Gantry explaining a full volume how quiet she would be. I used to know a small child like that, he is now 45 and can still be heard long before he enters a room!

Hope your journey home goes well, Kitty. The airports seem to be more or less back to normal.

And Pasta, how lovely that you're able to go right into the sea with your wheelchair and enjoy the full holiday experience.

I don't have any pyracantha (and will not be getting any), but Mahonia is my bête noire in the garden!

Point 6? What is this point 6?
Decimalising hands is just wrong.
4 inches to a hand, so he's a whisker over 19:2.

I always take a little time to remember on the day. I hope it won't be entirely forgotten by subsequent generations because I don't think it's exaggerating to say that the day changed the US profoundly, perhaps completely. We were an open/confident (read also: oblivious/arrogant) people before 9/11. We're different now, and I'll go so far as to say that I don't think a Trump presidency would have been possible before that day. But, social media has also played a huge part.

I just happened to be Back Home that week, and had friends caught up in it in Manhattan, as well as an old friend who worked at the Pentagon, so it was very scary for a few days, not knowing where everyone was.

Sometimes, very occasionally, it feels like it happened yesterday.

Thanks Damson. Just cleared Arrivals & here’s my final holiday pic.

Kitty, I feel as though I've been on holiday, too, in a way 😊thank you for all the lovely pictures! Glad your flight was ok 💛

I'm really out of the habit of wearing my steels all day! Which of the gerbils is good at foot rubs? Send them over with the hot chocolate bowser please.

Gizmo is just recharging the hot chocolate bowser for you Magpie.

Germoleen is quite good at foot rubs and massages.

Just don't let them send Gangrene.....

Steels?

I'm imagining something like horseshoes or chopines with metal elements or goth boots.

We had a friend who was working at the Pentagon at the time. He was okay.

A friend of mine, whose DH had worked in the Towers, knew a lot of people who were caught up in it. She was very, very shaken up by it all - I spoke to her on the phone at the time, and she had no idea what had happened to her DH's former colleagues. Luckily they got out, but she didn't know that for several days.

I can remember watching it on television after DH rang me from work to tell me what was going on. The whole scene was appalling anyway, and then when the first tower came down, it went from horror to apocalypse.

The world - certainly the western world - changed that day, not just America. The general feeling that civilisation was an upward trajectory towards a decent life for everyone took the hell of knock as we realised that there were people out there who hated other people so much that they were prepared to kill 100s of civilians out of the blue, and who despised their own lives so much, compared to whatever promised paradise they were expecting, that they were prepared to die in blazing fireballs. It felt as if no sooner had we managed to shunt the Soviet Union, with its millions of dead, off the stage of history, than something new arrived for us to worry about, and fear.

I'm ashamed of myself, I just copied and pasted it😞
Could it not be 19 hands and six inches .... oh wait, if it was 19 hands + 6 inches it would be 20.2 hands, wouldn't it?

I got it wrong but I think I worked it out - did I get it right in the end, Edith?

Sorry. Steel toe cap boots. Your options would be more fun!

Wonderful Gosie episode, thank you Myrtle!

I loved the economy of:
“What have I missed?”
“Sweden,” said Girdle.
“1951,” said Gimbal.
“Paris,” said Magpie, from her peanuts.

and that Gordian is good with knots😂

Hello!

I'm not dead, just been dealing with some health issues and other priorities.

I like Adventures and Naps. If you don't know her, she's a Canadian YouTuber living in the UK who reacts to UK stuff. I especially enjoy her booze episodes as she gets progressively more wasted while trying traditional British drinks.

And, since I couldn't link it, here is what amused me

Yes, Edith, this exactly. I look back on it now as naïve optimism, but we really had no idea that anyone could do such a thing. I was also in London, working and on the Tube, on the day before 7/7, and it brought it all back for a while.

There was obviously no social media in 2001, and no smartphones. I'm not sure I even had an email address, outside of work, which we were not allowed to use for personal emails. And all the cell service in NYC was blocked off for emergency services, so I couldn't call anyone there. Everyone I knew who was working in the city that day ended up somewhere else entirely, couldn't even get home. So even their families didn't know where they were. It was a bad week.

My enduring memory from that week, from the news, is of the shots of doctors and nurses lined up at every hospital, waiting for the injured, who never arrived, because there were almost no survivors.

Hmmm... bar gerbils, large hot chocolate with extra cream please! It's an odd day today.

Hey there @SionnachRuadh !! 😃

Angle, I think my enduring memory (aside from the repeated footage) is standing in our living room on the phone to my friend, and the shock and bewilderment in her voice. I had a sense that I was on the fringe of a huge catastrophe, and she was further into it, and it just went on going to the vortex at the core.

Marie, you are correct, and you are forgiven.

Magpie, I'd quite like a job with steel toe-capped boots, but I bet they're a bit heavy on the feet after 6 weeks in sandals.

And Sionnach, welcome back! I wondered where you'd got to a while ago. I hope the health issues have been resolved.

I watched it happen on my computer screen at work. I had a BBC alert saying that a plane had crashed into the WTC and I imagined it was a small private plane. My colleague then turned his screen so I could see, and we watched the second plane hit the tower live on BBC 24 News.

I couldn't believe that anyone would deliberately fly planes with people into a building, so I kept thinking they must have stolen planes from the airport hangars.

My colleagues spent the rest of the afternoon watching it all. I heard the gasp as the first tower collapsed and turned and saw the end of it and then saw the second tower fall. But aside from that I just kept working.

When I got home it was all there was on TV and as my then boyfriend arrived I burst into tears and sobbed. My father had died suddenly aged 60 in mid-August but wasn't found for a week, and we'd held his burial on the 31 August. I was just utterly bereaved and devastated.

I couldn't believe that anyone would deliberately make families feel the utter pain that I was in because my dad had died.

I've been laughing myself daft at this! What a delight she is. The clarified milk punch had me in stitches.

By seriously, why not just buy a nutmeg? They aren't difficult!

Oh, Myrtle, what a terrible time for you! And to have all that news on top 😔 It really makes you remember where you were and what you were doing, doesn't it?

I am feeling stupidly really down today, not sure why. I've just been thinking about it all day, in the back of my mind, for some strange reason. Must do something else this evening...

This is hilarious! I think the milk punch would make me want to vomit as well. I'm mostly just enjoying watching her get slowly more and more tanked the longer the video goes on 😆