Downton Abbey anyone

[CMP69]

Or am I just an old gimmer with a period drama fetish

Does anyone know what happened to that burnt man who was supoosedly the heir?

Avery, a book called The Victorian House by Judith Flanders is excellent on Victorian housekeeping, and exactly what a servant'svday, training, living conditions etc were like, though she focuses on middle class and upper-middle cases houses, not aristocratic ones.

He did a flit and left a letter for Edith which was very cleverly worded, it wasn't clear whether he really was Patrick or was admitting he wasn't and had just tried it on. No idea where he went.

averyJessup The Servants programme was interesting BUT IMO Pamela Cox seemed to have made up her mind about the terrible lives of the servants before doing the research which annoyed me a bit.

For more objective evidence it's good to read the BOOK by Flora Thompson called Larkrise to Candleford she was THERE !!!

I think the badly burned man will come back with more evidence and marry Edith and she will get EVERYTHING!

Mary will noooo be happy.

Here's hoping!

Wasn't nanny West pushing baby Sybie in her pram whilst out in the garden, when Thomas came up to her? If so I'm surprised if she disliked her that much, would have thought she'd have chosen Master George and let the maid push the 'half breed'

What was the deal about Giant Baby Sybbie in the pram anyway?

Was Thomas worried that she was being confined rather than being allowed to rampage about freely like the mutant half-breed she is?

ppeatfruit I had to do that Larkrise to Candleford book for O level. I passed but I'm not sure I actually finished it.

She did look a bit huge to be still lying down in a pram didn't she. It would have looked more natural if she was sitting up in harnesses.

Nanny was pushing George, wasn't she, as she left his pram to come back & talk to Thomas?

Yes I couldn't work out whether it was normal to put toddlers in prams in that era or whether we were meant to think "WTF! Why is she still in a pram?"

See there's one - "My charge is huge and the under-butler thinks IABU to still put her in a perambulator. Am I?"

It was normal to still be in a pram. Big silver cross type thingy it was massive.

Good God you lot have been busy! Just catching up now
Will be back when it's over

I think it was quite normal for toddlers to be in a pram, especially for the upper classes. Some of the large prams had a removable section in the middle so older children could sit up properly.

There was a fairly sexy bit with Thomas and the bad Duke at the very beginning.

at The Tragic Case of Mr Pamuk and Lady Mary's Doomladen Vagina! Btw, never having seen it before, I was stunned yesterday at the total lack of any reasonable explanation for Pamuk just dropping dead mid-shag like that. Why on earth would a young, fit man just drop down dead? He was healthy enough to go hunting earlier in the day. I think JF thought of the doomladen vag bit and then couldn't think of a plausible explanation so just left it with 'we don't know what happened, maybe it was a stroke'.

Adult sudden death syndrome or whatever it's called? Maybe he had a dicky heart?

The best part of that storyline was the old countess declaring it was just like a foreigner to be so crass as to die in someone else's house.

Oh I think I may have to watch the boxed set tonight.

But she wasn't sitting up eddiemairsit looked to me as if she had been asleep and unfortunately as soon as the filming started she woke up and you can't go about cutting filming because there's only so many hours L.O's are allowed to work.

well, back to earlier comment about the trains to London, according to the internet, it was 4 hours from York to London in the 1920s by express train, they're supposed to be near Rippon, so allow an extra hour, Edith's getting the 10am train, so would be in London for 3pm, not that far off how long it would take now!

Also, I think the nasty nanny was removed to allow for a new nanny, someone with shocking modern ideas, or to be a bit of "forbidden fruit" for the male servants (she would be considered to be 'above them'), or something else, but generally, we'll have a new interesting nanny next week.

Highly entertaining if not very watertight in bits
Old Branson has managed to get over his socialist/Republican views and settle in as Lord of the Manor. Maggie Smith should be a Saint not just a Dame
upstairs was the usual lunacy but the servants have lost their spark a bit. Hope things perk up a bit on Sunday

TooExtra JF didn't make it up !!! It actually happened also I don't want to start the vag v bumsex discussion that went on and on and on when DA first came out.

But IIRC think the conclusion reached was that they weren't having vanilla sex to allow her to stay a virgin and avoid pregnancy !!

lots of people disappear from DA, it has black holes. Not just the nanny and the burnt man.

I'm struggling to see the point in drawing Carston's old side-kick out of the workhouse to live on Isobel's bounty. Where is this going? Yes, we'll have a new nanny for the Earl to start larking about with and perhaps the bereft Branson will too when he sees her taking such good care of his dd and well being available. I see them drawing near over the girl's cot. Perhaps she'll get sick and the nanny will nurse her through while Branson stays up all night at his dd's bedside.

Also wonder why Edith can only have elderly neighbours, burnt and bandaged up Canadians, married farmers and a married journalist with a wife in the asylum. Her mum should have packed her off to America to marry a rich young man by now. Strange they have no problem with her gallivanting about London in dresses slashed to the knee and covorting with a married man.

Isobel is clearly going to marry the circus bloke

They all have Edith firmly cast as family blue stocking. They genuinely haven't noticed her cavorting under their eyes.

I a little bit don't like Edith for calling Mary a slut over pamuk when she's snogged the faces off two married men

I think Isobel is a secret snob for all that she denies it. She was dead keen to have Matthew lord of the manor.