Welcome to the Bluestocking! It is celebration time for everyone!

[MyrtleLion]

Welcome to The Bluestocking, the best (perhaps only) online women’s pub. The sign on the door says CELEBRATION, in glitter, and the gerbils have been told they may use as much glitter as they like.

The champagne is flowing, and it is the good kind. Every bubble is perfectly fizzy, every glass is bottomless, and nobody wakes up with a headache or a vague memory of singing to a coat rack. You may toast as many times as you wish and remain entirely clear-headed, sharp-witted and ready to explain your point again, louder, with hand gestures.

The gerbil crew has gone all out. There are bunting-laden tunnels, a tiny brass band that knows many tunes and play them with total conviction, and a head gerbil in a waistcoat who will announce your achievement to the whole room if you hand over a sunflower seed. Several gerbils have been practising a synchronised pouring routine. Two of them have already collided with the canapés, and the canapés are fine.

Whatever you are celebrating, a win, a finish, a survived meeting, a Tuesday, pull up a stool and raise a glass. The corks are popping, the confetti is mostly staying in the building, and everyone here is on your side.

Any curious menfolk are welcome at the Staunch Ally down the road, where they are invited to cheer from a respectful distance.

Cheers, everyone. The next round is on the gerbils.

Previous thread is here:

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5582462-the-bluestocking-where-we-look-forward-to-good-things-happening-both-soon-and-later

Yeah, it's a fair cop!

I passed a very nice Fendt on the way to work this morning, and two large Masseys in differing states of repair. One looked like it had been driven straight into a wall!

Thank you for rescuing me. And for the emergency Tunnock's you brought with you. Kitty wearing it like a St Bernard's barrel collar was especially thoughtful.

I’m not usually a visitor to the Bluestocking although I have been curious about it. As a newcomer, I’m worried it might be a bit of a cult and some of you are going to try to convince me that you actually ARE Beetles or Kitty Emperesses rather than merely identify as them. Whereas I am actually the overlord of the Daleks. I am wondering if @Seethlaw ever pops into the pub as I have missed her across the boards recently. Maybe she frequents the Lounge Bar whereas I am strictly Public Bar only, it’s cheaper

Rather chilly this morning. I'll get the capybaras to chop up some wood for the fires. In the meantime it may be time to wake Balrog, she'll be needed if this weather keeps up.

Gubbins, sweet pup... Give me the triangle. Please. No, I don't want you to play your three hour celebratory solo written for Myrtle. Why don't you go and get me a cup of tea and some cornflakes then I'll give you Myrtle's room number and you can go and show her your triangle skills.

Morning! I can't speak for the Empress, but if I tell the truth about my beetleness will you promise not to try and exterminate me?

As for the cult aspect, avoid Galaxy and Grace, those two gerbils are rather militant gerbils, who will try to persuade you to let hamsters join the gerbils workers union. Once cornered by them it will be hours before you manage to extricate yourself.

ETA everything is free here, but grab a handful of gerbil notes off the counter, you'll need them if you wish to pay for a hug, you'll spot the hug gerbils, they wear badges.

Morning all, bore da, maidin maith everyone.
It's so lovely to be starting a new chapter in a new Bluestocking with the placed covered in glitter and wreathed in smiles, thanks to Myrtle's great job news!

Welcome Davros, we are honoured to have the Overlord of the Daleks here. I think. You're different when you're off duty, righti?😬

I was going to go into my usual 'welcome to the Bluey all the food and drink is delicious and devoid of any tricky stuff like calories, gluten' etc, but I thought I'd google 'what do Daleks eat?' first-

Daleks do not eat in the normal sense; they are nourished through an internal feeding tube that extracts protein from the organic remains of their victims.

Like I said, you are off duty, aren't you???😱

That said, this being the Bluestocking, we probably have 'organic remains of victims' which are as magic as our swimming-pool-sized G&Ts which don't make you fail a breathalyser. Maybe in Dalek language 'organic remains of a victim' means 'a foil-wrapped tea-cake'....😃

We have a number of cats in the Bluey, and they wouldn't dream of hunting and eating our dear gerbil friends, so hopefully in a similar way you'll leave our organic remains uneaten inside us? I'm sending over a bar gerbil with something to distract you...

You mentioned Seethlaw, Davros - you're right, she hasn't been around on any of the usual threads, her posts were always interesting, hope she's doing OK and maybe she pops into the Bluey under a different name, who knows?!

