💥 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!

ROFL
Leave Shula alone!

I'd like her to be appreciated. Not keen on the vicaring SL - maybe she could have another fling. On the other hand, perhaps not.

OK, maybe a fling off mic with a silent. Or Roman.

OMG I love the idea of Shula stealing Roman away from Tracey! Imagine the fallout from that. You are a genius MUM. It would be worth keeping her alive for that.

Oh Chem, I think I love you.

Hands up all those who have ever said "I'm gasping for a bath!"

Gasping for a drink - yes
For a bath - no

Nope 'can't wait for a shower and gasping for a glass of water'.

I didn't like tonight's episode.

I didn't like tonight's episode

I have to say au contraire, @cameocat! I hugely enjoyed catching up with the local slave-master and son. Philip and Gareth’s ill-concealed contempt for the horses was unusually well-acted - given the parameters we are operating within. It’s good to have this slow-burning SL reignited.

Little Gareth says or does surprises me so I didn’t bat an eyelid at him gasping for a bath. I can imagine how thrilled Kelly was to see him during lockdown. She must have been congratulating herself on being the luckiest lady in Wales as she waved him off and out of her life forever!

I do hope reviving the slave storyline heralds the return of studio recordings.

What I would like to hear as we finally get back to some sort of normality is that Phoebe has woken up from her torpor during lockdown and realised that she doesn't want to live in Ambridge and potter about on the fringes of things. I hope to learn that she's moved to London and got a job more in keeping with being an Oxford PPE graduate. Research assistant to the local MP would do it, or some kind of researcher job at a think tank.

I couldn't agree more. It really bugs me that two of the most highly-qualified women in the main cast (Phoebe and Alice) are essentially doing bugger all with their degrees.

I hope there is a rapid conclusion to the slavery story, it’s been dragging on too long now. Gareth is too much the pantomime villain to be interesting, he’s so one dimensional.i hope a bridge justice is unrealistically swift and they’re both jailed and forgotten soon.

I, on the other hand, would like to see it drawn out for a bit longer - at least until we have proper multi-person scenes again and can enjoy some criminal capering with plod in hot pursuit.

And there's Kirsty - I'd like her to have some agency in the collapse of her domestic life this time, not just a surprise knock on the door from Harrison.

Agree Gavin is one dimensional - but Philip is entertaining under stress, desperately trying to maintain two personas, catch all the balls his son drops, and keep up the pretence of a legitimate business in the midst of an irksomely friendly community.

I couldn't agree more. It really bugs me that two of the most highly-qualified women in the main cast (Phoebe and Alice) are essentially doing bugger all with their degrees.

TASWAMA.

The men with degrees all do jobs using their education. Apart from GoldenPips/Ruth do any of the women?

Who are the men in Ambridge with degrees who do jobs using their education? Well, who are the men in Ambridge with degrees?

Adam: I doubt that he needed a degree to rear goats in Kenya, to be honest, and by the time he came back to Ambridge I don't suppose his 1990 2:1 in agricultural economics from Newcastle was terribly relevant really, especially since Brian didn't allow him any say in the planning or money side of anything.

Roy: stayed in the job he had been doing before he took his degree, and it doesn't seem to have made the slightest difference to him whether he had a degree or not.

Who else? Robert may have had one before starting his computing company, but it's quite possible that he didn't, and if he did I don't really think he is using a fifty-year-old degree in something else (no computing degrees to speak of when he would have been at university) to help him be a carer. Locke will have got one before becoming a doctor, but we have never been told that he did or where he trained.

David and Ruth both have qualifications from agricultural colleges; degree courses were first introduced at Harper Adams in 1981, so yes, Ruth probably got a degree rather than a diploma, but David, who left Cirencester Royal Agricultural College in 1978 after a two year course, would not have been offered a degree course there at that time anyway, but did I suppose use his higher education in the career he went into.

Justin has a degree from Cambridge, possibly. But he may have been pretending to something he did not have: the man is a consummate fake in many ways. And you don't need a degree to be a wheeler-dealer.

