Call #111 for Archers advice: Is Hilda breathing? Should Joy be breathing? Could Nelson Gabriel be in cryogenic suspension? 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. 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 Joy'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 for all the input on title suggestions. I'd missed the significance of 111, but @R4 and DDD, our resident numerologist, were right on to it. Strongly tempted by Bore's suggestion but couldn't resist the chance to mention my favourite ever Archers character, Nelson Gabriel. Have not managed to incorporate a cricket reference, so you'll have to read up on that for yourselves. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nelson_(cricket)

I wonder if this thread will last till Joe's funeral.

Makes you wonder, doesn't it.....?

I used to live in the northeast. No way would most local people consider that a short distance. A lot of people living 10 miles from Newcastle, for example, would only travel into Newcastle once a year for Christmas shopping & possibly theatre trip.

I remember chatting to a woman on a bus who had moved less than 1/2 mile from one pit village to another and was missing her family and friends. Everyone else on the bus was very sympathetic about her plight.

Durham City is one train stop (under 20 minutes) from Newcastle. There were many people at both ends who had never been to the other city.

Let's put it this way, if Joy and Ruth are related, it's quite believable they'd have to wait for a coincidence like both living in Ambridge to find out!

“Except when it comes to binning a dull but inoffensive (he really wasn't in LTB territory) husband for no good - or at least fully articulated - reason and letting half the village know about his gambling 'problem'.“
I don’t think anyone has to stay married to someone they don’t want to be married to- although I do agree her reasons weren’t well explained.
I can’t remember her telling half the village. I do remember her sticking to him when they had to remortgage the house to pay off his debts and supporting him through relapses.....

Fink I think you must be moving in weird circles. I live near durham and don't recognise what you are talking about. I commute into newcastle , pretty much everyone I know commutes, that's why the traffic into Newcastle is a nightmare. Elderly people I know who don't drive regularly take the bus to the metro centre etc.
People in the pit villages couldn't survive if they didnt travel as their are few services left in those villages.

Honestly, with all the available characters and situations why introduce this ridiculous Carmen story? Where would Joe have been sneaking off to meet that horrible woman? When did he ever go anywhere under his own steam?

Also, did anyone else think that tonight's Carmen was played by the same actor who played last night's (drag queen) Carmen Avvago?

I looked this up because I was very sceptical that the supposed 'drag act' was played by a male actor. All the cast list says is 'Carmen - Mia Souteriou', so I don't know whether it's the same person playing both roles (surely they wouldn't fork out for two new actors when they evidently can't afford to let long-standing cast members appear? ) but Mia Souteriou is definitely female and has been a stalwart of R4 drama for many years.

birdsdestiny I think it's a class marker more than anything else. In Durham and Northumberland, the new estates in the pit villages and towns are full of professionals who travel for work. Our first house was in one of these and above 80% of our neighbours were public sector workers (education, NHS, police), often from out of the area and so used to travel. There was a row of 10 houses where every single household had at least one teacher! Before that (when we were renting), we lived in areas where nearly everyone was either a professional or a student.

This was a very different demographic from the original villagers and locals we gradually got to know.

Even now (I'm in the northeast about once a month), when I do outreach in schools I meet Year 10 and 11 pupils who have never been into Durham City except maybe once on a school trip. I was chatting to someone in the Market Hall in Durham who would only consider visiting the Metro Centre once a year on an organised coach trip. Whole year groups of pupils where not a single person has ever been to Hadrian's Wall, for example. A heart-rending conversation with a pupil who had straight 8s and 9s at GCSE but wouldn't consider any university other than the closest one.

I love the people in the northeast and would move back there in a heartbeat if I could afford it, this isn't in any way a criticism, just an observation.

I've lived in or near Durham for over 40 years a long time and in the early years it was as Fink says. I think it's changed over the years but still applies to some folk. However I have met Croydonians who rarely if ever go up to London.

