🧚‍♀️ 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.)

I had an old account linked to a different e-mail address.

As my son said when I showed him my magnetic knife-block, which looks like wood: "Now you're just trying to fuck with my head."

Waaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Also, no wonder MNHQ was confused.

Did you show MNHQ your knife block?

I didn't confuse MNHQ, but I name changed and started a thread that made a reference to something that might be considered trolling material.

Alice nagging Fallon to tell Harrison that she doesn’t want babies was weird. Fallon would understand more than anyone her reluctance to continue the pregnancy. She could at least have tested the water with saying that she wasn’t sure how to feel about it, even if she couldn’t admit to wanting an abortion.

MikeUniformMike
Did you show MNHQ your knife block?

I would if I could but I casn't.

I really don’t envy Jill getting a new mixer for her birthday. She can probably churn out cakes in her sleep using the old one so why on earth would she want to waste her time reading a manual and having to work out where the batons/whisks slot in on the new one. Such an ill-judged gift. It must be the very last thing she would want.

I don’t know her very well but I think she would have preferred a nice silk blouse or scarf for going on dates with Leonard or may be even a couple of fancy chickens (how about the ones with fluffy feathers on their feet?) with a new coop which the boys have thoughtfully made.

The mixer gift serves the family more than it does Jill. They aren’t thinking of her but rather the lemon drizzles they hope she will keep producing...

I am slightly mournful about the disappearance of ILoveShula. Surely it's a first on any Archers forum to see positive Shula sentiments?

I agree that the mixer was probably not what Jill would have wanted. She probably has an old rotary whisk she is quite happy to use. I was interested to hear Continuity announce that the Alice Fallon interchange was recorded pre lockdown. Does this mean they are recycling bits from the episodes that were ditched at the beginning of lockdown? At the same time, Jill and Ben's discussion about Freshers Week is clearly much more recent.

I don't think they meant pre-March-lockdown - rather pre-new restrictions forbidding gatherings of more than six people, and (if Ambridge/ Lower Loxley happen to be within an area of special concern) preventing the mixing of households. Both of those rules would now preclude the family gathering for Jill's birthday and Alice and Fallon visiting each other's home.

Whether they're resurrecting parts of their abandoned Spring scripts is an interesting question, though.

I don't think they meant pre-March-lockdown - rather pre-new restrictions forbidding gatherings of more than six people

Ah, that makes sense, PersephonePromotesEquinamity. After the editor stated that they were not going to progress major plot lines during the Drearologues, I did wonder if they had material about Philip and Gavin that was going to be postponed for later use.

It was wonderful to hear Jill again. She reminds me of my Mum in some ways, although my Mum would rather die than attend a demo and end up in police custody for throwing a flapjack. My Dad has definite Phil-like tendencies.

Just to add to the Jill/Peggy talk upthread, Peggy has been in TA from the first week or so back in 1951. At that point she and Jack Archer, the eldest son of the Brookfield family, had been married some years. Phil and Christine were still single. I gather that in true soap style the SWs thought putting Phil into a protracted will-they-won't-they on-off romance with Grace Fairbrother, his eventual first wife, would be a way of keeping listeners engaged. However, not long after they'd finally married them off, the powers that be at the BBC decided that they could usefully distract tens of millions of regular TA listeners from the opening night of ITV by killing Grace off in a fire.

Jill is Phil's second wife. Phil and Grace had had no time to have children, though IIRC Grace had just told Phil she was pregnant, to ramp up the pathos even more.

Just to add to the complexity of things, Peggy's first husband Jack Archer died of alcoholism and she married her second Jack (Woolley) after many years of protracted will-they-won't-they on-off romance. I wonder how many of those there have been in total over the last 69 years.

Such an ill-judged gift. It must be the very last thing she would want

I thought it was an odd choice if she hadn't expressed a wish or been complaining about problems with her old mixer. I can understand someone Ben's age thinking it would be ideal for a cake making grandma but David really should know better

Ysanne Churchman, who played Grace Archer, has suggested that she was killed off because she wanted equal pay, not because of the ITV launch, Gasp0de.

