🧚‍♀️ 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.)

Well, there's no signs of them advertising a return to normal. They haven't said anything, I just think they're hoping we will forget it was ever more frequent.

I was assuming it was until they can record properly again. Which OK may not be for another year 😭......

But we've seen recent photos of them recording in what I assumed were studio conditions. (Someone posted the BBC photos - either here or in the Spoilers thread - can't remember.)

So now I'm wondering, too ...

There's Spoilers thread?? (Realises she hasn't read the OP properly.....)

But discussions are going on here of the plot : what are the rules?

Apologies if I've broken them!

Or has it all gone to pot (nothing personal, Freddie!) since the pandemic?

The spoilers thread contains advance plot that is actually known through reading the Daily Mail and the Radio Times, which give next week's updates, and the cast lists and BBC one-line teasers on the BBC website for weeks which have not yet been broadcast. There is a thread devoted to those things, for people who don't mind getting facts in advance. (You are asked not to get into too much speculation over there, or it would fill up very fast.)

Then there is this thread, which has plenty of speculation and discussion about the plot but nobody saying "aha, but it can't so-and-so because he isn't in the cast this month" or "the teaser for Friday says x" or even "Helen is in the cast next week so it can't be her who dies" -- which did happen a couple of times on another board, and spoiled things for a lot of people.

Ah thank you, that all makes sense! Phew.

Don't worry, August - the division between the two can be a bit hazy!

So, for instance, in the past week I've been sitting on my hands trying to avoid mentioning the R4 trailers - because usually they presage something exciting. But it's arguable that most TA listeners would also be listening to the rest of the R4 output, so they're not really spoilers. Still ...

And the daily website teasers give away nothing at all, to the point of sometimes being misleading - but some people object to seeing them so they're kept on the other thread and not mentioned here. (Can be somewhat challenging. I often have to check exactly which thread I'm about to comment on.)

Once or twice people have wailed loudly about discussion of events during or immediately after the broadcast of an episode. Thankfully, enough people pointed out that having to wait for confirmation that every possible lurker or poster had heard each episode before we talked about it would be unsustainable - so later listeners just need to avoid the thread until they've caught up.

The teasers are usually things like "There's shocking news for Lynda" but the episode will just have something like Eddy Grundy didn't want to be in the panto.

A spoiler on this thread would be something like a poster saying what a teaser for next Thursday is, or as Gasp said, who is in the cast list.

Thursday's BBC One Liner was "Fallon has a dilemma on her hands and Jazzer attempts to turn a situation to his advantage."

It's not exactly much in the way of "spoiler" given how little it says. Might mean almost anything in fact.

Having heard the episode I thought Jazzer didn't just attempt to turn the situation to his advantage: he came out of it six pints behind the bar and a crate of booze on his doorstep to the good.

Come to that, I don't think Fallon had much of a dilemma: her mum misunderstood something she had said and she corrected her misapprehension.

Sorry, I meant Eddie Grundy.

I made a list once of the commoner mis-spellings of the various characters. It's long!

I sometimes deliberately mis-spell e.g Fallen or Felon for Fallen.

Fallon even.

But not Eddie. Or, um, Freddie and Lily. Jill. Neil, Ian, Kathy, Russ, Clarrie, Sid, Tracy, or God forbid, Lynda.

There's a lot of deliberate misnaming at ambridgereporter.org.uk/nicknames.html
but Eddy, Freddy, Lillie, Gill, Neal, Iain, Cathy, Ross, Clarry, Syd, and Tracey are not there.

Felon is a good one; needs to be in that list if it isn't already.

Oh Asking, Mianed (mine) isn't on there.

CMR was mine too. Not that I am boasting because there are much better ones on that link.

Frilly is one of my faves.

How about the Chrysalis? Was that you as well?

SW1- Hello young person

Intern- Hello

SW1- so your task last week was to get up to speed with home mummysnet is feeling about us at the moment. Our previous young people have been a little disappointing in that area, they often tended to report only the negative news from there. After all if they didn’t like what we do they wouldn’t listen, We Are The Archers, after all.

Intern- Firstly I think they think the characters are The Archers, not the writers.

SW2 - how quaint of them, such a cute attitude, sweet.

Intern- So, at the moment they are pleased that some long running stories seem to be coming to a climax.

SW2. - Interesting...which stories?

Intern - mostly the horses.

SW1 - Oh yes that is “galloping” to its denouement. Only around seven months more to go before Kirsty starts to put two and two together.

Intern- To be honest I think they were hoping for more like seven days.

I'm with the SW on this. We've been complaining that things aren't allowed to develop properly, that EastEnders influences are showing. We can't really then turn round and say "hurry up with the horses".

Asking, yes, but Chalice is a possibility because the little blighter has been poisoned.

I wish I'd thought of Frilly.

The horses SL will probably carry on for a while. Poor Kirsty will be treated quite badly and will end up with Rotaboy.

I predict a Baby Burns - little Harrisonson, or Therdigrie if a girl, and the termination of the Chrysalis, running vaguely parallel.

It's about time we heard more from Tomtasha.

Urghh ... Christopher's birthday feast for Alice sounds so lame ... They're well off, and have access to both online shopping and the Bridge Farm shop all the time. How are olives and cheese a treat worthy of special mention? And the mocktails ...

Therdigrie ...

Thank you!

I think Fallon is being set up as someone for Alice to talk to. She will ask Alice how she feels about being pregnant and truly listen rather than brushing her feelings aside.