🍾 Archers thread 123: Goodbye & good riddance to 2020 – to Philip too? The Archers is 70 on New Year’s Day – celebrate or vent about it here!

[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 wish we heard more from Shula, 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.)

So! 2021 beckons. Big anniversary next Friday, 1.1.21 (and to mark that we have episodes Tuesday-Friday next week). What would we like to see happen? I may be in a minority of one, but I'd like a nice gentle character-driven episode. I don't think we'll get that, but I really, really hope they don't kill someone else off, just for the headlines.

[Title edited by MNHQ at OP'S request]

An ex-threadster here just popping by to mention a special archive programme on Radio 4 tonight, in fact right now, A Social History of The Archers:

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000qxd4

From squirearchy in the 1950s, where caps were doffed to lords of the manor, via teddy boys tearing up the village in the 1960s, to the heretical change of name recently inflicted on the venerable old Bull, Ambridge hasn’t spent the past seventy years frozen in aspic. Far from it. In this programme, featuring extracts from the series and many new interviews, David Kynaston brings a professional historian’s eye to bear on the way the Archers has reflected, over the seven decades of its existence, the immense changes in the way we live our lives, socially, culturally, politically and – not least - agriculturally.

I just listened @nauticant. Thoroughly enjoyed it.

Got me thinking how I'd love to hear a series about Ambridge through the ages - from serfs and lords of the manor, through plagues and wars, enclosures and the Industrial Revolution. With dairymaids, wise women, bishops and priests, ox-ploughs, hiring fairs, haystacks and all of it over the last thousand years or so.

They should have done it for the Minellium really, but it's not too late.

@Ratched

Or, how about Gavins evidence exonorates not only Kirsty, but also himself. Gavin and Kirsty marry, locate the horses and invite them to create a wildlife haven/ bee heaven. Which will be self funding. Obs.

That would actually be a really lovely scenario, altho what's the age gap between Gav and Kirsty?

nauticant Yes, just listened to it. Brilliant! There was one bit of fantasy from one of the editors that left me a bit open-mouthed, but of course I've completely forgotten what it was now. SOC's re-writing of hove the coercive control story came about was no more than we would expect, and there was a bit of self congratulatory stuff about the Archers' being the best researched radio programme. But the old clips were great, Jennifer pregnant at a time when it wasn't acceptable to be pregnant and unmarried.

One thing that did puzzle me - one of the "experts" was saying that Jennifer was pregnant at a time when the usual course of action was for the mother to disappear for the later months of pregnancy and the birth, and the baby would then be adopted. This was 1966/7. I thought we were a bit further on by then? I can't remember the go away for the birth/child adopted scenario being the first one that came into mind.

It was terrific wasn't it? Teen Jennifer was a real highlight.

As far as the "reality" of adoption goes, one has to remember that the people creating the story that was broadcast in the mid 60s were likely to be the established middle class for whom making the "unwanted" baby disappear would have been a real option for them at the time.

I know someone born then who was brought up as her mother's much-younger sister by her grandparents, after being "born on a summer holiday". Her mother then went back to school at the beginning of the autumn term. She knew nothing about this until she was told when she was twenty-three and "Mum" was dying of cancer. Whether the authorities knew I have no idea, but knowing that family it's quite possible they didn't.

Yes @nauticant I think this may have been the approach still in "nice" families. I'd guess it was fading by then though. Certainly adoption was still very common in those circs.

I worked in a benefits office in the 70s. There were several families where the illegitimate child was brought up by the grandparents as a sibling. Officially we knew about it so the actual mother, if working, paid maintenance if her parents were on benefit. If she had to claim benefit herself then she claimed for the child as her dependent but, at home, the child thought the grandparents were his/her parents.

Bear in mind that things changed very rapidly after the 1968 Abortion Act

Just re-listening to this week. Are the SWs setting us up for Kirsty and Phoebe to re-wild together?

I will spend the day feeling sorry for Tracey needing a love nest in a cricket pavilion.

I am also furious at Peggy handing Alice a G&T to hold at a social gathering.

If Tracey and Jazzer do get together, there will be some cracking scenes with Jim!

