My new boyfriend’s grandmother settled into her chair, poured me a nice glass of single malt whiskey, and leaned in to make “small talk.”
“Then tell me, my dear,” he said, taking my hand in his twisted, jeweled one. —Do you young ladies still ride in the saddle today?
I almost spit my drink into the glass, while my boyfriend was laughing out loud on the shelf. She wasn’t being naughty, she really wanted to be updated on the preferred driving style of twenty-something women, as things had “come a long way since she was a debutante.” He considered it a worthy start to a conversation with his grandson’s latest love.
British actor Luke Pasqualino plays Basil Babbingham in the Disney+ series Rivals
I didn’t have the courage to tell him that I didn’t ride a side saddle or any saddle. I’d never actually ridden a horse, unless you counted being taken on a pony, aged ten, on a holiday camp in Wales. The closest I came to riding a horse was going to the betting shops, on behalf of my grandfather, to place a bet.
In the end I just kept going, for the sport: “No, I don’t,” I said in a voice that didn’t sound like my own. “And it’s a very good thing, he looks horribly uncomfortable,” as my boyfriend left the room, doubled over with laughter.
Oh, how I adored ‘Posh Granny’. She never failed to remind me of the totally different world I had entered during the two years that I (a well-educated, working-class girl from a seedy seaside town in the south of England) dated a member of the Debrett’s list. the aristocracy, in the early 1990s.
It’s a world enjoyed by some in the TV adaptation of Jilly Cooper’s scandalous 1988 bonkbuster Rivals, which explores the machinations and pleasures of the wealthy horse group.
Although I never played naked tennis with a Conservative minister, nor joined the Mile High Club at Concorde a la Rivals, it was an interesting and fun-filled two years, Anonymous writes.
Although I can’t say I ever played naked tennis with a Conservative minister, or joined the Mile High Club at Concorde a la Rivals, it was an interesting and fun-filled two years that ultimately ended with us returning to our respective worlds.
He accepted a job abroad, which put us in an impossible situation. To join him, for visa reasons, I would have had to marry him, and I think we both realized that wasn’t something that would work.
However, why? These were the supposed glory days of social mobility. Just a year earlier, in 1990, John Major, a primary school student from south London, had entered Downing Street promising a “classless society.”
However, in the end my ex and I just weren’t compatible. It went far beyond the niceties of “napkin, no napkin”: our different backgrounds meant we were out of sync on many fundamental issues.
Dates outside of class shouldn’t matter, but unfortunately they usually always do, even if no one likes to admit it.
Statistics tend to back up the number of classes that still quietly dominate the UK. Those who thought that issues of class relations were limited to Austen’s time will be surprised to learn that even today, people tend to marry their own kind.
Alex Hassel, who plays Rupert Campbell-Black, and Pasqualino on the hit show.
A report from the Public Policy Research Institute showed that 45 percent of women born in 1970 married someone from their same social class. 32 percent were “married” and 23 percent were “married.” A generation later, the first figure stood at 56 percent, with only 16 percent “going up” and 28 percent lowering their sights.
My ex and I had met at work, that great equalizer, although it came with an expensive education and a cut-glass accent. What attracted us was the old chemistry. I had never met anyone like him before, while his family had only hired people like me.
To be fair, her family were lovely to me, although, looking back, it had an unpleasant taste of My Fair Lady. My ex loved talking to me about the do’s and don’ts and the expectations of a weekend of filming at the family farm.
And his old school friends, all with nicknames like Bilbo, Whiffy or Nobby, considered me a passing fancy at best. In fact, once one made a shocking gesture at me.
My ex’s old school friends, all with nicknames like Bilbo, Whiffy or Nobby, considered me a passing fancy at best, Anonymous writes. In fact, once one made a shocking gesture at me.
His attitude toward women in general raised alarming red flags. They didn’t seem to have any friends. The girls were divided into three categories: those they wanted to sleep with and those they would consider marriage material, and the rest were simply invisible. It was definitely Category One.
The family had a ski lodge in the Alps and spent every Christmas and Easter there. There was a certain lip balm that he used during the trip and when, at the age of seven, he was sent to boarding school, it was this soothing lip balm that he smelled under the covers at night, while he struggled with all his might. in being a brave child and not crying.
I simply couldn’t understand my horror at the story.
She thought it was cute and of course insisted she would do the same with her son (note: son, not daughter). The boarding school would be, he insisted, his creation.
His sister, however, was not sent to school, but instead attended a much cheaper private day school. Again, when I dared to ask why, he simply shrugged and said it was the family custom. She was expected to marry well and not have to worry about a career.
A year after our breakup, I met my husband: a primary school boy, with an electrician father and a mother who worked as a nurse, just like me. We have been married for 25 years.
I will never regret the time I spent with my Posh Boy. I saw online that he had married a hearty, ruddy-cheeked girl who looked like she could twist a pheasant’s neck with one hand while pouring a martini with the other. I’m sure they are very happy.
As for him and me? It was never meant to be this way.
