🧚‍♀️ 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.)

Hope we're all listening to Ramblings on R4 right now??

He sounds so lovely.

Brains, voice, initiative, energy, empathy. Both a leader and a willing team player.

I am drafting my proposal of marriage right now ...

That's what I meant, only much more articulate, PPE! I'm afraid it did sound as if he's taken, though.

Oh, a lot of places do a vegan option, instead of a vegetarian option now. Kill two birds with one stone.

Its worse than that. The "vegetarian option" is frequently also the vegan, nut free, gluten free, soy free, flavour free option compounded by this problem:

[posted too soon this should be with the above]

but the vegetarian options if there are any are a bit beetroot/caramelised onion and goat's cheese or mushroom/butternut risotto

Each season there is a new "fashionable" vegan/allergy option. Each season this is pretty much the same in every restaurant.

The year it was beetroot tarts (I hate beetroot) was a year where I rarely entered a restaurant unless it was Indian/Chinese or similar.

I remember another year when every place had a tasteless "mushroom and nut fettucini". Presumably all these outlets buy in from the same suppliers (its quite an eye opener how many apparently up market places do this).

And OMG - the endless bloody risottos.

I’m a big fan of hugh fearnley whittingstall’s veg book, not a chewy meat substitute in sight

THat is why its a pretty good veg book. He tries to produce recipes based on the ingredients rather than recreate a meat dish substitute. He also doesn't assume we live on cheese.

My cousin is a veggie and hates butternut squash and goats cheese. Almost all menus seem have one or both as their only option

Many many moons ago, my bloke and I attended a university society Christmas meal. We were both veggie at the time. Our friends tucked into a turkey dinner with all the trimmings. We were presented with....a cheese salad

As one of the greediest people on the planet, I'd have been absolutely gutted about that, Sparkly.

Diana Wynne Jones, who had a seriously bad reaction to lactose, was once on a panel at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London before which they were going to feed all the people appearing. Everyone else got served some sort of slightly 'orrible lasagna-thing, very vegetarian and Suitable For Authors; she got what she later described as "a vegetarian brick, about the same size, shape and colour as those small yellowish slabs they have in the Fens, and about as much like food." On the drive back to Bristol afterwards she had to stop at a service-station because, as she put it, "I could feel the thing reconstituting just under my ribcage, all corners, and I knew the only way to deal with it was lots of liquid." That was the occasion on which she begged for soup but wanted to be reassured it had no milk in it, and asked to see the tin: they brought it out for her, on a sack-truck because it was a huge catering tin.

is a veggie and hates butternut squash and goats cheese. Almost all menus seem have one or both as their only option
I'm not alone then.
I'm a bit funny with mushrooms; sometimes I like them, sometimes not. Occasionally, both the starter and main will be mushroom-based (or both goats' cheese).

The Huge Fearlessly-Eatsitall books are great for ideas if you want to base it on two or three ingredients.

Goats' cheese is something I cannot have in the house, because some Greek goats' cheese gave my DH brucellosis in his teens and he fair took against the stuff.

I'll bear that in mind. I knew of brucellosis but not that it was something that affected humans.

brucellosis is one of the reasons that raw milk is to be treated with caution.
it's pretty unpleasant.

I grew up on raw milk, but a neighbour had to get rid of his herd because of brucellosis

A very soapy ending to the episode tonight. Chris and Alice at cross purposes again. However, I thought it was a good touch to reveal that Gavin's ex had a termination last year.

Philip's conversation the other night about moving Blake on was absolutely chilling. No wonder Gavin has a lot on his mind.

And Chris is going to tell everyone Susan.
How far gone is Alice?

I hope when we return on Monday we find that Alice has put him straight in the mean time. Bet we don't, though.

Oh right. The amazing cure for alcohol addiction - become pregnant and all your cravings and reaction to going cold turkey will just vanish.

I knew of brucellosis but not that it was something that affected humans. I worked for a short period in a Milk Marketing Board lab - we had to have regular tests for brucellosis in case we had caught it from the milk samples we were testing.

I remember when the vegetarian option was an omelette. But for a period after that, 1980s probably, I used to order the veggie option at mass catering events because that way you got something edible when everyone else got some unidentifiable bulk school dinner stuff (I'm talking about old-school type school dinners, whose purpose was to toughen you up and make you able to compliment your hostess on anything, no matter how badly cooked).

I hope when we return on Monday Oh, I'd forgotten that.

Michelin star restaurant? Really?

Gavin is having serious misgivings. He likes Kirsty. I wonder if he’ll be the one to tell her. He won’t have enjoyed being portrayed as a gambler, and I’m sure he knows what his father is capable of. Plenty of hints that he didn’t have a happy childhood. Philip is also going to be worrying about someone less naive than Kirsty hearing the word ‘horses’.

I’m very surprised to find that Gavin showing a softer side is actually working quite well for me. He’s far from Mr Darcy material at this stage but his gentle support to Alice and self-awareness about Kelly’s abortion was rather nice last night. I don’t believe he would have actually said ‘her body, her choice’ (or whatever the exact words were) about Kelly’s termination but I almost wanted him and Alice to run off into the sunset (via the Marie Stopes Clinic) after their chat by the river.

Chris is such a Neanderthal (remember when he said to Adam ‘no one speaks to my wife like that’!) and is going to epically fail to acknowledge or take seriously Alice’s ambivalence.