🧚‍♀️ Archers thread #120: Magic time. Dialogue! Good Fairy Lilian made Lynda’s wish come true. Will Phil vanish in a puff of smoke? Join the Magic Circle in Alice’s shed, where time is never called!

[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 hear more about the Naughty Milkman, 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 @Roysnewshirt for the excellent title suggestion, which I tweaked a bit.

I wonder how much dialogue we're going to get in the coming weeks. They're back to normal recording, I believe, albeit socially distanced. Also, when will we get our Friday and Sunday episodes back? I know I'm not the only regular to miss TA a lot more on Friday than on Sunday. The Sunday episode is still an incomer, of course, having only been introduced some 20 years ago, of course.

(My parents retired to a village and some features of Ambridge life are very familiar from their experience, the 'incomer' label being one.)

But not as loud as most of my Greek colleagues.

I'll never forgive her for saying the vegetarians could have turkey

And that vegetarian meals should include cheese.

TBF to Delia, her complete ignorance on vegetarian diets was no worse than other meat eating celeb chefs "doing" vegetarian or vegan. None of them are very good at it.

I'd also credit Delia with putting her money behind a free online cookery school which covers lots of basics in clear, simple lessons.

@MikeUniformMike Hmmm a termination storyline is signalled by the ‘it’s my body’ line. I can’t decide. It’d be an interesting one though.

I don't think there is a lot of hope that Kirsty will break the habits of a lifetime and have a happy ending to a story with her in it, though. I sometimes wonder what the editorial teams have all had against her.

Poor Kirsty is prime target because she has no family in Ambridge.
She's a catalyst in the SL.
She's neither a rude mechanical nor Ambridge aristocracy.

She did her best to marry in!

Alice is having to face up to four enormous issues at the moment - her drinking, her feelings about being a mother, her marriage, her career.

I'm not surprised she's struggling to articulate any of it to Chris.

It’s the drinking she needs to tackle - that’s why she lost her job and that’s why she is pregnant. I’m not sure about her marriage - I remember Brian described it as a starter marriage and I think he may had a point. She and Chris seem to be on very different tracks and he has yet to notice. They used to be very loved up, but they never really wanted the same things. His business is also what is keeping highly-qualified Alice yoked to Ambridge. I have just got the Chrysalis joke and can’t stop chuckling.

The drinking was probably a coping strategy to avoid thinking about the other things. Now it’s a problem in its own right.

@AskingQuestionsAllTheTime, she did, and failed spectacularly.

@C8H10N4O2,
TBF to Delia, her complete ignorance on vegetarian diets was no worse than other meat eating celeb chefs "doing" vegetarian or vegan. None of them are very good at it.

I agree. There are some very well known and much rated eating places not far from me but the vegetarian options if there are any are a bit beetroot/caramelised onion and goat's cheese or mushroom/butternut risotto. I wouldn't want to eat that at home never mind pay a fortune for it.

I can't help feeling that honestly, a vegetarian might prefer to have the vegetables that would be served with one or more of the other dishes on the menu and give the fancied-up "vegetarian specials" a miss. I know at least one who happily ate all the bits from the Christmas meal apart from the turkey and gravy, just the various veg and then the mince pies and brandy butter. I did offer to make something vegetarian to replace the turkey with, and was told not to bother; she reckoned she would get her protein at another time, and didn't need that much anyway, so I took her word for it. I did make vegetarian gravy for us all, using vegetable stock instead of turkey stock, and she said that was fine.

Vegan would have been more complicated, but how many posh eateries have a vegan option on their menus?

Oh, a lot of places do a vegan option, instead of a vegetarian option now. Kill two birds with one stone. I love dairy, so don't want vegan cheese or some other dairy substitute.

I'm all for vegan if it is just normal food (e.g chips). Vegan cheese - no thanks and although the 'plant-based' stuff is tasty it is a bit slimy and has loads of ingredients.

I agree with @AskingQuestionsAllTheTime, with all the veg minus the turkey. Usually if there is something to 'replace' the meat, it tends to be carby or veg based so lacks the density of meat, or it will be at odds with the rest of the meal.

I find cheese usually makes food a bit nicer but not goat's cheese.

@MikeUniformMike

Lynda often mispronounces things in a pretentious way, so the nasturtia is only to be expected.

The thing is we actually heard her say it .

Ideas for other Lynda-isms?

Oops, lots of ideas above.
When did Delia say about the turkey and the cheese?

I think she said "and for the vegetarians there is always turkey". It was in quite an early show, and I think she was in the garden and there was a white conservatory.
It was probably filmed in the summer.
Obviously it made an impression on me.

Back to turkey (think we have one Deli book, but loads of Jane Grigson's). I'm still waiting for them to insert a bit with Eddie going "Oh 'eck" when he realises that Christmas is going to be fairly antisocial.

What are they going to do with the rule of 6? Will Jill and Leonard go to LL, or will Pip and Rosie be expected to dine on an M&S Ready Meal with the Fairbrothers? Maybe they will just ignore Christmas altogether as presumably they will be planning the storylines round about now?

Clear daft, unless she is of the "of course bacon is vegetarian! Pigs grow in orchards" breed.

Phil's pig Freda certainly grew in the orchard. She was like the Empress of Blandings, a pet really, and enormous.

I’m a big fan of hugh fearnley whittingstall’s veg book, not a chewy meat substitute in sight. Yes i put kale on a pizza and i LOVED IT, it shook me to the core i tell you. The Bosh book is fab as well but there is a lot of liquidising involved and who can be arsed with all that?

It was a long time ago. I970s possibly.

In Ambridge we have Kate being a vegan (but as Peggy might put it as she did about "I'm her mother!", "only when it suits you, dear") and Amy was vegetarian, but apart from Elizabeth suddenly deciding to be a vegetarian in her teens to annoy Jill she stopped the following year I can't think of any others not being meat-eaters.

I'm really surprised to hear that Delia Smith said anything of that kind. Her Complete Cookery Course from the late 70s has a whole chapter on vegetarian cookery and lots of the recipes are vegetarian (especially if you aren't too fussy about rennet in cheese, as most vegetarians would have had to be back then). Her approach in more recent times has certainly been that people would do well to eat less meat, but make it high welfare, which is what I try to do.

Lucy Perks was a vegetarian, IIRC, of the proselytising kind. Did she let some farm animals out? Anyway, I don't think Sid had a lot of patience with it.

He wouldn't! Yes, she did some pre-Tom-and-Kirsty ecowarrior things.

I have always thought Kirsty would all least be vegetarian. I suppose that wouldn't have fitted with the sausage king but I'm surprised she hasn't discussed knowing her meat sources or meat free Monday.