💥 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!

Trying my hardest to be fair, it's probably right that every generation of Jack Archer descendants contains an alcoholic.

Is Lilian's drinking problematic? Other than during periods of extreme stress she seems to enjoy the anticipation and sociability of gin as much as its consumption. She's apparently very healthy.

Poor Alice does seem to be her grandfather's granddaughter. Do we know how much James Bellamy drinks?

Most people in Ambridge drink alcohol at least occasionally. I believe it's true that at a population level younger people now drink less than the middle-aged and elderly, possibly because the Muslim population is getting larger, maybe just as a normal part of rebelling against what they've seen their parents do.

I'm sure it's also true that women drink a lot more alcohol now than they used to because it's become more socially acceptable, even expected in some circles. The trouble with that is that Mother Nature hasn't caught up and female livers are smaller and more susceptible to damage from alcohol than male livers (IIRC). It's riskier on all fronts for a woman to drink heavily than for a man.

Maybe the SWs have thought about all of this and are slowly leading up to a health-related storyline for Alice, possibly around the impact on her fertility of all this drinking, or she might become pregnant and struggle not to drink. Or maybe they really are just sexist and misogynist.

If the SWs were going down the path of realism they might have Lilian succumb to COPD, heart disease or lung cancer. Her smoking is a worse health risk than her drinking, surely.

If we can all sit in restaurants and pubs, a metre apart, presumably the younger/healthy cast can get back to the studio to do a bit of recording (surrounded by perspex screens)?

They could have already done actual phne calls, rather than characters telling us they'd phoned someone. If the sound quality wasn't quite the same at both ends of the call, that's just like real life.

They could have invented a specialist engineering concern near Felpersham where she gradually worked up the ladder.

They opened one at the Berrow Farm office buildings, so Alice could stay close to home and thus within the range of the recording equipment. It wouldn't have been too difficult to have made that into a successful career for Alice, instead of drunkenly getting off with colleagues (that was also Aaron, who she complained was nitpicking about everything, wasn't it?) and doing sales rather than actual engineering.

When Kenton was having his sulk about having borrowed on his expectation and got badly into debt as a result for which he blamed exclusively the person who had not given him a lot of money, ane never once seemed to think that maybe his spending money that he did not have might be anything to do with it he seemed to be getting through a bottle of scotch from the bar on more than one evening, but that fizzled out the moment his family paid his immediate debts for him.

I think you only have to read the regular MN threads on 'how much do you drink' to realise that quite a lot of women drink quite a lot and don't see it as a problem. They also only want to hear responses from other drinkers (those who hardly drink are told they are being sanctimonious) so as to normalise the amount they drink.

Hmm. I don't particularly like alcoholism (two family members in my life, one male and one female, have died as a result of it, two more been badly scarred, and three non-family who were close have died) but I do not see drink as a demon or evil if it isn't a dependence. I worried when my ex-husband started to drink more than two cans of beer in front of the telly every singe night he was at home, because it was something he didn't seem to consider not doing, but I'd never felt that it was my job to stop him from drinking altogether, and I quite enjoyed alcohol myself with friends in a pub or at a special meal.

I think probably I go along with "a little bit of what you fancy does you good" and "moderation in all things", but that might be because I no longer enjoy getting plastered, throwing up and dealing with a hangover. If other people with younger livers want to, that's up to them so long as it isn't on me or my possessions that they throw up.

How many times have we heard Lilian drunk, on air? Not many, I don't think. Ditto Brian: a few times while the Ruairi mess was coming to its conclusion and he was breaking up with Siobhán Brian was drunk in conversation with David, and I think that's about it. Apart from the alcoholic Jack Archer, Alice has been more often drunk on air than almost anyone else except perhaps Tony or John when young, and Tony got over it and John died too young for us to know what might have happened later in his life.

I don't think she ever got off with Aaron; there was speculation about whether she might have done, but no evidence that I recall.

Oh, and the BBC are spelling that name Arun, I now discover: it's in yesterday's BBC synopsis.

I've said before, Phroebe should be sorting out the pandemic, seeing she has a degree in PPE.

there's lots of aerospace/MOD stuff going on there, which is right up her street. ... including this job - what a load of bollocks!

"Operating in a matrix organisation, you will influence the business, clients and internal teams at all levels to deliver project outcomes to time and budget."

I seriously doubt Alice's competence to get another job that she will think is worth her while; and she seems to think Price Beaumann will not give her a reference worth having, either.

Her training is ten years old now, and she doesn't seem to have been keeping up with the job she did have, let alone doing extra work to keep up with development elsewhere.

Truly TASWAMA.

Though I suspect it is at least as much because they have no idea at all what is involved in Alice's subject and don't want to have to write it. Not that that stops them when it is horses, or medicine, or the law either criminal or company, or....

I'm sure they don't know what's involved in an engineering job. I was intrigued tonight, though, when Alice admitted to herself that the MD wasn't happy with her performance while working from home during lockdown. Too much drinking during the working day, or just rubbish employer?

Frustrating that we nearly got a conversation between Debbie and Alice but yet again they bottled out of it.

(I take the same line as you, Asking, when it comes to drink.)

I missed it but can't be bothered.

MUM:

Debbie homesick.

Alice hyper.

Chris sounding increasingly like a man who wouldn't recognise his wife in a police line-up ...

and she seems to think Price Beaumann will not give her a reference worth having, either.
Again, the SW don't know what they are writing about. References these days are often no more than a scant "we confirm that they did work for us between xxx date and xxx date."

With 9m people furloughed and countless firms going bankrupt every day, it is tone deaf to suggest Alice would hand in her notice without a back-up plan. Chris is his mother’s son and would undoubtedly be anxious about the loss of income. As an Aldridge we know Alice will never starve or have to cross the threshold of a food bank but this storyline doesn’t work for me.

Apologies for my lack of manners! Huge thanks to Gasp0 for new thread!

Thanks Perdita. Debbie might be worth a listen.

Ooh, some quite pointed references to Alice's drinking habits! Even from Alice herself

Signposting a future SL maybe.....?

Or maybe they remembered an earlier abandoned plot?

Alice knows Daddy would never let her starve so can take the risk of leaving a job like that.

She doesn't need to pay a mortgage or rent.

Oh Debbie, do stop the mawkish guff! Between the ages of four and twenty-one you never saw your birth-father. If he had passed you in the street you wouldn't have known who he was, and he would not have recognised you either. He turned up for your twenty-first birthday, gave you a car and had a shag or two with your mother, until you told him to leave your mum alone and he went away. So all this getting back together stuff is nonsense: you can't get back what you didn't ever have.

If I didn’t know Debbie was played by a great actress, I wouldn’t draw that conclusion from this week’s listening...

It is mawkish, but I find it plausible (just about). It's not a logical reaction, it's entirely emotional. Brian was Debbie's father in all the ways that matter, but his affair with Siobhan hit her hard, especially because of how it affected Jennifer. Roger was never Father of the Year, but an absent father can be a blank canvas onto which the abandoned child can paint a picture of what might have been.

I did like the touch of Debbie starting to realise Hungary is not a very good place to be living at the moment. From the little of what I know about the political climate there, I find it totally believable that during this crisis the population might turn on foreigners. We saw it here with vile racism directed at Chinese students and people of Chinese heritage early on in the pandemic.