💥 Archers thread #118: Back in time for The Archers - catch up with the catch up until the scriptwriters catch up! 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 think Philip Moss is in line for Employer of the Year, or other unusual views.

Spoilers: OK, there aren't likely to be many for the foreseeable future, but when we do have some, 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/3853783--The-Archers-spoilers-thread-5-Cant-wait-for-7-02pm-Join-us-here, 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 @LillianGish for the title! This thread starts at a very odd time for The Archers, longest-running soap opera in the world. No new episodes expected till late May , and when we do get them they're not going to sound like normal, as the actors are recording separately at home and the BBC is attempting to cobble it all together. Tough times for the sound effects team!

The BBC is filling the gap by repeating key episodes from the last 20 years. Some of us here will have heard them before, but not all, by any means, so if you want background on what you hear this is the place to ask.

Over to you! I must try to catch up with the repeats at some point today.

So sorry, essexmum777. Were we listening to the same episode?

I felt quite sad by the end of the episode. What a ghastly relationship Lilian and Justin have tumbled into. I wasn’t quite sure who I felt more sorry for - but it was probably Justin, on balance. Lilian is simply toxic...

@BashStreetKid, I wonder how many people in the general community know that bi-polar can be inherited. I’ve known for years but I think it’s quite plausible that Tom won’t and might not put it all together.

Regarding hypothyroidism/Hashimoto’s, the words are often used interchangeably in the U.K. IME Hashimoto’s is used more by folk across the big pond. In fact hypothyroidism is a word that’s describes a more general phenomenon of an underactive thyroid. Hashimoto’s is specifically the autoimmune type of hypothyroidism- so it doesn’t include other causes. eg somebody who needs thyroxine because their thyroid was removed due to cancer or as treatment for overactive thyroid (also called Grave’s disease) do not have Hashi’s. The vast majority of people in the U.K. and elsewhere who have underactive thyroid have Hashi’s. I can’t recall the stats exactly but it’s relatively rare to have a non-autoimmune cause for hypothyroidism. My son is one of these odd balls. In his teens he developed a massive goitre in his neck. Blood tests showed underactive thyroid - because of his age, and being male, he was referred to an endo. Because I have Hashimoto’s and several other AI conditions we all (GP, me, Endo) assumed he’d have Hashimoto’s. Bloods showed no autoimmune antibodies. It’s quite hard to know other causes - generally they ruled out causes like cancer and autoimmune and because he’s responded well to replacement thyroxine it’s probably due to a bad sinus infection a few months earlier that his body’s responded in this way.

Anyway, Ambridge - in the U.K. relatively few people see an endo if they have straightforward Hashimoto’s. But they should at least have yearly blood checks. My aunt ended up very ill (and with bone problems) because her GP didn’t remind her to have regular checks. My GPs are good about that and anyway I know it too. That could be a useful public reminder if they had Jill falling off a chair (getting a Christmas card off a bookcase even) because she hadn’t had a TFT done in the last 15 years.
My old GP - now retired - used to nearly always phone on a Friday around 7pm if he needed to speak to me about my thyroid or any other bits that don’t work properly. That would never happen in Ambridge though.

I hadn’t intended to make that such an essay.

I agree @Roysnewshirt. I couldn’t follow everything Lilian was saying but I didn’t like what I heard. She’s definitely had a personality transplant. She was never that awful before, was she.

I think the idea re Lilian and Justin is to show how people get more irritable and snappy, and their partners' annoying habits are magnified, in lockdown. I enjoyed it, although Tracey's has been way the best so far, she's such a good actress, always convincing, never sounds like she's reading lines.

Just read the previous page - I didn’t know Jill had been so ill with her hypothyroidism. I’d like to think being so ill would have meant she knew she needed regular testing. See my aunt - she was very ill when it first emerged - and very pregnant - and still didn’t know she needed annual tests. She wasn’t one of your brightest sparks really but she was a lovely person.

Lovely news about the uncle of MUM.

@AskingQuestionsAllTheTime No need to be snippy! My point was merely that for those us whose symptoms are not immediately life threatening and whose treatment has been satisfactory, it isn't a significant part of our life, and this could explain the comment someone made that no-one says they've had a good treatment experience. I'm not belittling Jill's or anyone else's experience or saying that their problem was trivial.

how do you ever stop dyeing once you have started? I did it by moving over to non-permanent dyes so they faded gradually. Once your "roots" along your parting have spread down to your ears, they no longer look like roots. And the line has smudged a bit too

I havent heard last nights yet but I have always loved Lillian. I know she isnt very popular on here but I have a soft spot for her.

MereDintofPandiculation, it's fine for you to think that there cannot be any problem about myxoedema, just give the patient T4 and it will be fine for the rest of her (or more rarely his) life and never need any further adjustment, but when people in the medical profession think this and deny that the patient can possibly need any adjustment to their medication it can leave the patient suicidal after three or four years of inadequate treatment -- if it were not that the patient is too damn tired to do anything so positive as self-harm.

There are two major hypothyroid medications, one of which is never considered in the NHS as an early option for hyperthyroid treatment. Many people for whom it would be the appropriate treatment have not even heard of it, and have spent years assuming that the inappropriate treatment is as good as it gets and they will feel awful for the rest of their lives. That is why I get angry.

it's fine for you to think that there cannot be any problem about myxoedema But I don't think that, and I didn't say that.

