🎄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?

Oo what other juicy Christmas Day narratives can we predict?

2 weeks doesn't sound nearly long enough for detox & rehab

It wouldn't be: but as far as I have been able to make out, it's just detox. Still takes a large chunk of time out of her window for a termination...

What does Hannah think is going to be achieved in 2 weeks?

The idea of keeping this secret is ludicrous- she'll still be an alcoholic at the end of the fortnight.

Alice @MissBarbary*

I think Alice just wants the problem to go away, she’s not fully taken on board how hard it’s going to be ( or is deliberately not thinking about it). I have no real knowledge of detox, but I imagine it take months to really start having control over the mental desire for a drink. Sometimes years.☹️

@UntamedWisteria

Ah, OK. I missed that detail.

2 weeks doesn't sound nearly long enough for detox & rehab.

Whats the betting she relapses on xmas day?

2 week detox is quite common but that will be to physically stabilise before entering rehab. By itself it won't do much to address her addiction but it will hopefully mean she can stop drinking without dying

I'm guessing Alice's attitude is similar to many at this stage. I'm not sure she's ready to rehabilitate yet, she doesn't want it enough. The baby is a massive complication, which I too am wondering if she'll end up losing, one way or another.

What's the betting Chris is going to crumble and tell his sister in the next two weeks? It was nice to hear that he valued that sibling relationship tonight.

Hopefully the detox will help her to get on board with this. If it wasn't for the baby I don't think she would have allowed anyone to know how dependent she is, and would have had several years or even decades ahead of her before dealing with it.

It always baffles me the way that siblings in TA are forced to lerve each other in the face of utterly disgusting behaviour from one or the other. If I were Will, no, I wouldn't be particularly fond of Ed and I wouldn't want to live in the same village, let alone the same house. If I were Chris I would not have forgotten the pretty-much constant belittling and bad-mouthing he's had from her since he was a small child.

Perhaps coming from a large family makes it easier to like or love some and thoroughly dislike others? My mother and two of my aunts never really forgave her eldest brother for going off to America with all the money from the (badly set up) trust fund that was meant to pay for the younger ones' educations, but she did have seven other siblings to get along with.

Ambridge is roiling with sibling rivalry.

Unless the BBC decides to give us all an extra Christmas present this year, sadly there won't be any Christmas episode, as Christmas Day is on a Friday. So their options are to pretend it's Christmas Day for the Thursday episode or to hold back time and have Christmas Day on Monday 28th.

More likely, I'm guessing, that on Christmas Eve we'll have various people looking ahead to Christmas Day, with lots of references to how different it's going to be this year, and then the following week assorted people talking about how Christmas was for them and their families.

As it's all fictional I'm rather hoping that at some point (on air, preferably) Alice gets blind drunk in front of her whole family. IRL, surely a therapist would tell her she can't make any progress with her addiction unless she's open about it and tells her nearest and dearest?

I'm not bothering to keep up with the government's pronouncements about Christmas bubbles (baubles?) as it's not relevant to us (no family within 400 miles, sadly), but as the production team have clearly decided not to worry about that at all (how could they, given the delay between recording and transmission?) I assume they'll just go ahead and have assorted big family gatherings. The Aldridges could muster in Honeysuckle Cottage, I suppose, as the only family dwelling big enough for all of them to sit round a table together, unless Brian and Jennifer lower themselves to using a pasting table to extend their usual table.

(I do wish the SWs would remember that renting Willow Cottage was supposed to be a very temporary arrangement. As others were commenting recently, why haven't B and J shown any interest in househunting? We know Willow Cottage is tiny and they're not so strapped for cash that they're trapped there for want of money to get something bigger.)

I can't imagine how they're going to exploit the "don't tell anyone" plot. Who in Ambridge will be forced to make a long, unexpected delivery trip, spot Alice in the grounds of wherever and innocently spill the beans? Or will Emma bludgeon the truth out of Chris? Possibly he'll just sob into the arms of the first person to say a kind word to him. He can't have had an easy couple of weeks.

I'll be mightily displeased if Rex and Toby don't end up taking possession of the council farm together. Between Toby's flair and dazzle and Rex's plodding good sense they have all the qualities to become hugely successful rivals to the Archer clan within a generation.

Rex will be strong-armed into giving over half the land for rewilding though. For good or ill.

Speedy, Gasp0! (I do type very slowly.)

I'm another with no reason to concern myself with governmental baubles - so an Ambridge Christmas to listen to would have been A Nice Thing.

the Fairbrother Farm is presumably the intended outcome of the Brookfield eviction.

Ps I love Neil

Indeed, Darker - but they do like to confound audience expectation. Perhaps they'll lose this one but find something better. Or one of them will get it, and it'll be months before the other deigns to join up. Or someone else entirely will be given the farm, but allow them to work it ... Nothing straightforward.

Why couldn't the Rewilders / The Conservation Trust take it over?

(No idea if it would be suitable land for their purposes.)

I really hope the Fairbrethren end up on this council farm - I had no idea such things even existed and love a new bit of farming information. It’s the only way they will get their own farm so I suppose we can high hopes that Rex’s application will be successful (and also we can hear something about the process and what’s involved). Re. Alice’s detox, I don’t see how she can hope to succeed when she comes out for Christmas into a community of drinkers - Brian, Lillian, a village that revolves round the pub and has a cider club, resident gin maker and now even Jazzer has gone into home brew. In fact now I write it down I can really see what she’s up against. Finally AskingQuestions - I think it was Eileen Pugsley (not Ellen).

I thought Neil was strongly hinting of his own influence there. Parish council...

Other contenders for the farm could be Josh, Mianed, and the lovely Hannah.

Rex seems to attract bad luck, as do Mianed.

I’ve only known as council or crown farms being sold off so this is some cheery news. I wonder what the criteria are. Surely Josh already has a shoe in to farm land?

Why on earth would Chris irritate Alice at the last minute by asking if he offer Emma vindication on a platter and tell her she was right that his wife is drinker. She is clearly the very last person in Ambridge who should be told. If he really wanted to be helpful, he should have said he’d like to quietly tell her parents so they can line up with the appropriate support when she comes out, even though she earlier said she doesn’t want them to know.

He offers a clear steer on exactly how not to behave.

Also, I agree the GPs follow-up plan was extremely thin once he had come up with the brilliant idea of two weeks of private detox. Another fine example of how - unless you are actually in imminent danger dying - if you actually need treatment the good old NHS is nowhere to be seen.

Don' men usually confide in their mothers on occasions such as these?

Not if their mother has a second job as the Town Crier

Whenever I had a row with [whichever fella it was at the time], he'd always tell his mother, and then repeat what his mother have said.

I must have dated a whole string of mummy's boys.

The only thing is that I learnt years ago that if someone says '[person] said this about you' I just think that the person telling me it a twat.

Well, I'm pretty sure that, after drying out, Alice will fall spectacularly off the wagon over the Yuletide. Probably in front of Emma.

Joy to the World.