🎄Archers thread #122: Deck the Hall with Eddie, Freddie 🎵 'Tis the Season to be jolly (but orange juice for you, Alice)

[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 love Bert Fry’s poetry (as I do), 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 @C8H10N4O2 for requesting an annoyingly cheerful thread title which might take us up to Christmas and to @Prestissimo for the title suggestion. I was strongly tempted by @LillianGish’s suggestion: Eddie’s turkeys, Freddie’s show, village green with lights aglow, Stir Up Sunday, Deck the Hall, Merry Christmas one and all - with apologies to Bert Fry and @R4’s suggestion Wassail to the Ambridge Not-A-Panto where Freddie gets nine LESSONS in directing from CAROLe Lynda. Top work, all!

Three days to go until we can return to Ambridge.

My list for Father Christmas

In the next few weeks I’d like:

• Freddie’s show to be a huge success

• Philip and Gavin to be driven out of the village with pitchforks into the waiting arms of the police, and the three ‘horses’ rescued and taken in by kind people who will help them turn their lives around

• Pip to take a perpetual vow of silence and leave for a nunnery

• a terrific Grundy Christmas (although the travails of Alice and Chris will overshadow things)

• Alice to lose the baby, as this seems the least grim option for us listeners; she leaves Chris and makes a fresh start of some kind

What do you all want for Christmas from The Archers?

Shula is going to be 😱 at her Oliver stooping so low as to date Tracy. Bring it on!

Oh yes!

@MissBarbary

Tracey and Oliver are soooo going to be an item.

I flocking well hope not. Sentimental bollocks. They have the square root of frack all in common. Oliver's encroaching senility does seem to manifest itself in nostalgie de la boue, rather; but lodging with the Grundys should satisfy that more than adequately.

Even if Tracy does have, as he pointed out, 'a lot to juggle'.

Oh, but I am absolutely longing for Oliver to take Tracy to an Italian opera, like wot he enjoys.

@PoulePouletteEternellement

Forgive me if this has already been linked but I think it's a fairly new BBC Archers article on modern slavery and the means used to keep the horses scared and subservient. Refers to the episode last week where Blake, Kenzie and Jordan talked about their pasts.

Thanks for that link PoulePouletteEternellement. I hope it means that The Archers scriptwriters do plan for Phillip to be prosecuted. I think I heard Phillip mentioning last week that the Grey Gables report was due so I assume this is why he wanted to offload Blake, Kenzie and Jordan.

I also wanted to flag up a boop for Tracy for being more rational than Helen or Kirsty when it came to Roman. I've just been trying to work out the Tracy/Oliver age gap so was very pleased to find that it had already been done on the thread.

I might be alone here but I don’t think there is romance in the air between Tracy and Oliver. I think he feels paternal towards her, which given how hopeless her actual father is it’s lovely. I think he sees her in much the same way as he sees the Grundys - he can support her and give her opportunities. Now I’m worried that there will be some horrible, embarrassing denouement where she misinterprets his intentions.

Oliver brings out the best in people and is helping to give Tracey self confidence and a new sense of purpose. There is a bond but I also don’t think it’s Romantic.

Is Ambridge ready for two older people to have a FWB relationship? I am a sentimental old fool and I loved hearing T and O together. Also delighted that Tracy is so clear-sighted about Roman.

Freddie has been extremely remiss not to discuss in detail with Roman what he was doing. However, we all knew there was going to be a last-minute disaster which will all be resolved triumphantly. This happens every single year. He will have to grovel to Eddie (is anyone surprised? Anyone?) None of it will matter, however, as 5 million listeners will just be sitting there with mouths hanging open at the idea of this event going ahead in current conditions. I've had a dress rehearsal listening to Oliver and Tracy having dinner at Grey Gables.

@CheetasOnFajitas

But Caroline being widowed very quickly was a terrible experience for her.

Sorry, I am 47 and no way would I be marrying someone in their seventies- most people with parents that age are at the stage of planning ahead for caring for them as they age.

Rereading this - all I could think is that hindsight is a wonderful thing. One moment your elderly parent is flying around the world, a flurry of lipstick and perfume and brand new clothes, bossing people, bossing you, sharp tongued, quick witted, hilarious - the next (and it could take a second) it's 999 and months in hospital and the house being fitted with aids. Carers visiting who speak with raised voices though the elderly person has nothing wrong with their hearing.

