Discuss The Archers #108: Has Ed & Emma’s ship sailed? Will Alice stick her oar into Kate's love life? Can Shula walk on water? Come and discuss whatever floats your boat in The Archers.

[Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g]

Thank you, @PseudoBadger, for kicking off this long, long series of Archers threads and @DadDadDad for being our resident statistician and keeping the ball rolling when Pseudo stepped back a bit.

All views on The Archers welcome here! New blood welcomed. We don't all agree on all points and most of us are posting tongue in cheek a lot of the time, so don't worry about revealing that you'd like to be Susan's best friend or other unusual views.

Spoilers: not on this thread, please. We don't wait for the omnibus to discuss the weeknight episodes, but we do try our best to avoid cross-contamination from www.mumsnet.com/Talk/radio_addicts/3439443-keep-it-to-yourself-the-archers-spoilers-thread-4, where spoilers are positively welcomed!

For newer listeners, lurkers or those who just have no idea what we're talking about, DadDadDad has created this useful thread: www.mumsnet.com/Talk/radio_addicts/3557323-For-Archers-fans-a-guide-to-acronyms-on-the-long-running-discussion-threads-and-any-other-meta-thread-questions-you-may-have BOOP point for him! (See thread for explanation.)

Thanks to @QuaterMiss for the title of this thread. For reasons of space had to cut out the bit speculating about Oliver and Tracy pairing off. Surely not!

Off now to give blood, something nobody in Ambridge ever does. See you all later.

If by brandy glass she means a brandy balloon, they are just the sort of thing aspirational people like Emma would buy. The proper posh wouldn’t touch them with a barge pole!

The new owners of Home Farm farmhouse being overlooked is another example of the weirdness of the script writers. As is the disappearance of Hannah.

Hannah was horrible but very prominent- at one point we thought she was engineering to get Neil's job. She hates Emma. She has lost her home because the Grundys are moving into it yet we haven't heard from or about her for months.

Oh, ppeat ... My parents had some beautiful, wedding present sherry glasses which had been so carefully packed away that I didn’t see them till I was in my teens. Rediscovered, they were brought out for a dinner party and I, washing up the next day, broke three in one fell swoop. My mother was very forgiving - but I still feel bad about it.

The British class system is so toxic. Nancy Mitford and Evelyn Waugh were writing about U and non-U two generations ago and sometimes I think we haven't moved on at all. Social mobility certainly hasn't improved. People on low incomes with little cultural capital aspiring to be middle class and not getting it right, the upper classes looking down their noses at the middle classes, etc etc etc.

(Strongly recommend recent BBC documentary How to break into the elite presented by Amol Rajan, available on i player for another 11 months. Shows how tough it is to move up the ladder if you don't come from the 'right' background. I was enraged by the City recruiters' requirement for 'polish', i.e. the right accent, clothes, name, contacts, outweighing everything else. Equal opps seems to have passed them by. But I digress.)

My mum has a display cabinet full of wedding present china and crystal. Some of it's attractive but very little of it is practical. There may be brandy glasses in there. I don't know what they should look like, so couldn't say. Are there any sensible reasons for using different glasses for different drinks?

“Shows how tough it is to move up the ladder if you don't come from the 'right' background.”

Yep. It’s all about knowing the password to the club. And there’s loads of gaslighting because there are “false passwords” like brandy balloons, that mean you think you’ve got it right but you haven’t, so people will still laugh at you. .

Gasp, the different glasses for different drinks are to do with warming the brandy, letting fewer bubbles leave from fizz etc.

I wouldn't laugh at anyone for having the 'wrong' sort of glasses, not least because I don't know what they are. Jennifer Aldridge might, I suppose. For all her faults, Lilian probably wouldn't either.

One of the most interesting observations in that documentary, which was also mentioned on Feedback the other day, is that organisations like the BBC and Channel 4 have just as much of a problem in recruiting diverse talent because there are so many unwritten rules there that some people fall at the first hurdle trying to navigate them. 'Studied informality' is their culture. Great, but how do you dress? In some ways it's worse trying to second guess that than buying a traditional business suit. There was a lovely shot panning across Television Centre at foot level showing the assembled Converse and other expensive and trendy footwear.

I'd like to see the BBC address class in The Archers more. Move away from the yokel/squire model. Plenty of scope to do it.

I wondered if might be something like that, Mike. I don't buy expensive booze on the whole, so little point in also buying expensive glassware which would get used once a decade or so! We drink fizzy wine (incl champagne) from ordinary wine glasses. Still tastes fine.

“Gasp, the different glasses for different drinks are to do with warming the brandy, letting fewer bubbles leave from fizz etc“

I think that research is showing that most people can’t tell the difference! But apparently it’s also showing that nobody, not even proper experts) can tell the difference between a good modern violin and a Strad. Now that rocked my world! (Champagne glasses are another “password” thing too)

We have a fair bit of cut glass, including brandy balloons (which replaced the ones you got free at the garage. Remember them), but she says, defensively we do come from a glass blowing area.

