🧚‍♀️ 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.)

In my defence I was listening at lunchtime and thought "Eh, what was that?" and launched BBC Sounds to double check.

It did sound like a "Bridal Bag", and I concede that Alice's might be looking a bit tired after being schlepped back from Vegas a decade ago (
I hope this isn't some new urban slang word I've not heard of).

It turns out that bridle bags are a 'thing': I've just googled them. They look like those welly bags that some people use when they've run out of Bags for Life! I thought people just left bridles hanging up in a tack room, but maybe they get nicked these days? Maybe 'horses' steal them to sell on Ebay!

Listening to tonight's dull episode tonight, I was left wondering what had become of Bartleby? The Bull would get loads of media attention/custom if they had a pony and trap delivering beer to Ambridge and beyond. If it was good enough for Kirtsy's almost wedding....

Urgh!
I grew up in the part of Wales where the residents have no idea that the place names are meaningful and beautiful, and to hear names like Rhuddlan pronounced as Rudlund, Rhuallt as Roo-ult or Caergwrle as Kugurly is sickening.

Even worse is when some-pig ignorant person mispronounces the anglicised name.

Rant over.

Thank goodness that Pat went to Prestatyn not Llandudno or I would have smashed my radio.

This is why I get into arguments on the welsh baby name threads.

I still like Zeb Soanes (it wasn't just him), despite his less than perfect pronunciation of Llanelli, and the latest parts of Wales to go into lockdown are easier to get right.

I thought when I heard it that a bridle bag was something to be carried in the hand by someone who couldn't put their arm into a bridle until their shoulder was where the horse's ears go, and put the reins over their arm, in order to carry it that way. You still couldn't use that arm for anything much else when you were carrying a bag, thought I in a considering way, whereas with the method I used to use you could carry things in that hand as well as the bridle on your shoulder.

I sat up beyond my bedtime to catch up with tonight, expecting something exciting to have happened. Disappointed and disgusted. Harumph! Three days to wait too for the next episode.

Total tumbleweed when it comes to CMR these days. I’m surprised Elizabeth didn’t crowbar his name into her conversation with Freddie last night and say how brilliant it would be for him to help with the stage set of the Christmas play. Where is he?!?

Incidentally, I had hoped we would escape without one this year. Strange how the rest of theatre land is in total meltdown, with the arts teetering on the brink of oblivion, but the show still goes on in Ambridge...

@MikeUniformMike What do you expect us to do? Growing up in an English speaking household I can't even hear the Welsh sounds that aren't in the English set of sounds. So if I try and get it wrong, that's bad, and if I anglicise it, that's bad. So what's the alternative? Stay out of Wales altogether, and never, ever speak about it?

In normal times, we could expect some fun when CMR gets miffed that Freddie is being allowed to do the show. But as he seems to be off the cast list currently, who knows.

Mere, some places have anglicised names, Rhyl, Bala, Bangor-on-Dee, Mold, Abertillery, Ruthin.... I mean people who get those wrong, not people who would look at a name like Rhosllanerchrugog, Dwygyfylchi or Machynlleth (I mean you, Kenton Archer) and think 'I'm not even going to try'.

Some places you'd be hard pushed to find anyone local who is even aware that there is a welsh pronunciation (e.g. Bagillt, Towyn), or that the name is derived from a welsh name (e.g.Oystermouth).

I'd be expected to know how to say Cholmondeley, Daresbury, Mousehole, Hunstanton, Worcester, Bellingham etc. I've been laughed at for getting place names wrong.

If I am corrected, I try to get it right but if you correct someone if they mangle Afan or Ruthin, they will persist with their version.

You say you don't 'hear' the welsh sounds, and that is probably true, likewise, I struggle to get certain foreign sounds right.

You could always go to somewhere with an easy to say name.

Yes you'd think the Christmas Show might have been shelved this year.

I can see what might happen - Freddie will be going all out and doing well , or maybe just discovering more and more barriers, then will have to admit defeat and the whole village will lament and someone will have lost some money on set-building or hiring costumes or something.

This will mirror RL and the struggles of the acting and allied professions of which the ca** are a part.

Brides don't have bags.

Maybe Lynda will step in and save the day.

Where are they going with the Fallon storyline? It's not as if she and Harrison rushed into marriage, I find it hard to believe they wouldn't have talked about it. Surely that's a really important thing to determine before you get hitched. Also it didn't ring true that she would be discussing it with Jolene first and feeling concerned about disappointing her mum as if Harrison was just an afterthought. It's clearly all part of shoehorning in some over-arching theme about wanting/not wanting to have children - is Alice going to find an ally in Fallon? I can't work it out, but when it comes no doubt it will have something of the sledgehammer about it. Alice I can understand - her marriage to Chris was all about the impetuousness of young love, going against family expectations and the novelty of settling down and playing house without fully thinking through the implications of what she was getting herself into. Fallon and Harrison was quite the opposite.

