Don't be a Lonely Cow! Come and join in with The Archers chat

[PseudoBadger]

New thread!

And don't forget Helen's other ex - barman Leon who shagged Helen's sort-of-stepdaughter and got her pregnant.

Hooked Who died? Did I miss something? I remember someone was hospitalised - but recovered.

Though I agree, just reading catch ups does seem tempting sometimes.

I don't know but think Linda is in her 60s, Cathy 50s. That means Cathy was always middle-aged mentally, even 25-30 years ago, when a domestic science teacher, before she got together with Sid. Sounds about right.

I thought a child at the gymkhana died due to E Coli - recovered - well thank goodness for that!

I'd forgotten about Leon.

Poor Cathy - 50s - it'll be ages before she can draw her pension.

I used to think mistakenly that Kenton was Kathy's "younger man"', you're right lotte Kathy has always sounded middle-aged.

Its not Kathy's fault, isn't middle-agedness a requirement for domestic science teachers? TBH I think because I've grown up with a lot of these characters they don't sound that old to me (I'm 52 and not middleaged FGS! )

Yes, I think Cathy has always been boringly, restrictively sensible and moany. Even in what must have been her 20s.

She really annoyed me when Lucy was a teenager (Lucy is a few years older than me, so now in her 40s but I haven't forgotten my irritation!). In particular, when Lucy had recently turned vegetarian and they went out for a meal somewhere and the only veggie option was ratatouille with rice. Cathy's 'but where's your protein?' has been lodged in my mind for years. It wasn't Lucy's fault, or a fundamental deficiency of vegetarianism, that pub menus in the 80s were extremely limited. So long as she ate a good diet the rest of the time, she was fine, Mrs 'I've seen a food group chart and have no imagination or flexibility whatsoever'.

Hmm, some serious character consistency over time there, Mrs 'this has always been our menu, what do you mean, adapt to current circumstances?'

I do feel a bit sorry for her now.

Lucy was annoying too, because she espoused issues I agreed with, badly.

How can young lucy be 40?

WHO THE JEFF IS LUCY?!

Lucy née Perks is Sid's Perk's daughter. Sid was a widow when he met Kathy. Lucy didn't much care for her step mother. After uni, she moved to New Zealand and stayed there - you remember Sid had a heart attack and died when he was visiting her.

Lucy was upset about hormones being given to cows to produce more milk (BST?) and did some minor vandalism at Brookfield. She was a bit of a whinging pain t.b.h.

I was pretty sure Rob's wife Jess was in prison but started to doubt it when no-one else mentioned it on here until recently. There was a phone conversation early on about phone cards and being 'inside' iirc.

Missed the bit about the scars, where are they?

Do you remember Sid Olivia :o

Sid Perks arrived in Ambridge in the 60s from Birmingham, I believe. He had had a brush with the law and initially was a bit of a tearaway. Jack Woolley took him under his wing and helped him get back on the straight and narrow. Sid married local girl Polly and they ran the post office first and later the pub, as managers for Peggy Archer (as she was then). She was the tenant/owner of the pub after her first husband, Jack Archer, succumbed to alcoholism. (Jack was the older brother of Phil and Christine.) Jennifer, Lilian and Tony all grew up in the pub during the years their dad was succumbing.

Polly Perks was killed off in a car accident in the 70s when their little girl Lucy was very young. Before my time as a listener, but older listeners have described Polly's death as a very traumatic time.

Many years later Sid started going out with Lucy's domestic science/form teacher, Kathy, who was also renting a cottage Sid owned in the next village. Lucy was not happy about this new relationship at all, especially when Sid married Kathy. I remember Lucy as a right royal pain in the butt in her teenage years, although of course Kathy has always been a wet blanket.

