🧚‍♀️ 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.)

who then falls in love with an Ambridge resident and stays forever.
Can we have Andy/Mackenzie as the visiting expert, with Debbie as his Becky. That would be awesome.

I thought of John too. IIRC the actor thought he was destined for bigger and better things. Not a blood Archer, but they had Mark dedded for similar reasons.

make cakes with a hand-held mixer from Argos and a suitable mixing bowl Me too. I can mix a second batch without having to wash the mixer bowl first, just pick another bowl out of the cupboard, and when I've finished it tucks neatly into the larder alongside my proper scales which I love using, complete with weights - none of these new-fangled electronic things.

It's only when I'm making a family Christmas cake that I long, momentarily, for a stand mixer. Which bit of a Christmas cake could you use a mixer for? Surely all that fruit that mustn't be mushed to pulp means you can't use an electric mixer?

You can't make bread with a hand mixer (although you can just use your hands). I use my kitchen aid for this as well as cakes, pastry, scones, grating, slicing etc. It lives on the worktop because I think it is a thing of beauty.

The food mixer was an appalling gift choice, for reasons mentioned in pp. I'd have gone for a cashmere jumper or cardigan (cream or ecru so that it could be passed to DD1) or a beautiful silk scarf or something.

I am crap at presents though but not bad at buying clothes for people I know well. I generally don't give or receive presents at the usual times, unless I have bought them during the year.

Generally, the people I do exchange gifts with get it right, and so I hope do I. I find the Gift Guides to be appalling and sexist.

FWIW, if I wanted a food mixer, I'd want to choose it, and would probably go for one that could be put away. I had a brand new hand held one, and somebody borrowed it, broke it but didn't replace it.

I agree it was a bad choice for her. She obviously didn't want it.

Thank you all for your contributions. I now want a homemade cake. My mum’s birthday on Friday. I’m not a great cake maker but I can do the basics. Maybe I should do her one.

Mere, my family are weirdly unkeen on recognisable things contained in cake (dried fruit, nuts, etc,) so a bit of pulping is all to the good.

Captain, my hand mixer has a dough hook as well as a whisk. I probably used it when I last made bread - but I don't have the patience for bread making so it was a while ago. Pretty sure I use the dough hook for pastry, though.

I'm having to avoid baking right now - clothes getting tight.

I wonder if Jill uses a stick blender (mine's in use almost every day) or a huge jug ...

I also use a stick blender for soups etc. Mine has a small container attachment to blend smallish quantities.

I use a stick blender for making hummus. I rarely use the jug that it came with. It has a chopper attachment that I have never used.

I don't eat soup or pastry, and rarely eat cake other than the odd cheese scone.

Yes that was the one I heard C8H10N4O2 - the dramatised version and an interview with Ysanne Churchman.

I'd love to see an AIBU thread based on Jill's dissatisfaction with the Kitchen Aid. Replies would range from her total ingratitude to suggestions that she went totally no contact with her family. That would be a problem for David and Ruth who clearly enjoy Jill's cooking.

The main advantage of stick blenders and hand held mixers is that they are much easier to wash up. I rarely use my food processor unless I am batch cooking - an increasingly rare event.

I probably use the stick blender most, for soups in particular, but also blending stuff like stuffing mix. The egg whisk, too. I have used the chopper, especially for biscuits for cheesecake bases. I do have Mum's Kenwood (which is older than I am, but the hand blender is usually easier. I don't often do mass catering, though, and I tend to mix cakes by hand.

I love making bread, but haven't done it for ages, as I can't stop eating it and I eat quite enough already. I've always made it by hand. I find it therapeutic, both the kneading and the waiting around while it rises.

Stick blender - wonderful bit of kit! So much handier than a blender for most things, as I blend soup in the pot I made it in, so it saves washing up, and takes up far less space. None of that awkwardness when I realise the blender jug won't take all the soup (I can't manage to make soup in small quantities, I usually make enough to keep a soup kitchen going for a week) so I have to faff around with an extra pot or bowl for the first lot of blended soup.

I bet Jill makes fabulous soup and bread. I can think of worse things to be remembered for than being a terrific cook. My grandmothers and my two fondly remembered aunts were all very good cooks, as is my mother (men in my family didn't cook, prior to my own generation - my brother is an excellent cook, though).

Now, as to the coins, will Brookfield become fabulously rich, or will it be Treasure Trove? Are Tony Robinson or Alice Roberts hotfooting it to Brookfield even as we speak, to film the dig?

a beautiful silk scarf or something - I was thinking they should have bought her a Hermes scarf or some other such unashamed luxury that she'd never justify buying for herself, but still very wearable and could ultimately be passed on.

Another dedded Archer was Jack, who died of liver failure brought on by alcohol abuse.

Sean O'Connor's fiction about the death of Grace lacks a few essentials to make it a documentary, such as Godfrey Baseley's side of the story, or anything from any of the high-ups in the BBC at that time. I suspect the BBC lawyers would have had it canned if Basely had still been alive, since it would probably have been deemed libellous. (Or is it still slander if it is spoken on the radio?)

After she had died as Grace Archer, Ysanne Churchman had a part in TA as Mary Pound until 1982, which makes her having been got rid of as an agitator sound somehow a bit less likely.

I don't like the idea of buying a present for a 90yo with the thought at the back of one's mind that after she dies it can be passed on to someone else! My parents are not far off 90 and I usually buy them flowers, vouchers for meals out or some specific item that they request. Not so easy thinking up gifts for people at that time of life, if they're reasonably OK financially.

Buying Jill a special pair of hens was an inspired idea, @Roysnewshirt!

Ooops - Gaspode that came out wrong! I just meant that's how one can justify the ridiculous price of a Hermes scarf - in that its not a disposable item - not because I thought Jill wouldn't have many years left. I would think that if purchasing one for anyone of any age. I like the hens idea if Jill still kept them, but I thought she'd handed them over to Josh or Ben so that would be just like buying a present for themselves.

Ah, I see what you meant, Lillian - yes, that makes perfect sense.

Oh isn't great to have proper episodes back! Even though I am not Jill Archer's greatest fan, I am really pleased she is back in the cast (I was wondering whether some of the older characters might become "silent").

My Kenwood Chef (which I bought secondhand in the 80's) caught fire near the start of lockdown! It had been making far too much bread and pizza dough (which I now realise are really easy to make by hand).

Why has NOBODY asked Alice when the baby is due?

I thought that my suggestion of the ecru cardigan was a very practical one, and my silk scarf suggestion was of a luxury one. My thoughts were probably more Liberty though.

Flowers for someone like Jill would be likely to be used on Phil's grave.

I'd like to think that in normal times the entire Archer clan might have given Jill a truly swish holiday somewhere, possibly with Leonard (as all the offspring would claim they're too busy to take a couple of weeks off.) I can't remember the last time she left Borsetshire.

Well, she had a day out to the seaside, which included Carol and scones....

Last time she had a Significant Birthday they got her a weekend in Bath.

Alice sounded like she had made a decision to keep the chrysalis when she was talking to Fallow last night and thoughts of an abortion seemed to have melted away. When we last heard her talking about it she seemed dead set on drinking her way through her pregnancy or booking an appointment with the softly-spoken woman at the Marie Stopes Clinic. The SWs seem to have made her perform a handbrake turn over the weekend and she is sounding more grounded and certain about life than ever.

Are we really meant to think she’s ok with it all now and it was just a case of the early-days jitters?!? Feels like they are throwing away an excellent storyline.

Freddie did express some doubts over the food mixer which Elizabeth just dismissed.

I wonder if an abnormality is going to show on the scan?