MUM, "I'd be expected to know how to say Cholmondeley, Daresbury, Mousehole, Hunstanton, Worcester, Bellingham etc."

Interesting. Not by me you wouldn't! I'm as English as they come (ie I know of at least twelve different nationalities in my ancestry) and I have no idea how three of your six should be pronounced. I know Cholmondeley only because it was a standing joke at school (a dog of that name) and Mousehole because it appears in a book written by a Canadian. The only one I had in my head early on is Worcester, and that was because someone we knew lived there.

Why should anyone know the pronunciations for places to which they have never been, or people they've never met? I don't know how the locals say Pécs or Aarhus or Szczecin, and unless I go to one of these places, I doubt I shall ever need to. Jyväskylä I knew only after I had visited it.

Fallon and Harrison had discussed it and were not planning on any, but Fallon is now broody.

Alice and Chris married young and would probably not discussed it. Jenny was in her 40s when Alice was conceived, so it was probably something they assumed they would do one day.

I wondered if there's going to be a compare and contrast with how Fallon and Alice deal with it. Fallon will find it hard to tell Harrison, because he seemed to really enjoy looking after their niece, and he did mention that it might be nice to have a child, but she will tell him. Whereas Alice doesn't want to tell Chris she doesn't want children, she'd rather carry on with the pregnancy, as long as she can still keep drinking, then dump the baby on him and Jennifer/Susan, while hoping she miscarries and the problem will go away. Or something along those lines.

Baffled by Bellingham. There's one of those not a million miles from us and it's pronounced exactly as you would expect, but it could easily be one of those things where I've never notice a local pronunciation.

My son tells me I pronounce Shoreditch wrong, as I put the stress on the -ditch and he feels it should be on the Shore-. Ah well. Turning into my mum, who puts stresses in all sort of odd places.

I do enjoy hearing American tourists trying to get their heads round how to say Leicester Square.

And now we return to The Archers. I would say that when Fallon and Harrison got married their position was that both thought children were not an immediate priority, but maybe some day ... Not uncommon, I expect. Now they have to work through Fallon's announcement that she never wants to have any. I suspect Harrison will be disappointed.

Chris and Alice may have discussed it before they married, but they were both extremely young then. It's easy to say yes, fine, to something a long, long way in the future. Now it is the future, Alice is feeling differently and Chris isn't.

Has it ever been the other way round in Ambridge - woman keen to have a child, man lukewarm or against it? I can't think of any case, off the top of my head.

Asking, you'd look it up, or you'd ask, wouldn't you.
I'd guess those as Paitch, Shtetin, AhrrHoos, and maybe Yiffer-skeeler.
I might be way off though.

The Bellingham I was thinking of is in Northumberland.

Oops, way out with Jyväskylä.

Mike and Vicky, Gasp?

Has it ever been the other way round in Ambridge - woman keen to have a child, man lukewarm or against it? I can't think of any case, off the top of my head.

Helen did it without a man, with Henry, but deep down, she always wanted to be in a relationship.

Kirtsty wanted a baby and Philip didn't want another child.

MikeUniformMike
Asking, you'd look it up, or you'd ask, wouldn't you.
I would; but that brings us to Shrowsbury/Shrewsbury and Budapesht/Budapest. Sometimes even locals differ. And Krek Waiter's Peak Bristle only works on one side of the river there; on the other side it's a different language.

There are no outré pronunciations of villages near Ambridge, though. It makes me wonder sometimes whether it can be a real place...

@AskingQuestionsAllTheTime, Shrewsbury is Shroasbry (posh) or Shroosbry (less posh) or, if you live there, Shoosbry.

Isn't it Boodapesht.

There are no outré pronunciations of villages near Ambridge, though. It makes me wonder sometimes whether it can be a real place...
It seems fairly true to life. I've had a quick scan of the map and I can't see much outré-ness. We are simple, straightforward souls round here.
The only one I can think of (apart from Beauchamp, which is fairly standard isn't it? Worcester doesn't count either because everybody knows how to pronounce it thanks to Lea & Perrins) is Bevere. This is not pronounced in a Frenchified way akin to belvedere but as "Bevvery".

And Britwell Salome is Salome not Salomay. This confuses a lot of people who remember the one from the bible, and I imagine particularly those who say the bible one like a cooked sliced meat from the deli.

I would love it if the Ambridge-local Perivale were pronounced per-EE-vul, or Gassiotts Green were Gazzerts Green, or Acre, Uhcray; but as far as I know they are not. Is Henloe "Henlow" or "Henloo"? We may never know.

Kirtsty wanted a baby and Philip didn't want another child.

Which, as we now know, is a good thing.

Thinking about it, the people whose names might have been spelt not as they sounded were Tim Beecham not Beauchamp, and Caroline Bone not Bohun.