💥 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!

They tend to do siblings quite well, I think, apart from the Cain & Abel type stuff.

I also think they have done Alice's lying to herself quite well. She comes from the offspring of a relatively heavy drinker (Brian). She was angry with Chris for breaking their agreement but didn't stop to consider that she had too. Her 'everyone gets drunk at funerals' is a common justification.

I hope they do her storyline well and she doesn't miraculously recover because that just isn't realistic. Alcoholism has a profound effect on all those around you (I know, I live with one)

Is Brian a heavy drinker? He and Jenny drink routinely but I don't think Brian often drinks himself into a stupor, and any drinking he does during the working day would be at an old school business lunch. He's too canny to drink so much that he would make a business decision he would regret once sober. On the evidence of the last few weeks, the same can't be said for Alice, who is a secret and solitary drinker at the moment.

The only time Brian was ever portrayed as getting drunk, as far as I remember, was when he had so comprehensively lost his baby son and his lover because he elected to stay with his wife and her grasping offspring his step-children, who wanted his farm. I don't think he got drunk on air when Siobhán died, or when he was choused out of his farm by Adam and Jennifer, or when the repulsive Kate forced the sale of his home.

I know vast numbers of people who drink socially and are not heavy drinkers. Apart from Alice, the person I'd think a heavy drinker in The Archers is Lilian, who like Alice is descended from the character whose drinking killed him, Jack Archer. I am unsure that it's fair to think that alcoholism is hereditary, though the editorial team seems to be veering that way.

Brian and Lilian are almost certainly daily drinkers who drink well over the recommended maximum and also use booze to help a range of social and business interactions along. They would probably find giving up quite difficult because its a habit rather than an addiction. However this normalisation of drinking, and it's use as a cure-all for emotional pain will not have helped.

Jack, Jennifers father and Aices grandfather, was an alcoholic.

I've just had a mammoth catch-up, of every episode currently on Sounds. My main thought is that it is a lot more riveting listening to it all in one go, so that there's perceptible movement of the plot lines.

And actually, I've only just realised that we had Phil and Gav talking, and Ed and Emma, and Emma and Chris and Alice.So it didn't come as a jolt, and so recent monologues can't have been that bad.

So much for Ed saying he wouldn't tell Emma or Chris - he's told Emma, and caused Chris to be told.

The recommended maximum alcohol intake per day in arbitrary units (like the five-fruit-a-day rule) was plucked out of thin air and has little or no foundation in any reason or sense (the committee minutes have been published and make this clear). It also fails to take any account of any factor whatever which differentiates one human being from another: age, weight, sex, diet, metabolic type and so on. It's like that idea that "any alcohol in your blood is too much for driving"; the human body makes alcohol all by itself by a process called endogenous ethanol production, so if that were the law, nobody would ever drive again. Embarrassingly, in some people this can be as much as two units of alcohol per day... See also the recommendation that heart patients (all heart patients, no matter what ails them) ought to aim to have zero salt intake in their diet, which I was told in all seriousness by a cardio physio with whom I didn't argue because there was clearly no point.

(Mind wanders off into mild theorising about whether perhaps extrovert types make more ethanol in their own metabolism than introverts, and take the age off their inhibitions simply with that.)

Daily drinking is not in and of itself evil anyway. time.com/4070762/red-wine-resveratrol-diabetes/ for instance. There are plenty of other studies which show beneficial effects for moderate alcohol consumption; it really is "a little bit of what you fancy does you good". As with most things, what is bad is not the thing itself: it is excess of it.

"take the age"? edge!

We know Brian keeps a bottle of whisky in the farm office. Alice found it and had a couple. But I think Brian would sometimes have one at the end of his working day,

I am hoping he fancies a snifter while in the office and discovers most of the whisky has gone.

I have a bottle of whisky here. Doesn't mean I have a drink from it every day!

(Actually I have about eight, because someone I know who is a single malt fan somehow got the impression I am too, and keeps giving Whisky Society bottles to me for Christmas. It doesn't get drunk.)

If Brian uses the farm office, why doesn't he ever seem to use it?

At my workplace, which I haven't set foot in for months, there are some bottles of wine in the kitchen cupboard left over from a Christmas party or a leaving do or similar. They've been there for years.

