I'll try and put all of the relevant information in without being too long-winded and boring.
I like my job and the woman I refer to above is of course perfectly entitled to ignore me &/or dislike me, but she seems invested in to excluding me and has successfully engineered a few situations that excluded me. She has never ever done anything that you could complain about if you see what I mean.
I am older than her but the other colleagues aren't ageist I don't think. I could be part of the chat if she'd ''allow'' it. She has a way of cutting me out of any social interaction in a group. She's 'sweet' and good humoured and lighthearted to other people.
I don't want to be her friend because I see the lack of authenticity. But colleagues I do want to be friendly with are taking their cue from her.
So this is her Modus Operandi: If I join in the conversation she'll react as though what I said was so dull that everybody is embarrassed for me. Like a pause and then ''well yes *Jane''.
Or she just plain interrupts me and sadly, obviously people do prefer her, as in any sentence stand off, she gets to finish her sentence even if I started first. If I keep speaking it seems like I'm the aggressor. Or, she reacts as though I said something really inappropriate and does a faux gracious thing - rising magnanimously above my 'offensive' remark. This is a favourite gig of hers.
Or she contradicts me sharply as though she is so educated and wise and I'm a bit of a Daily Mail reader. I've never expressed any offensive views in the workplace at all. I know she has a masters but it's not related to our work, and I don't think she knows that I don't have a degree or a masters. She shared her education level with me, I never divulged my level of education.
If I make a joke she seems to reprimand me or it hangs in silence. I did speak to one man I'm close to about her but even though we are friendly - he just doesn't see it and I think he was disappointed in me for what he saw as my jealousy /bitchiness.
What do I do? I can't ask people to include me as that would be pathetic and would not serve me. Do I do nothing but put up with her casting me as a boring weird inappropriate humorless role?
The men could say anything literally any old boring shite and she'd laugh like an enchanted songbird. She's not jealous of me at all, btw, she is nice to the obviously good looking women. She's kind of ordinary looking and so am I but I'm a decade plus older so there's no reason why she should be jealous of me. It's not jealousy. More likely she only wants a glossy posse to reflect well on her 
Any practical advice? I hate going in to the canteen knowing that if she's there I can just forget about joining in the conversation. But realistically when she is well-liked, challenging her is going to be very risky. I could come out of it looking like a jealous bitch.
Typing this helped anyway. Maybe the answer is that the thing to do is to do nothing... Or a version of nothing. I may, may risk a mumsnet style ''did you mean to be so humorless!'' the next time she reacts as though I've said something risky. For the record I would have thought her views are very similar to my own but she wants to cast me as a red neck. Not really sure what is going on. Only speculating there.