When we first started haunting a hospital ward we vaguely thought that all the other middle aged offspring knew what they were doing, that we were the only ones wandering around exhausted with shock and terror. Soon found it was the same for every one of us. I'll never forget our fellow visiting middle aged child - mother in the ward, accompanying her father to visit his wife; in the hospital corridor he collapsed and had to be rushed to another part of the hospital. How the poor woman got through that day, I cannot tell.

Absolutely no planning for elderly care happened, because we just didn't know when our parent would suddenly become 'elderly'.

But Oliver could live to 100 with nothing more than the occasional achey finger. Or die suddenly at 80 leaving Tracy as Queen of Grey Gables! Which would be nicely circular, since it was acquiring The Dower House through marriage to Guy that enabled Caroline to buy GG (with help from Oliver) in the first place.

I don’t care that Ambridge isn’t pandemic land - it’s real enough out here in our daily lives. I am more annoyed that there is no mention of Brexit though I understand that this is equally difficult to write about several weeks ahead - it will affect farmers.

Oh heavens! I started writing my post before 8 am. Then Riverford arrived, and I had to deal with other post and packages and only came back to it a few minutes ago. Fascinating to see the diverging opinions that appeared while I was battling cardboard boxes.

A thought has just struck me.

With TA 70th anniversary on New Years Day, I wouldn't put it past them to mark it in the traditional way by killing off someone.

Oliver would be a good candidate. His will could change the fortunes of the Grundy's and Tracy.

So, Oliver is thrown off his horse while hunting (possibly involving Alice, booze and her horse with the kissy spine).

The 🔮 is looking at me like this >>

Apologies for the errant apostrophe Grundys

@PoulePouletteEternellement I’m not sure if you were trying to gently tell me that I may be deluded about whether or not it is possible to plan for a parent’s old age, however my parents died of cancer in their fifties and early sixties so I was not speaking personally. I never even got to the point of starting to think about it.

Not at all, Cheetas - I was rather in awe of those hypothetical people who did manage to plan ahead. Hence bluster! But no one could possibly plan for what you experienced.

I'm not sure I could see myself in a relationship with someone of my parents' generation - but I have no difficulty at all imagining myself with someone a generation younger than me. So I hope Oliver is not shown to be deluded ...

More class-war induced anniversarial death, Bore?

It's horribly plausible ...

I don't think there's romance in the air for Tracy and Oliver.
He is being a good friend to her, that's all.

Well, they have rather set a precedent with the 60th Celebratory Dedding Poule

If only everyone in Ambridge had started singing Russ's praises over the past two weeks ...

"Such a solid role model."
"So good in a crisis."
"Brought such artistry to this quiet corner of the world."
"The love of my life."
"What would we all do without you?"

Doom music ...

50th Anniversary Issue: David left for dead in a ditch overnight.
60th Anniversary Issue: Nigel thrown off a roof.
70th Anniversary Issue: ? but I think it may be Philip's arrest and Kirsty's despair, rather than Oliver killed off. With a side-bet on Alice having a riding accident on the restive horse with a dodgy spine, and a miscarriage.

I don't think the present editor can trump "much-loved character of thirty years and more is killed leaving young children behind" in the shocking-death stakes: Oliver dying would de-house the Grundys (no, I don't think he has left them his house in his will; he has children) and mean that Grey gables needed a new owner, but otherwise not really have much lasting effect.

But a Ross dedding wouldn't have any long-term impact on Ambridge. He's always been peripheral and is now completely irrelevant anyway.

I'll allow him to be trampled underhoof as part of the Great New Year Equine Disaster though.

Actually Asking I agree with you about the likely 70th scenario - I was just letting my imagination run wild

It will be something to do with the metal detectors.

Ooh eddie killed by one of the detector gang. That would have endless ripples. David is often present when someone dies so ..

Oh, I know, Bore - he's much too insignificant. I'd just like him gone.

The 60th had Nigel's death and Henry's birth, so there's every hope of both Philip and Alice provoking a full length signature time. I'd be very sorry if they killed off Oliver, though.