Is that a CHICKEN roasting in the oven Rob, or are you just pleased to see me? Oh and Hayley, LTB. Discuss The Archers here.

[PseudoBadger]

How about we immortalise Schrodinger's Baby in the opening paragraph?

How long will this thread last DadDadDad?

Surely P&T didn't send their kids to the cathedral school - both because of finances and principles? I don't doubt that Rob will eventually want to pack Henry off somewhere ... shades of David Copperfield.

I think traditionally grandparents could offset them, possibly not any more.

I'm fairly sure Helen and Tom went to the Cathedral School - though as they're my age, I wasn't really listening then. But it was a huge deal when Peep went to Borchester Green instead, so I'd always assumed that Archers Did Cathedral!

Peggy would be a good target for school fees though

Hmmm, Jill doesn't like private education, but I don't know about Pat and Tony.

And even though Jill doesn't like it, Shula, David et all all went anyway - I think Phil was keener!

Does rob know that the farm is mortgaged to the hilt? If he's expecting any money he's in for a shock!

Peggy would so pay fees! yes, perhaps Pat and Tony would say 'well darling, Borchester Green is very good these days and we're a bit tight with all the dead cows/pigs/bad milk (or whatever crisis is befalling 9 years hence), so Helen, at Rob's nudge, will go running to Peggy and her ever-lasting cheque book.

Pat and tony are the socialists of the archers clan. I really doubt they did send them private unless funded by someone else as they have always had much more of a hand to mouth existence than the other branches.

Surely Peggy will have pegged before Henry's secondary age?

Well, they do like organic food and all that, but I still have a feeling their children went Cathedral! Alistair didn't like Dan going there, but it's what Archers Do!

Was I imagining things or was Lyndipops' synopsis of Rumpelstiltskin something like "naive young girl falls in with demonic midget who steals her child"? Is Rob particularly short?

Helen (+ John) went to a specialist agricultural school didn't they - not sure if that was only at sixth-form. (I remember we talked about this several threads back and someone said the school was still there but no longer specialist.)

Mimsy will know.

Pat and Tony definitely didn't send the children to the Cathedral School. It had never even been mentioned until David and Ruth fleetingly thought of sending Pip there.

They did, however, send John off to an agricultural boarding school called Brymore when he was about 14, I think. It's a real school - a state boarding school, so the education is free if you can get a place, but the family had to pay boarding fees. IIRC Peggy stumped up for that. Helen went off to a college called Reeseheath. Can't remember whether that was at 16 or 18 but she studied cheesemaking there. Tom was the only one who never left home. He dropped out of Borchester FE college when he was about 17 and as far as I can remember he was at Borchester Green before that.

Cross-post, Zero!

James Bellamy and all of the Home Farm children went to private schools. Alice insisted on going to Borchester FE college to do her A levels and Kate had no choice as she had been expelled from her private school (was it Cheltenham Ladies?). Debbie managed not to get expelled from Cheltenham, but dropped out of Exeter university because she was having an unhappy affair with her lecher lecturer, Simon Gerrard, whom she later married (and divorced). Adam is the only one who managed to stay the distance in education - Sherborne to A level (like Brian/Charles Collingwood), and then he did a degree in agricultural economics at Newcastle.

Shula and Kenton went to Borchester Grammar School, which doesn't exist now, or if it does it's never mentioned (may have gone private, more likely has vanished from the SWs' consciousness). What is astonishing about this is that they were bright enough to pass the 11+.

David and Elizabeth, however, were sent to private boarding schools, very much against Jill's wishes. Elizabeth was also expelled. David stuck it out and made it through agricultural college - Cirencester?

Maybe Borchester Grammar converted to comp and became Borchester Green?

Shula and Kenton at Grammar School?

Was Phil a magistrate then? Or a school governor? Or did he just send a Grundy to hijack the results van and then sit up all night correcting their papers?

Grammar schools back then weren't as selective as they are now.

Errol, I can bore for Britain on this and on the old BBC Messageboard I frequently did. Borchester Green is a comprehensive school and came into being after Borsetshire gave up the 11+. Kathy Perks was teaching at the grammar school and was against the proposed merger with another school which was going to create the new school. Jill was on the other side. What isn't clear at all is what happened to Borchester Grammar School in the end - did it merge into Borchester Green or did it go private, as was indicated at the time? I think the SWs may have forgotten what they'd said, I'm afraid. [I hope no one is too shocked by this ghastly revelation.] They certainly seemed to have forgotten all about Borchester Grammar by the time they invented the Cathedral School when Pip was 11.

not boring in the least... i am in awe. i can barely remember what happened on TA last week

Ah, see I was remembering Jill saying to Phil that she thought Pip should just go to BG, and Phil said 'you didn't mind private schools for our children'. And Dan seemed to go just because it was expected... Though alistair didn't want him to. I just assumed Tom and Hellin had also, being Archers, and also I suppose because it seemed unlikely Helen and Emmur had been to school together!

Thanks Mimsy! (Still think Rob will be keen on a big name (in archers-land, obv) public for Henry though!

Ah yes, Petula, but you are a young thing and can probably remember all sorts of much more important things. I sit in front of University Challenge once a week and all sorts of dross floats to the surface of my brain. Similarly on the question of Archers trivia. Ask me to remember useful stuff that I need for work and my day to day life, and it's a very different story, sadly!

I sit in front of University Challenge once a week and all sorts of dross floats to the surface of my brain.

It's Brain of Britain for me. I hear answers jumping out of my mouth and it's as if I've been possessed - stuff I have no knowledge of knowing anything about.... I ought to be pleased but tbh I rather thought extreme middle age would bring more glamorous benefits.

But I never remember anything as useful as Archers history.

Ah, if only I had the formed memories of some here...

....that said, I feel impossibly nostalgic (to the point of bereavement- and not joking) about some fondly half remembered characters...

Nigel's mother (Julia?)

Nelson

Phil (natch)

Jack. And Captain FFS.

Maybe I'm just having a maudlin evening...

unknown I'm imagining their faces in the sky like in Hunger Games....

Ah, yes....

Can but hear the anthem and the cannon boom.....

BERT FRY!!!!!!