Archers thread #112: Quelle beau de lollox! And yet we stick with it. 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 Alf to stay around, 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 to @DoctorTwo for the thread title! I was strongly tempted by R4's suggestion of Wildlife on Four: Jonneh is wild at Lily, Phoebe rewilds by Occam, Joy is in the wilderness and David is bewildered by a marriage proposal.

So we did make it past Joe's funeral at last. Are we heading for a Christmas octogenarian wedding now?

I didn't mind yesterday's ep nearly as much as the foetal position CMR lollox the day before. Actually, I quite liked the bit at the end of yesterday when Eddie nearly broke down. He's just trying to get it right.

What I couldn't understand was why they couldn't just have multiple Santas on different shifts. It's not as though kids are likely to plan repeat visits to GWoC and compare and contrast the Yorkshire/Lancashire accents of Santa Leonard and Santa Harrison. And that would fit it better with people's work patterns. Or maybe I've misremembered and GWoC is only open for one day.

What I always found unlikely was an art teacher being in SLT at all, not because they lack ability, but that in 40+ years of teaching in 8 different school/colleges I've never encountered or even heard of an art teacher at this level. I assume it happens though.

When I was an NQT, there was an art teacher who was assistant head. It was quite a close knit staff (several family members and marriages - it was an area with not much mobility) and everyone liked him and his wife. They'd been married over a decade. He was in his mid-40s. Then he started an affair with an NQT the same year as me. It all got nasty. Particularly when they broke up and both went off work with mental health problems. That's why I remember him.

But I agree that it doesn't happen often, although I haven't taught in FE, where CMR was. Maybe it's a broader spectrum there given that they often teach a wider curriculum. Also agree that promotion to SLT is no reflection of teaching ability.

I must be thick, coming to the end of the academic year but it's only just dawned on me that all this CMR trying to direct Jim and the Santa interviews are substitute for the Lynda Snell Christmas production shenanigans of blessed memory.

Why is Russ looking for period furniture for his set anywhere other than the LL attics?

Exactly. There would have been servants rooms at LL in days of yore, there should be stacks of stuff around.

What was all that about? CMR would have sourced props from LL attic (which is the whole point after all), Eddie would have organised a rota of whichever Santas could fit in the costume (or picked someone retired like Leonard - or unemployed like CMR - who would be available full time). It actually made realise how Lynda’s personality and performance manages to inject at least a little humour into the usual Christmas casting session - last night didn’t work for me at all.

It’s absurd. Apart from anything else, in RL life nobody would have volunteered to be Santa and Eddie would have ended up having to do it.

I suggest that Rewilding Trio switch off their phones, grab a crayon and listen to Desert Island Disks.

Isabella Tree is going to be talking about rewilding. She might also mention that her glamming business is one of the more profitable enterprises (never understood why Phoebe didn't ask to rewilding Kate's parcel of land).

The more I think about it the more I wonder whether the editor was 'strongly encouraged' to have rewilding in Ambridge. It seems to get a mention elsewhere on the schedule most weeks.

That MIGHT explain why they have ended up with the 'team' being made up of an unemployed work-shy graduate, a part-time taxi-driver/hobby pig man and a cow/girl who can also drive a tractor. Everyone else was too busy?

Apologies for the typos

unemployed like CMR

He's a busy gallery manager, daily battling the philistines of Borsetshire. How could you possibly forget?

Trying to follow the SW’s thought process - for comedic purposes he wanted CMR to attend the audition. So he had to find a reason for him to be at the village hall. So he took him on a walk /drive from a stately home stuffed with antiques to the village, in case there might be some old tat lying about?

Give that man a BAFTA.

Have realised why I found Eddie touching - I recognised his tones of broken desperation from an occasion some time ago when, with no experience whatsoever, I had to cast and put on a show at very short notice, with very little help.

Still traumatised.

The lead up to Christmas is always irritatingly ludicrous in Ambridge. A vast cast of people is usually assembled for the Panto which is then painfully rehearsed with lots of dramatic flouncing then, at the last minute, everything comes together. The fact that absolutely everyone with a name in the village is IN the panto so that there can be no audience is irrelevant. It’s my least favourite time of the year in TA.

Yes nobody wants to be santa. In my experience it involves a fair amount of emotional blackmail to persuade someone.

so that there can be no audience

But the named are only a fraction of the Ambridge population. I don’t really have a picture of the size of the village, relative to others if it’s type, but (judging from villages I’ve lived in) I imagine there must be at least two or three thousand ‘un-named’ residents.

Although perhaps you meant no named audience members? They do generally manage one or two.

Right. I wrote I T S with no apostrophe. Phone changed it. I changed it back. Now look.

I will be writing my comments with pen and paper from now on.

Trying to follow the SW’s thought process - for comedic purposes he wanted CMR to attend the audition.
But why ......?
Bearing in mind the 'sleazy teacher grooms student' storyline, who is going to want CMR-Santa anywhere near young children?

Isabella Tree is on Desert Island Discs right now talking about re-wilding.

And she mentioned TA!

Yes Captain I heard it and was impressed on Sunday. She sounds a great person.

Surprise If anything Lily groomed him. She sought him out. I She was also 18 hardly a 'young child'

Re the population of Ambridge, surely a village of 3000 people would have more than one struggling pub, one struggling shop and one church? I live in a village about twice that size and there is a small supermarket, a newsagent, a couple of chip shops, three Chinese takeaways, a library, community centre, three churches, four pubs etc. I think of Ambridge as being on the hamlet side of villages.

That would be a huge village! Ours has about 400 people in it. One pub, a church, no shop.

“Surprise If anything Lily groomed him. She sought him out. I She was also 18 hardly a 'young child'“
Fuck me- that’s a truly vile post.

Lara groomed him too?

He must be very easily groomed. All these calculating teenagers desperate to trap him with their womanly wiles...