Their "mention it a bit, but alter little" COVID world seems very odd.

Do we think Lynda will be going to an "investiture ceremony" in 2021? I seem to remember that some of the Royal Family are Archers fans. Did the Duchess of Cornwall have a cameo appearance once?

Did the Duchess of Cornwall have a cameo appearance once?

She did, and when she drove past Lynda in her car (Lynda having failed to be on duty at Grey Gables to meet her face to face) Lynda was ecstatic.

Clearly I'm not as middle class as I thought I was

I know several people with older "sisters" about 20 years older than they were - some have said that their "sister" is in fact their mother.

Bear in mind that things changed very rapidly after the 1968 Abortion Act Attitudes must have been changing before then in order for that Act to happen. I can remember when you could suddenly get family planning from your GP rather than have to masquerade as a married woman or go private. I can't remember it changing behaviour very much but presumably there were fewer surprise pregnancies.

I remember having to go to the Brooke Advisory Clinic for any sensible advice or help about contraception, because I wasn't married. I wrote a letter to (horrors) the Telegraph about it because they published an article about "irresponsible young unmarried women going on the pill and causing unwanted pregnancies", pointing out that obviously young women who went on the pill were being responsible not irresponsible, and were a lot less likely to contribute to the statistics for unwanted pregnancies -- they published it, too, greatly to my surprise.

Yes attitudes were changing but obviously that Act changed the whole landscape.

I got the Pill from Family Planning in the early 70s. All the clinics seemed to me to be staffed by very disapproving middle ages women.

I mean the women were middle aged not medieval.

Good on you AQAAT

I remember the FPC. They would weigh you each time and I remember being sternly reprimanded for being 3 lbs heavier than 6 months earlier, even though I was well within what is considered a normal weight, BMI of about 20 or 21.

The FPC staff were dressed in white coats not GoT garb.

In my family - the "normal" action was to strong arm the 'couple' into getting married (Working class), and a "premature" baby arriving or being dodgy about dates. But in 1965 my Aunt did offer my cousin the choice of having the baby out of wedlock or getting married (she choose marriage).

My Mum who worked in London and lived away from home obviously knew people who'd visited abortionists - and was very pro the abortion act when it passed.

I remember young women getting married quickly and a baby arriving quite soon afterwards.
We're talking 1980s.

There would be whispers that 'she trapped him'.

From what I understood, if marriage wasn't an option, you would be sent away to 'recuperate' or 'to help out an aunt', and the baby would be adopted and it would be hushed up. That would have been before my time.

@ILoveShula

I remember young women getting married quickly and a baby arriving quite soon afterwards. We're talking 1980s.

There would be whispers that 'she trapped him'.

I had a baby out of wedlock in 1980, it didn't seem that outrageous. I was in London if that makes a difference.

The social history programme was very interesting and so is the follow on conversation on here.
I've also listened to the Women's Hour special ( v good) and the quiz (ok, but not amazing). Also With great pleasure. Did I miss anything else?

Peggy reading the whole of that poem instead of only selected verses? I think we were told we could find that on line.

Captain, I grew up in a rural community. A Jennifer Archer situation was a scandal.

There was a family with divorced parents, but we were not to say anything about it, and there was a family where they lived with their DM and DGP. It all went over my head, but on reflection the DC didn't resemble each other much. There was also a family with adopted children and very few where there were no children (because the woman couldn't have any). And there were a couple of families where there was a father but he wasn't around. Families were large, I think 3 or 4 was considered normal, but several had 5 or 6 children. This is in the 1960/1970s.

By the 1980s, I think I remember one teenage single mum, but generally you got married. You got married in white and the bouquet would be a posy or a huge flower arrangement.

By the 1990s, there would be some families where the parents probably weren't married, and maybe a couple of families where the parents were divorced.

Very small rural community. When I was growing up I was nudged towards certain young men. Not in a serious way, but let's say it was Ambridge, it would be a bit like Tom would have been more of a catch than Kristiffur, Will or Ed.

And you only married locally. Ideally, a farmer from the same village or a couple of villages away.