💥 Archers thread #119: Has the Bull reopened? Will Ambridge pull through? We’ve all dozed off and haven't a clue. Moan about the monologues 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 we should have monologues all the time from now on, 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/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 PPE on the last thread for the title suggestion, which I tweaked a bit.

As for the current state of affairs: here's how it could have been done. www.youtube.com/channel/UCvRSVdfQWAjNhNu1AtABYjw Nigel Pargetter returns, albeit in spectral form. I loved these.

I don't love the current set up. Very, very hit and miss for me - but I am too much of an addict to give it up. Looking for a silver lining, maybe the rather clunky trot through the Aldridge family tree last night was helpful to newer listeners. It is rather convoluted. In 12.5 minutes they managed to explain that Adam and Debbie are Jennifer's children by different fathers, that Debbie's father Roger Travers-Macy adopted Adam, that after he and Jenny divorced she married Brian and that he (secretly) loves Adam and not nearly so secretly adores Debbie. I don't think they explicitly stated that Kate and Alice are Brian's children with Jenny, but they did manage to squeeze in a mention of Siobhan and Ruairi, and explain that Xander is Adam's son by a surrogate and has no genetic connection to either Brian or Xander's other father Ian. Phew!

CheetasOnFajitas
But do you think Alice went state for 6th form too @AskingQuestionsAllTheTime?

Well, yes, I think that because it's what happened: Alice decided to insist on a local state school for sixth form, having previously been at some invented fee-paying school rather than following her sisters to Cheltenham Ladies' College -- perhaps CLC wouldn't take her after their experience of Kate, and who shall blame them?

Felpersham Cathedral School is fee-paying. I think Cathedral schools tend to be except for pupils with exceptional voices, who become choristers and get in free or at a very reduced rate.

Phil was going to pay Pip's fees to go to the Cathedral school and it was hoped she would get there with a music scholarship, but she chickened out because it was all too difficult for her poor little brain to cope with. Daniel went there and seemed happy.

Incidentally, Alice made a good decision: many universities give preference to non-fee-paying schools in their admissions process, for government funding reasons, so you are more likely to get a place at your university of choice with ordinary grades from a state school than with ordinary grades from a fee-paying one.

Well, yes, I think that because it's what happened:

Sorry @AskingQuestionsAllTheTime I seem to have irritated you with my question, I was just asking as I genuinely could not remember, and you seem to know a lot but hadn’t mentioned Alice in your previous reply, just Lily. ,

Sorry: I thought that Alice had already been covered, so I didn't bother with her.

It's too damn hot; I didn't mean to snap, I am simply ratty.

David and Ruth made a very late decision to put Pip in for the entrance exam at the Cathedral School (October/November for an entrance exam in January, IIRC). They were strongly influenced by Phil, who had suddenly and unaccountably decided that Borchester Green wasn't good enough for his adored granddaughter. He thought she was musically talented. The mercifully short clips we heard of her playing the piano indicated that he was not being very objective about her abilities.

Ruth had reservations about the Cathedral School for Pip, and so did Jill, who has consistently been against private schools for decades. David and Ruth did try to get hold of a private tutor for Pip but as it was a matter of weeks before the exam it was hopeless. Eventually one of them, can't remember which, found Pip in tears over all the extra work and pressure of expectations, and made the sensible decision to forget about the whole thing.

Alice needed no special consideration for her A level grades. She got As for everything, didn't she? This is why it's so frustrating that the SWs have given her such a mediocre career trajectory. She worked hard and had a very good grounding, but nobody gets all As in science and maths A levels, especially at a sixth form college rather than a private school, without having some natural academic ability.

Daniel is brighter than Pip and Shula started planning realistically early for getting him into the Cathedral School. We did see that it was touch and go for Freddie to get in. Many people would say that he'd have done better at Borchester Green from the outset. He's not thick, but being at the lower end of the ability range in an academically selective school can make a young person believe that they are thick. I saw this at my own school, and at a school reunion recently it was clear that 40 years on some of that insecurity was still there.

I dread to think how Adam Macy is going to play a recuperating Adam

I wrote this on 4th August - I thought Adam Macy was the actor!

Girls who didn't do well in their A-levels were encouraged to go to the local tech to do 'seckitarial' or to teacher training college

Why are you spelling secretarial that way? I know you're trying to make a point but I don't get it.

I hear and read about how the 11-plus made children feel like failures at 11, but is that worse than being made to feel a failure at 17+?

Sorry to be political - but my very bright Mum passed the 11+, but the school she ended up at was so alien and middle class that not only was she bored because she was in advance of most of her class mates. But also she stuck out and was unhappy at the school - which despite the attempts of some teachers meant she was expelled and ended up leaving school at 14.
She did support me so I knew University was a possibility. But no teachers took me under their wing, and I did struggle when I first got to University and she didn't have the capital to help me then.
And lots of bright WC children fail/failed to get into Grammar Schools. The MC parents tend to know how to help their children through the system.