Brian's driving the combine.

The office is Adam's not Brian's, as Adam went to some trouble to make clear when Brian wanted to use it.

Has anyone seen the Adrian Chiles documentary on drinking (mostly his own drinking) on iPlayer. I would imagine Brian's drinking may be like that - some beers after a round of golf, some wine while cooking, more wine with the meal, a nightcap before going to bed, etc.

I haven't, Taswama. What was the general conclusion?

I found it.

When I was younger, I would find that a lot of socialising would revolve around food, or drink. I wasn't enjoying it, just eating for the sake of being sociable.

Alice specifically looked for, and found, Brian's whisky in the office. Doubtless there are others in the house - I'm not suggesting Brian has a tipple every time he goes into the office.

He was drinking something like 100 units a week but because it was all social (not hidden) drinking he hadn't considered that he might have a problem. Of course Alice was mostly a social drinker until her pact with Chris.

100 units a week is a lot!

@Chemenger

I know nothing of the law but would the Grey Gables insurers not be pursuing Phillip to recoup their money?

Yes. Highly likely, given that the accident report suggested that the liability for the explosion lay with Philip’s staff using the wrong solvent. However there will be some question mark over the grill being on as nobody other than Gav/Philip/Blake knows who did that or why, as I think Blake was warned off telling the police.

What would normally happen is that the GG I insurers would notify Philip that they were reserving their rights to make a subrogated claim against Philip. Phil would then have to notify his insurers, who would investigate. In the meantime the GG insurers would adjust their claim and agree a final payout with GG. Sometimes Phil’s insurers might be given the chance to step in and take over assessment of the main claim, but only if they admitted full liability up front, which would be rare. The whole process can take years, but it’s unrealistic that Phil’s insurers are not already on notice. (An additional complication is that Phil’s insurers might have grounds to decline cover given Phil’s dodgy dealings, in which case the GG insurer is actually more likely to drop the claim than to pursue Phil for what minuscule personal assets he may have, though it could be a good plot device to have him lose the house and make Kirsty homeless).

As for Tracy, highly likely that she has been convinced by an ambulance-chasing firm to being a claim, alleging PTSD or some such. She’d need medical evidence to support that so the claim is unlikely to go anywhere but her lawyer may be hoping for a “quick and dirty” nuisance value settlement. Could fall within Phil’s excess.

I imagine Brian's whisky in the office as the sort of thing he'd bring out to share with someone after they've done a deal. He might drink more than the recommended limits - interesting insight there AskingQuestionsAllTheTime - but he is not out of control. I do think Lilian is quite dependent though. The thing I find strange is that if Alice has seemed so drunk to Ed why does Chris not appear to have noticed too?

I am more excited than I have been for months with the Tracy twist - she will be harder for Gavin to silence than Roy I hope.

The Adrian Chiles programme was really interesting, not least because it felt to me that he knew perfectly well he drank too much. I wonder if it actually changed anything long term.

I also don’t understand how Chris hasn’t noticed yet but he’ll notice from now on.

Some clever person talked about Brian normalising drinking. My suggestion wasn't that Brian was out of control himself but that such regular drinking normalises things for someone like Alice. So if Brian has a glass of wine or two most nights or a beer round the golf course etc Alice has grown up seeing this. She then sees this is usual, but instead of it being a glass of wine or two she turns it into a bottle or two. This is how she justifies it just like everyone drinks at funerals (but not to that degree).

I have idly speculated up-thread how Alice should be living life as a young professional in a big city somewhere. This would involve working and playing hard and drinking a bottle of wine most nights, topped off with a couple of shots. Her social life would revolve around dashing to the pub with her colleagues after work and meeting up for drinks and dinner with her flat-mates. Post-Covid, she would be having virtual drinks via Zoom, of course.

No one would consider her a borderline alcoholic - she would simply be a party girl, who has mammoth hangovers which make work a bit of a struggle the next day. But because she is trapped in a boring marriage in Ambridge with the social life of someone twice her age, her in-laws feel able to judge her and think she has a problem.

I’m not saying she’s not drinking too much- but so are a large number of Alices living in the UK today...