I think that if you are trying to ape your betters then you are on a hiding to nothing. As soon as you get close, they move the goalposts. When only the rich could afford air travel and a mediterranean tan they were envy-inducing; when they went mass-market, we got airport hell and told we would get skin cancer. The rich could afford flash cars with their growly engines; the poor sit in traffic jams and pollute the plant. Education opened doors for the rich; the masses have 10-a-penny degrees and a lifetime of debt.
Basically, by the time anything has become 'attainable', its time has gone and those in the know have moved on to something else.

R4 That's true, fashionable glasses are a very good example; they've changed their shape in my liftetime , oooh about 3 times ; if I remember correctly, from the saucer shaped 'perry' type,.then the flutes and now (I've forgotten!! we don't buy them anymore because we don't like or drink the stuff, well I don't ) We drink cremant or good prosecco at Xmas in unmatched flutes. !!

Champagne glasses duh! Does the above post make me sound a snob. I'm sorry ,I'm really not. I hope.

It's strange that Emm was sooo obsessed with her new house that she paid out for new glasses\furniture and didn't go to charity shops or on ebay.

Yes Bert sorry I didn't see your post.

The only brandy glass I've ever owned, is one of those huge ones, with the cat and mouse! (Christmas present from my nan!) I've never aspired to have dinner parties, but I have had a couple of friends round for dinner a couple of times. It was just dinner and pudding, and we were best mates.

I've dragged my middle class husband down to my level, we're the black sheep of his family. We don't go on skiing holidays, like his sister, and my son (his step son) didn't go to private school, like our nieces do. Our car is a Honda that we had to save up for, (they told us we couldn't get a decent car with only £3K, they were wrong) his family all drive BMWs, Mercs, Porche4x4s and Audis. And although he owns our house, it was given to him as part of inheritance planning.

You can imagine his family's shock, when he told them I was 10 years older than him, divorced, and had 3 children! In fact, his mum interfered with our relationship, and persuaded him to end it, which lasted all of a week, when he realised he was a grown man, who loved me, and couldn't bear being without me, and it was none of his mother's business who he had relationships with.

We get on ok now, and his dad was always lovely, but I'm sure my MIL would have preferred he married a nice middle class girl, with no baggage.

I have to admit, I laughed when Emma was talking about the brandy glasses. She probably imagined the men retiring to the front room, to smoke cigars, drink brandy, and discuss the latest feed prices, while her and the girls, would stay in the kitchen/diner (that's probably what that house had), polishing off the prosecco.

It certainly highlighted that she had delusions of grandeur.

Motoko delusions being the correct word! It's a shame.

I hope I'm not bigoted, I only care if the person is kind and flexible in their outlook.

I went to boarding school, my brothers went to Eton. I am just not interested in all that nonsense and believe in equality, as does (one) brother. We live pretty normal lives and have educated our children in the state school system etc. My boss put it beautifully when she met my mum and said
'Oh my god your mum is so posh; you must be such a disappointment!'

How rude!

How rude!

Depends how they said it. It could've been in a fun, jokey, affectionate way.

We had little Babycham glasses! Only used at Christmas though, we were more of a tea drinking family with a small sherry before Sunday lunch.

I agree that Emma didn’t want much out of life, and it seems unfair that she has been knocked back down again.

I do understand why Ed felt he couldn't cope. They both weren't earning enough to be contented in the new house even if they had moved into it. Every bill would give them so much stress, the unhappiness would permeate their lives.

It's true to say that, if they had moved in, Emma would still be discontented if she couldn't throw post dinner parties that enabled her to get the brandy glasses out.

Mind you, depending on how many glasses there were, Shula seems to have got a bargain at £5. I'd like to have heard her quietly slipping another £5 in.

I still don't understand why Emma couldn't just return most of the stuff.

It's the carpets, curtains and blinds (presumably already fitted and installed) that are bothering me!

Perhaps the eventual owner of the house will agree to buy them, and come to a monetary agreement with Emma?

Oh dear! How complicated it all is! I'm so thankful not to be Emma!

But Ed did the absolutely right thing splitting up with her. She was bad for him.

And if she comes sniffing around, all doe-eyed and sorry, I hope he runs far, far away, up Lakey Hill, over the top and out of her aspirational clutches.

Is it obvious that I don't like Emmur?

It would be very unwise for carpet and curtains to be fitted before exchange/completion, if the buyer is purchasing them rather than the builder, as the buyer doesn't have legal title to the place before then. She may well have lost deposits on those, though.

This is making me fancy a sherry. And yes I am well aware it’s 14.41 on a Monday!

Do people have "yard sales" in England? I've seen people put boxes of kids books out and excess veg from allotments.... Ambridge isn't exactly awash with residents.

With Emma being so into upcycling it just seems so very very weird that she would have blown thousands on brand new soft furnishings, garden sets and brandy glasses.

I wonder if Hannah and Johnnie will buy the unwanted starter home.

Shula sounded as if she was reading a script when she insulted Susan.