I am generally critical of Sean O'Connor as editor of The Archers but he was responsible for an interesting play about it. Other people at the time agreed that there was something in Churchman's accusation:

www.radiotimes.com/news/2015-09-19/was-an-archers-character-once-killed-off-for-nefarious-purposes/

More TASWAMA maybe?

More TASWAMA maybe?

That was a fascinating programme (assuming you heard the same interviews and archive recordings). It could well have been that they wanted a big story to compete with ITV and that as a "troublemaker" she was a convenient sacrifice. She wouldn't be the only woman dispensed with for wanting equal pay (although I think she was lobbying for the equity rates for all the team, it wasn't only women being short changed).

I think the BBC did admit decades after the event that they wanted to sabotage the ITV launch. I expect they asked the production team to pick someone youngish and unexpected but dispensable to kill off and they picked Ysanne Churchman. The union thing may have sealed her fate, but there's a good chance they'd have gone for her anyway. They'd never have killed off an Archer.

An Archer by blood, I mean.

It was an ill-judged gift, but I find that completely realistic. It won't be long before AIBU and Chat are deluged with people reporting Christmas gifts which have disappointed or outright infuriated them. David and Ruth don't strike me as likely to be good at spotting the perfect present, especially for a 90-year-old woman who already has just about everything she could ever want or need.

I make cakes with a hand-held mixer from Argos and a suitable mixing bowl. All the women in my family when I was growing up used those, or beat the batter by hand, as I recall. I love it. The mixer takes up very little room, the beaters come off and go in the dishwasher, and the hand-held bit just needs a wipe over. When something goes wrong with it, every 10-15 years, I splash out another £5 or so and get a new one. What's the advantage of one of those huge KitchenAid things they have on Bake Off?

An Archer by blood, I mean

John?

Bugger, caught out. Well done, @C8H10N4O2, you have passed my cleverly devised test!

Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g

And beore 9:00! I'll now take my brain off for a little rest.

David and Ruth don't strike me as likely to be good at spotting the perfect present

I think Lizard was involved in the gift-buying too. I seem to remember her mentioning it to Freddie the other day. How awful to have children who really don’t know you to that extent. May be that’s normal though - I thankfully don’t have any so will never know.

Like you @Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g, I have a hand-held electric whisk. I would want no other. It makes excellent mayo as well as cakes and whips double cream to within an inch of its life...

My daughter gave me a Kitchen Aid for my 60th. I love it and use it nearly every day but I'm not sure I'd want one when I'm 90.

I make cakes with a hand-held mixer from Argos and a suitable mixing bowl - me too Gaspode. Apart from anything else I want something I can keep in a drawer when I'm not using it, not have some huge piece of tackle cluttering up the side. Not a well thought out gift for Jill unless she had been hankering after one, but one that sums up exactly how the family sees her (and us come to think of it ) - as a maker of cakes. Slightly at odds with huge and thoughtful effort that went into her party. I love the fact that we are all discussing Jill's cake mixer and not her potential discovery of a priceless Roman hoard - but that should tell the SWs (if any happen to be lurking on here) what we are really interested in

not some huge piece of tackle cluttering up the side.
After years of me going on about "footprint", I think DH finally gets it. For kitchenware, at least. Whenever he wants an impulse buy, my immediate response is, "where will we put it?" He is hankering after a mid-life-crisis classic car atm. I've told him he can have one if I can have the outbuildings and rolling acres of grounds to put it in.

I'm another hand held mixer fan. Mine was supposed to be a stopgap while deciding which fancy new machine to bankrupt myself for. I spent hours in the kitchen department of John Lewis - and then bought one in Sainsbury's. I've had it ten years now, working perfectly.

Having grown up with a big Kenwood and owned an even bigger one years ago, the little hand mixer is a bit of a relief. It's only when I'm making a family Christmas cake that I long, momentarily, for a stand mixer.

Thing is, they probably asked Jill what she'd like - and she probably replied that there was absolutely nothing she wanted or needed.

I do love her relationship with Ben. Just occasionally the SWs do something wonderful. Deserves a BOOP.

I'd be outstandingly interested in the Roman hoard if they got Mackenzie Crook to write it, and had Toby Jones as the visiting expert, who then falls in love with an Ambridge resident and stays forever.