Oh, Alistair. He will certainly have a degree relevant to his veterinary training. Jim used a degree for his profession. Oliver might have got one before joining the army, though it is unlikely to have been something he used in either the army or being a gentleman farmer because they don't do degrees in those: does Sandhurst count as equivalent to a degree? But I am having to scrape around for men-with-degrees here. Oh, Rex and Toby, possibly, but I am sure no degrees are offered in taxi-driving or making gin.

Alan and Usha. Also Alan's daughter Amy, who is a midwife, but not in Ambridge.

Also, Helen has a cheese making diploma.

Usha would have a degree and using it as a solicitor.
Kathy and JD as former teachers are likely to have degrees, although probably B Ed., both gave up teaching.
Amy has a midwifery degree, I expect.

Ruth will have a degree or HND from Harper Adams, which is now a university. David studied at Cirencester, but I don't think that was a degree course.

Robert and Richard Thwaite would possibly have HNDs.

It seems sad that Alice, Phoebe and Lily, and Roy, are not using their qualifications.

I think this is fairly representative for a rural community, but nowadays, farmer's daughters are encouraged to do well academically, and sons study agriculture before returning to the farm.

What about Debbie? Only been listening about five or so years so my Debbie-knowledge is v limited...

It seems sad that Alice, Phoebe and Lily, and Roy, are not using their qualifications.

Was about to say "Lily doesn't have any qua ..."

What the jeff happened to her plan to go back to university??? I vaguely recall a heart to heart with Elizabeth but don't remember the outcome. Surely she only agreed to drop out for one year? She should be getting ready to re-start (even if at a distance).

If she doesn't get a degree it would be TASWAMA on a monumental scale. Why on Earth shouldn't she get to go away and challenge her brain?

#FeelingmurderoustowardsScumbagRuss

Debbie dropped out of a languages course at Exeter.

Lily and Debbie both left their courses at university without taking degrees. Neither has any qualifications after A-level.

Jennifer didn't take a degree; she went to a teacher training college in 1966, when those did not award degrees. (West Midland Training College, Walsall.) It's likely that Kathy went the same route, having been born in 1953; you didn't have to get a degree for teacher training when she was doing it. (We used to have kids from the teacher-training college up the hill from us as lodgers in the mid to late 70s, and they were taking diplomas, not degrees.)

It is possible Robert has a degree, unlikely that it was in computing given his age. The competent computer-people I know of about his age don't have degrees; they learned (and learn) on the job, and had eg history degrees before that, which were of no use to them whatever in their chosen careers.

Thanks Asking, in my line of work, people my age or older tend not to have degrees, having learnt on the job often as apprenticeships or gone to a college of further education or polytechnic and done an HND.

Recruiters are often recent graduates. The candidates for a position are filtered on having a 2:1 or above. The wealth of experience and skills that must be filtered out is shocking. Someone with a degree awarded in the 1980s or earlier are unlikely to have a 2:1 or above.

An example of a company I've worked before might be an engineering company, and engineers might have studied a course tailored to that company. I have worked with some very intelligent engineers who do not have a degree, and a few there had more than one PhD.

Following the degree talk, I'd like to catch up with Ben's A levels after the fiasco. Hope he's on track for somewhere interesting

Hope he's on track for somewhere interesting

It'll be Felpersham, sure as eggs is eggs.

(He was heard pondering possibilities a while ago, but, iirc, was beginning to think warmly of the local option ...)

He'll probably start the course but drop out. He can't outshine the Golden Child.

The competent computer-people I know of about his age don't have degrees; they learned (and learn) on the job, and had eg history degrees before that, which were of no use to them whatever in their chosen careers.

Some of our best techies have history degrees. I think my computer science degree got me the interview, but my history degree is what I use most days - the analytical skills particularly.

It would be good to hear what Lily's up to - I expect most gap year students have been rethinking and changing plans this year.

Lily has dumped her course and does not intend to return to it, according to her conversation with Elizabeth when Elizabeth was under the impression that she was packing her car to go back to Manchester and start the first year again. Last heard of she was working in kitchen telesales -- her mother having sold advertising space for the Borchester Echo, similarly but without the A-levels.

Any degree which teaches you how to think in a straightforward way is a great good thing; not all do, by any means.