Hello hello, haven't posted in an age as I had several weeks of not listening. I've now caught up with TA and the thread. The most interesting thing about the new format is how it really distills what you love and hate about each character. I can't believe they started with David and Josh, just so boring (Josh slightly less so, admittedly). I liked Ben, all teenage bravado belittling Jill then dropping it and being a bit of a sweetie. Susan, Tracey and Emma - such great characters and acted so well. Susan sharing a little too much after drinking a little too much was not subtle but gave me a much needed laugh. Very interesting and well done to have a window into Helen's thoughts and the lasting damage done by Rob. I didn't mind Tony and Jonneh. I don't want Tony to have an affair with Joy, as I think it's more interesting the way it is at the moment - she's clearly stroking his ego and he's playing up to it. Very true to many men that age I know (including my dad who's a few years older). Also 'Grandad Hagrid' vs Frank Zappa made me chuckle. Ed - meh. Tom and Natasha - ugh. Lillian and Justin - make it stop, cannot stand the pair of them. I hate the way Lillian is acted, controversial I know.

The one thing that I really really hated was having Emma's beloved coffee table turn out to be hideous. Not funny and a cheap shot at the poor taste of the lower classes thinking they're summat when they're nowt (to quote League of Gentlemen). She LOVES that table, absolutely LOVES it. It being too big for the caravan I can just about accept (though that sums the whole thing up doesn't it? Her dreams are literally too big) but Ed telling her he hates it, nope.

I may have given too much thought to a table

"You" there was general, MereDintofPandiculation. An individual who does not have the power to dictate anyone else's diagnosis or treatment, or so I assume.

I was not replying to you in the first place, but you assumed it was personal-to-you so I then replied to you.

I assume you personally did not collapse as a result of acute myxoedama and have to be blue-lighted to hospital, staying there for some time because you remained in a dangerous condition? That was what happened to Jill.

Similarly, the Archers' casual "it takes six weeks and then the storyline is over" is equally annoying for anyone who has suffered from flail chest as a result of an accident and not been better enough to lug heavy wooden crosses around a few weeks later and return to blacksmithing as if nothing had happened; flail chest had ludicrously little effect on Chris Carter.

As I said upthread, I am very glad for people who get hypothyroidism which is immediately diagnosed and readily sorted out with a 20mcg or 40mcg dose of thyroxine (as opposed to their having to fight for liothyronine) once a day, but that is not always the case by any means, and it is irritating that Jill never has to go to the doctor for tests, and that Kenton can casually take off for furrin parts and stay away from England for an extra month without needing to work out whether he has enough of his medication with him.

Hellfire, my TSH was not even checked for seven months, even though on the second occasion I was taken into hospital as an emergency I asked whether it could be done at the same time as the other blood-tests that were being done: they said "yes, we can", and then didn't do it. With the result that I assumed that my thyroid was not what was making me so ill, and no doctor thought of it. (In the end it was suggested by a nurse.)

@AskingQuestionsAllTheTime Sorry I misunderstood "you" to be personal. The " MereDintofPandiculation, it's fine for you to think ..." misled me.

Sorry! I thought that linking it to "people in the medical profession" by putting them both in italics would make it clear, but it obviously didn't. My apologies.

Does anyone want to bet that this time Kate is pregnant?

Kate pregnant? She must be well on if so, but maybe it's not June in Ambridge at the moment.

No one would offer odds, Asking!

Might be three months in real time -- not counting from her previous period because we know they were being erratic, hence the scare a little while ago. Mid-March to mid-June since she last spent a night with Jakob, anyhow.

I know the script writers are trying to make the best out of very difficult circumstances but there are two things that are really annoying me

The way they have written peoples thoughts is really clunky.People just don’t explain things to themselves in full. For example you might think “ “That’s my favourite tree” but not “ Oh look that’s my favourite tree there, the one in Lillians garden” which is they way the characters are speaking to themselves.

There been hardly any plot development. There little point in keeping going if stories and characters aren’t allowed to develop. I’m hoping they’ll find a way to do that.

If it's June in Ambridge, she's missed the boat on on-line yoga classes

Hasn't she just! And her employee (for which, seems likely, read "the person who actually runs Spiritual Home whenever Kate can't be bothered") Lucy was better at this than she is, and got in there back in March.

I agree MrsGrindah. Most of the ruminations and one sided conversations have been filling in the time. I know they were faced with a difficult situation but surely the scriptwriters and digital techies could have produced something a bit more imaginative. A two sided telephone conversation can't be all that difficult, as with Kate and Jakob.

Monologues are a difficult art to perfect. I'm looking forward to the new series of Alan Bennett's 'Talking Heads' because each character really has something to hold your attention.

The sooner TA gets up and running the better.

I am not convinced by the way the characters address themselves in their thoughts by their own names “Come on Jakob, pull yourself together” etc. It’s like the ghost of Joe Grundy inhabiting them .

@TherapistInATabard thank you for your post. I agree with every word. I haven't posted for ages, but your analysis sums it all up for me perfectly. Especially your thoughts on Emma's table - spot on.