Archers thread #163: Too much aggro, not enough agri! Discuss The Archers here.

[Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g]

Thank you, @PseudoBadger, for kicking off this long, long series of Archers threads.

All views on The Archers welcome here! New blood welcomed, and of course we are always delighted to welcome back former or occasional listeners/posters. We don't all agree on all points, although we do mostly try to be civil about it. Most of us are posting tongue in cheek a lot of the time, so don't worry about revealing that, 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/4636789-the-archers-spoilers-thread-7-cant-wait-for-702pm-join-us-here, 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 @LikeTalkingToLassie for the thread title idea! She and @LillianGish had fun with this theme on the last thread:

More farmer, less drama
More ploughing, less rowing
There's mileage in silage.
More sheds, fewer beds.

All good points. Fair to say nobody on the last thread was delighted to see the return of Harry. I think we all agree that Alice is a blithering idiot to get involved with him again. Most of us also think that Miranda is up to no good. Other storylines in play at the moment:

Alistair and Denise, with the massive complication of John and Paul
Ed and Emma - another doomed Grundy enterprise? Does Will still have the will to wang them some wonga?
Whither George - YouTube sensation or Borchester Magistrates' Court?
Will Markie cause mayhem at The Bull?
Will Harrison haul him in to Borchester nick?
Will Hannah get off with Chris?
Will we ever get used to the new Robert?
Will there ever be a new Roy?
Why do we hear so little from Brookfield now? (Although if we never heard Pip again, I for one would be delighted)
Will Stella dump Pip?

There are probably others I've missed. Over to you!

Yes, I agree. The only people I knew who treated waitstaff like that were a posh bloke and a woman who had grown up in her parents' hotel and had a principle of always complaining about everything that fell short of her high standards. They were both utterly mortifying companions.

This isn't intended in any way as a dig at anybody, but I have been reminded of something that's puzzled me for a while: waitstaff. Why? Barmaid/man does require "barstaff", but surely "waiter" can be treated as being any sex anyone wants it to be, not exclusively male?

I guess waiter is male and waitress is female

but no reason we can’t repurpose language and make waiter both

Yes, but waitress is a nonsense word like professoress (yes, I really saw that once!) or authoress. They could go the way actors have, and just forget about the diminutising feminine form. And waitstaff looks and sounds silly, where barstaff doesn't, possibly because a bar is a place with staff in it but a wait isn't anything to do with waiting at table....

(Your edit came while I was posting, and I thoroughly agree, as you can see from the post I was so carefully writing while you cut through the crap straight to the point!)

Ha! Yes agree that authoress sounds silly!

Dorothy Sayers was complaining about "poetess" back in the 1930s, and also had Harriet Vane write a peevish letter to a paper which spoke of "sweet girl graduettes", I think. Or perhaps the subsequent correspondence mentioned "graduettes" – gummy what a word!

As for usherette, words really do fail me on that one. They never got round to calling female bus conductors anything but bus conductors, thank the lord, perhaps because how on earth would you feminise that one? Especially given that they didn't actually conduct buses...

When I was a tiny girl, my family went out for a drive in the country once (always described as a 'run' - no running was involved, however, and often no walking either). As I gazed out at the fields, the haystacks, the sheep and the cows, I said to my parents 'When I grow up, I want to be a farmeress'. I couldn't understand why they both started sniggering.

Conductress. I'm sure we called them that decades ago. A vanished profession now.

https://www.dictionary.com/browse/conductress

Some people obviously think it's OK. I have heard it used but not for a very, very long time possibly because they don't have any kind of conductor on buses where I've lived to the past 37 years.

There used to be a 'Farmerette' class in the National Ploughing Championship.
Maybe still is for all I know

https://www.kilkennypeople.ie/news/national-ploughing/479384/kilkenny-woman-wins-all-ireland-ploughing-championship.html

‘One little lady bus conductress
Leaping about like a gym instructress
Half civil servant, half seductress…’

Gawd knows where I dredged that up from

Take It From Here, possibly. A chap on this website posted about it 11 years ago. https://www.ablemuse.com/erato/showthread.php?t=21882

So many years ago it's not true, Frank Muir and Denis Nordern, two very clever men, wrote a wireless (!) comedy show called 'Take It From Here'. I still remember a Gilbert and Sullivan take off about London buses, which had to be cleared with Bridget D'Oyly Carte (and was)

The stars were Jimmy Edwards, Dick Bentley and June Whitfield.

One little lady bus conductress
Leaping about like a gym instructress,
Half civil servant, half seductress,
Cooing in voice so small
ONE MORE ON TOP! THAT's ALL.

Don't cuss
The dear old bus,
Swearing at the drivers,
Wanting change for fivers...

Take a 6 to Kensal Rise
Starting off from Hackneywick.
It's a one and sixpenny fare!
Avoid the rush hour if you can,
For the traffic's mighty thick,
From Saint Paul's to Leicester Square..

And that's just off the top of my head.

Oo, thanks, @Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g. Good grief, the things that stick with one…

Yes, but waitress is a nonsense word

It's been used for decades. Same with actress. So whilst authoress or poetess look daft and sound odd, waitress and actress are fine.

My DD(19) describes herself as a waitress. Waitstaff sounds American.

Waitron?

Waitstaff includes servers behind counters, whereas waitress / waiter sounds more like people who come to your table. imo

I don't have hang ups about language usage sounding American rather than British (which often means southern English) - actually, the American usage often sounds less 'foreign' to me.

That would fit with waiting on people meaning going to their tables, taking orders from them, taking food to them? I'd tend to feel that people serving from behind a counter could simply be called "staff", because by definition they're not waiting on the customers, they're serving them. (And serveperson or servestaff is a bridge too far.)

Whatever you call them, they shouldn't be targetted by entitled customers trying to boost their own egos.

If they're useless, they're a makeweight.

@RegimentalSturgeon

It’s Waitron in South Africa and for sone reason it irks me.

Manageress used to be in common use. I think that the use persisted longer in Scotland than the rest of the UK.

To me, waiter would definitely denote male, I don’t think it has become like actor yet.

I don't have hang ups about language usage sounding American rather than British (which often means southern English)

I don't have hang ups either. Well not about that. It just sounds odd to my ears.

Manageress was used in a different way to manager. A manageress would typically be in charge of a shop or cafe.

Waiter and waitress would be more or less equal.

True, manageress never meant a female boss in a factory.

I shouldn't say "never" because never's a long time!

waiter would definitely denote male, I don’t think it has become like actor yet.

Often synonymous, though