Most exciting thing he ever did that I can recall was dying in a car crash. To be fair, that is quite exciting by most people's standards. I never forgave Shula the hunt sab incident. And while I don't think you should have to stay in an unhappy marriage, I think leaving it for no other reason than you're bored is hypocritical if at the same time you're claiming to take seriously a religion which regards marriage as for life "for better, for worse". In that situation, I don't think you should be the first to break the contract.

Both of my parents were buried within nine days of dying All the recent funerals I've been to have been about 3 weeks.

If nobody says 'scrumping' anymore, what do they say? Yeah, that's what I thought! Although I'm aware that some of the words I use are now regarded as obsolete. "Against" and "Whilst" for example.

I remember chatting to a woman on a bus who had moved less than 1/2 mile from one pit village to another and was missing her family and friends. Someone said to me in a disapproving voice "Of course he's not a local man - He's from [next small mill town along, so close that there isn't even a field between us]". My mother, who was brought up in a small village near Ambridge, said that when she was a child, you could tell from people's accents which village they were from, such was the tendency for people to stay in the same place all their life. (Apart, of course from all the people who didn't - DH's and DF's families were spread all over the place).

MereDint - Against is obsolete? What do people use instead?

Yes I think it is the north east of the past. And class/income can impact on travel and aspiration in all areas. I work in a range of schools in Newcastle every day, and grew up in a working class village in Northumberland. I can explain the Hadrian Wall thing though. Until about 5 - 10 years ago, Hadrians Wall was not attractive to families. My family lived half a mile from Hadrians Wall, no one I knew went there, however people travelled much further to Beamish, and other historical monuments. Current parents probably have awful childhood memories of Hadrians Wall

Same thing about universities here- a lot of working class kids can’t even visualise not going to the local one. Fortunately it’s very good- but still....

Oh yes, I'm sure class and income differences are also there in other areas. The northeast is the only region where I've had extensive contact with a lot of contact with very low income traditional white working class people so I can't speak to other areas. Otherwise I've been mainly in London and abroad, both quite different dynamics.

Blooming omnipresent Beamish though, I won't miss that. It's fine, I don't mind it every now and again (and I'm speaking as someone with 2 history degrees, I'm not averse to a bit of dressing up and examining the past), but the idea that it is the only possible family day out. [hmmm]

I wonder if Shula put the hunt sab incident into her autobiography?

Forgot to say that my experience of the very small horizon for working class kids is in the South East, 35 miles from Central London.

The HT of ds’s school was always saying “We need to get them to look up and out!”

MereDint - Against is obsolete? No it's not, I was talking rubbish there. Can't think what I was thinking of, it's another word with two alternatives, one ending in st, that I was thinking of.

Beveren

Maybe you were thinking of amongst.

The one thing I will say is someone from Prudhoe would have no reason to go to Shieldfield unless they knew someone there. Its a few residential streets in Newcastle. I have no idea why the SW have highlighted it.

I still think London is different, Bertrand, because even though the wc kids often have a similar lack of travel (at church we bring teenagers from Zone 4 into places like Hyde Park, main London museums & galleries, often for the first time unless there's been a primary school trip), they've got a much greater ethnic diversity and, even if it's somewhat superficial, experience of others' cultures. Which also means the attitude to career and educational aspirations is more varied.

I guess by the time you get 35 miles out though, you've gone back to very largely white British.

Anyway, my original point wasn't that the northeast is uniquely filled with people who don't travel far. I wasn't trying to compare with other regions at all, just say that I thought it unlikely Joy and Ruth's families would have mixed. The same may well be true if they came from two places 12 miles apart in most parts of the UK.

We’re most definitely not London. 35 miles is a loooooooong way! The school’s focus when considering radicalisation was extreme right wing groups....

Yes, in our direction you'd probably get out to about Billericay in 35 miles, that's almost the antithesis of London.

I am seriously losing the will to live

What a load of old twaddle that was.

It was nice to hear Robert but it was a lod of tosh.

InnntEEEEEERN! Sort them out! Now! Please.

load not lod

Wtf are they playing at? That was just bollocks.