Maybe you'll be content to feast on the organic remains of these creatures,
Davros?

credit where credit is due for the Tunnocks animals:
Tunnocks Zoo - I love the design of the classic foil tunnocks tea cake wrapper. We have them a lot at work so I decided to start a wee origami zoo.

Thank you for the welcomes. I am off duty but will happily feast on those Tunnock’s foil creatures, I’m a right larf off duty and manage to consume alcohol instead of organic innerds. Am I right in thinking the gerbils are an evolution from the famous ferrets (and their reversers) or are they totally unrelated?
Mwah 💋 mwah 💋 to all

I'm real, but classed as 'vulnerable' rather than 'endangered' which came as a great relief.
🐼

Welcome on board.

They used to be poor aggrieved Foulcault-addled grievance gerbils, with some sort of activist connections, but they were shown a different way and are now happy members of society.

cult, us?

The gerbils pre-date the reversing ferrets.
I've explained the origins of the gerbils a few times in the past, and the last time I saved it, so here it is:
Ages ago, like 2024, somebody at Aston Uni was illegally scraping data from the MN site for proof that we are all transphobes, or something, and the the phrase 'Foucault-addled grievance gerbils' cropped up.
The regulars at the Bluestocking thought it was very funny indeed.
It made its way onto mugs and t-shirts.
Then somehow the gerbils seized the intellectual property and means of production, and set up t-shirt factories to produce the t-shirts themselves.
Then they diversified into catering...
the rest is history.

But as you may have spotted they are now little avatars of good wishes, e.g sending a care gerbil around to a poster who is going through a tough time with tea and Tunnocks is just a way of saying Sorry you're going through a tough time.
But a gerbil is cuter

I think they function very much as carriers of good wishes - like when Myrtle had her job interview [yay! she got it! yay!], we could all have said 'Best of luck Myrtle' in various ways, but it was more fun to recycle an old image of a team of gerbil cheerleaders 'cheerbils' waving pompoms and holding a banner saying GO MYRTLLE [AI used to be really crap at spelling].

Gerbils can even convey sympathy and support in very difficult or tragic circumstances, they are accepted as avatars of emotions that we can't express in real life cos we don't know each other in real life, but we do really care about each other's well-being.

Does that make sense?
They are also dead cute, of course

Gerbils came to my work to cheerlead me once when I was going through a tough patch. They were very helpful.

Welcome Davros, & yes of course I’m a regal feline-dinosaur hybrid. But not as regal as my cat Kitty.

Bore da! Croeso, Davros!

I could be a real life set square, or I could be a 36deg figure conjured in someone's imagination, with a bit of mining engineering thrown in. I was once mistaken for an Angel (ha!)

Bar gerbils, hot chocolate and a croissant please. I've had way too much coffee already this morning!

Always useful to have a Dalek around if the sinks need unblocking. Well, the downstairs ones anyway. I assume your presence in the BS means you’re actually an OverLady rather than an Overlord, @Davos?

Thanks for the explanation @MarieDeGournay I feel like a true Bluestocking now. I will not be unblocking any bogs with my lady plunger (oooer matron!).

Welcome to the Bluey, Davros

I find it a place of sanity when the rest of MN is driving me to distraction.

See below for another notable Bluey image, back in the days of illiterate AI.

I love that one, Edith! It's so not seeing the motte in its own eiyye😂

From Lucy Mangan's Substack, The Bookwormery.

Has Kitty taken over as a bookshop cat as well as out cat?

Kitty has her own bookwormery.

I'm real too, but classed as "common as muck'. In a distinguished way though.

@Magpiecomplex has a mojito pool. It’s not quite the weather now but it was wonderful during the heatwave.

Trying to delete

Bl!!dy h!ll, is Gaff here? I'm off. Let me know when the coast is clear, yeah?

thinks for a moment

Ah, this is the Bluey: (: IYKYK) no men allowed. Also, Gaff isn't real. Unlike all of us.

Hi @Davros, If you want to catch up on The Chronicles of Gosie, the current book is here: https://myrtlelion.substack.com/p/gosie-and-the-stained-glass-windows

I think the secret of the Bluestocking, which isn’t actually a secret, is we accept that the gerbils are real and take everything they do very seriously. And as @MarieDeGournay so eloquently put it, Gerbils can even convey sympathy and support in very difficult or tragic circumstances, they are accepted as avatars of emotions that we can't express in real life cos we don't know each other in real life, but we do really care about each other's well-being.