Alice’s drinking is a symptom, not a cause. She is bored with life and drinking takes the edge off things. She is always talking about wanting to have fun’ and if she had got a job after university in London, Leeds or any other big city then she would be doing just that. As a young (unmarried) professional she would be mixing with her work colleagues, dating, jogging in Lycra and going to pop-up restaurants with friends (obv not with Covid); but as it is she has endless evenings in with Chris (nice but soo dull and always nagging about starting a family) and the odd Sunday lunch with the family so an evening in the shed with a bottle of gin seems like an appealing option. She should have left like Debbie. Ambridge is just too restricting at the moment.

Marry in haste...

Oh and I don’t mind Alice bitching about Emma because sisters-in-law are fair game...

Ok. That’s it.

Cultural capital - mediocre kids with cultural capital are found a job through contacts. Mediocre kids without cultural capital end up burger flipping. Equality of opportunity isn't about selecting a few outstanding kids and giving them opportunities - it's about the mass of children having opportunity despite their birth.

(But all parents will try to advantage their children, so you will never achieve equality, so the sensible thing is to not makea "winner takes all" society.)

@Roysnewshirt, that's a very astute observation about Alice's drinking. You could be on to something there. I wonder if the SWs are going to pursue this jobshare idea. Great for Adam for a few years, not so great for Alice unless she has a Damascene conversion to the idea of having a child of her own.

@MollyButton, sorry to hear about your Mum's experience. I was talking not long ago to a woman who went to my own school who had a similar experience. Decades ago it was sink or swim for children, wasn't it? I would like to think it's better now.

As a young (unmarried) professional she would be mixing with her work colleagues, dating, jogging in Lycra and going to pop-up restaurants with friends Is that what young professionals have to spend their time doing nowadays? I'm so glad I was born when I was.

And lots of bright WC children fail/failed to get into Grammar Schools. The MC parents tend to know how to help their children through the system

I also remember WC girls in particular not being allowed to go to grammar school by fathers who didn't believe in education for girls. ("Gives them ideas" was one memorable quote). I also remember bright girls having to leave school at 16 and get jobs for the same reason.

The other group I remember not going to grammar schools were from families who couldn't afford all the hidden costs. Costs which were played up on open days. If a family couldn't afford to send all their children then the boys would be prioritised.

I'm in my 50s, I was aware of this happening all through my school career.

Adam needs to be put out of his (and our) misery.

When I heard the mention of job sharing, I thought it was opening up the return of Debbie.

I thought the job share implied Debbie, too.

Isn't Xander a bit young for farms?

Adam needs to be put out of his (and our) misery.
I have a theory that Andrew Wincott has a bet on with a friend to see how ludicrous the portrayal of Adam's voice (the stresses in all the wrong places, always sounds as if he will run out of breath before the end of the sentence, as devoid of emotion as a plank of wood, that awful shouting-but-not-shouting thing he does ...) has to become before AW gets the sack.

I don’t mind Adam, in fact I was fond of someone who sounded quite like him so maybe this explains why I think of him as a bit hot but not knowing.

Adam's actor will never be replaced. No-one could take on the vocal mantle.

Roysnewshirt excellent assessment of Alice - hers is one of the few storylines I feel I can get on board with at the moment because it hasn't come out of nowhere and her drinking feels like something that would have been exacerbated by lockdown. I do agree however that in reality there is no way a girl like Alice would have stayed so close to home - she was married off to Chris for the same reason that she and others mentioned here were brought back to Borchester for sixth form - so she could stay in the cast. I know it's not real, but I like to be allowed to believe that it is so I don't like it when you can see the nuts and bolts. The Adam job share - hate his delivery in the monologues though usually I don't mind him - feels hugely contrived. I'm interested to see what happens to Emma as the tea room dilemma is very much of the moment, though it's hard to see how Fallon would manage without her when she only has a staff of two, including herself. I think the SWs have missed a trick in not exploring the slave story - they could have used some monologues from Philip and Gavin (and even from the slave house itself) to fill in the gaps and keep us in the picture.

I've just listened and Adam's over enunciation is absolutely awful.

Being middle class and going to independent schools hasn't always been an advantage. I went to a very naice boarding school, I think mainly because my parents couldn't think what else to do - we were abroad at 11+ time. The school was all right-ish, but it was definitely not in the business of producing bluestockings. There were six people doing A levels in my year, and that was an unusually large number for that school. I did go on to university, but essentially it was despite the school rather than because of it, and for much of the time that I was there I was a bit of a fish out of water as I had very little interest in games, fashion, sewing etc and wasn't destined to be a debutante or go on to a finishing school. I've often thought that I would have been much better off in a grammar or a comp, if comps had existed then, and would have been much better prepared for the big wide world.

I do agree that the monologue format doesn't do Adam actor any favours. I suspect they might have been better off scrapping his bits when they heard them, and substituting people like Ian and Brian telling us what Adam is doing.