Fast forward another good few years - Kathy had an affair with a policeman, Dave Barry, a revival of the relationship she ended when she took up with Sid. Sid found out and threw her out of the pub (during opening hours - all very dramatic). Later they were reconciled, and to Kathy's horror (at first) they went on and had Jamie, who was unplanned. By this time Lucy had emigrated and I think they were on their way back from visiting her. Kathy got confused by the international dateline and forgot to take her pill.

Next dramatic stage - Sid had an affair with Jolene. There was a scene in the shower which has left scars on many regular listeners. When Kathy found out she moved out of the pub and into whichever cottage she lives in now, with Jamie. Sid married Jolene and stayed in the pub. After a happy few years together, Sid and Jolene went to New Zealand to visit Lucy and her family and Sid died of a heart attack. This can't have been much more than 3 or 4 years ago - Jolene and Kenton had taken up together before the first anniversary of Sid's death, and surely that isn't that long ago?

Yes, Lucy was also vocally anti-hunting but was generally a bit of a whiny, foot-stompy teenager, easily upset but not very articulate, so she generally wound people up and let the issues she espoused down. I used to get very cross, in my early teens, thinking I could have made her points better!

Many things the Archers SWs have done over the years have annoyed me but few more than the gratuitous decision to have Lucy go through three years of a degree course at (IIRC) Nottingham and then casually announce that she had failed her finals, but wasn't bothering to re-take as she had decided to marry her boyfriend and emigrate to NZ. Why? She could have married him and emigrated without failing her exams! In the very unlikely eventuality that she had sailed through the first three years and then failed, why on earth wouldn't she have re-taken her exams? Just typical of the SWs' vague and ill-considered approach to anything involving education.

Btw, I felt similarly about Kate (but less personally than with Lucy, just because of my age at the time) - she also let down some good causes with her self-righteous, self-centred attention-seeking. Linda wasn't much better when she enaged with some of Kate's causes.

(I did once make that point in person to one of the editors - that all 'political' and especially environmental causes were ridiculed on TA through the self-centred, whiny characters chosen to represent them).

A year or two later there was a brief respite, when ever-so-nice Usha, with sensible Shula I think (must have been pre-that doctor) got involved in some church-related international development campaign.

No, it was Usha and lovely vicar Janet. That makes more sense, the Usha / Shula debacle was a (n even longer) long time ago.

Hadn't remembered about Lucy's exams. Yes, TA used to make 'university' seem like a very far off, hostile land in the days of Debbie et al. It always amazed me that practically no-one went and those who did always had a terrible experience. Don't over-reach yourselves farming folk, it's toiling the soil for you!

That's only changed since 50% or so of the population has started going and, even then, only Alice seems to made anything of it so far.

TA hasn't been able to cope with higher education since they planned that Shula would become a vet and then was told by listeners that she was doing the wrong (Arts) A Levels. Shula then reverted to TA type and ended up as a secretary at Rodway and Watson. More recently Brenda - with a degree in Meedja - ended up doing the typing for Amside). Not many successful forays into HE apart from Alice (not forgetting Pipsqueak's current time at "uni").

Yes I know who sid is/was! Have been listening since about 2006 - basically when I started working for MNHQ

So Lucy is Jamie's halfsister?

Aha and it's just coincidence that Merial lives in NZ too?

And another thing;
why is JennyDarling so upset about Chris'n'Aliss not being invited to the wedding? Why are the Aldridges even invited at all?!?

Jennifer is Kenton's cousin.

And to answer your previous question re Kirsty and Tom, the pair of them were an item for years until Tom had an affair with a supermarket rep. They broke up, but I think she always held a candle for him.

Jenny is Kenton's first cousin (their fathers, Jack and Phil Archer were brothers) I don't really know why JD is upset about Alice and Chris not being invited though. I don't think they have ever been especially close to Kenton and Jolene.

God knows why as Tom is so resistable.

Please can the gg story be over soon as its beyond tedious.

Listening to the omnibus at work and pissing myself at Kathy and Jenny needing to 'de stress' at Grey Gables. What's the point of this storyline?? To prove how wonderful Lynda is??