❓ Archers thread #126: It’s a mystery why we’re all still listening.

[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’d love to be on the Parish Council, 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/4197199--The-Archers-spoilers-thread-6-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 @LillianGish and @Taswama for thread title ideas, but I felt most in sympathy with @R4's suggestion. Is it me, or is the programme in the doldrums at the moment?

Haven't heard the 31/3 episode yet. Perhaps it's a gem.

This discussion reminds me of those Royal Navy advertisements "if you can fix a skateboard, you can design a torpedo", but in reverse for poor Alice! If you can't be an aeronautical engineer, you can answer a phone in a farm office, if you can't do that, you can tinker with bike repairs as a sideline to Fallon's upcycling.

Every so often someone starts a thread asking something like "Did you fulfil your potential?", and hundreds and hundreds of women respond, describing the brilliant futures they're dragging behind them through a disappointing life.

I guess until this morning I had only been thinking of Alice's profession in terms of her career - until some random thought took me back to the wrenching pain I felt for years after leaving my former profession, partly for the crushing loss of status, but mostly, day to day, for the cut and thrust of challenging, quick witted, brainy conversation with my colleagues. For years my own clever, witty, well educated family chastised me for (inadvertently but repeatedly) making it clear I found 'ordinary' conversation slow and plodding and somewhat taxing of my patience.

So imagine being Alice! All her former colleagues would have been specialists, she would have been among the least qualified amongst them. I've never been an engineer - but I'd imagine her working life made the same level of intellectual demand on her as mine did. To go from that to full time bunting and cup cakes and in depth discussions about cleaning out the pickers' caravans. And then eventually to being the Home Farm equivalent of Roy of the Rotas ...

This storyline has been incredibly cruel.

Am I the only one who thinks that something awful has happened to Alice ( other than her current situation and failure to reach her potential/escape from Ambridge). I thought there was some foreshadowing about her self loathing that wasnt just about failed ambition.

I am not minimising the utter despair of being trapped in her situation/marriage but I feel there may be a big reveal of a hidden trauma.

Oh god, I hope not. We've already done sexual abuse with Jim. Debbie covered terrible things that can happen at university with men (quite similar to the Lily / Russ storyline, except for Russ not being as nasty, obviously / yet, as Simon). There could be something sexual at the root of all Alice's sexual disinhibition and self-loathing but i'm hoping that's just the drink.

I think of Alice as someone very privileged, clever and rather spoilt, who grew up used to being able to do and have what she wanted and to choose her own path. The bump of coming down from that seems enough to explain things.

It would be odd, Langsdestiny - huge hidden stories aren't really the TA story-telling style, are they? As listeners we're often made privy to information that hasn't been revealed to some characters, but I can't immediately think of a story that was revealed to us after the event. It's true the Carter and Titchener weddings happened off-screen, but we were told about them the moment the relevant characters re-appeared. And Lily's relationship with Russ - that sort of unfolded undercover in real time, it didn't arrive out of the blue. But maybe I'm constructing distinctions without a meaningful difference?

Don't know ... What sort of trauma are you thinking of?

We've already done sexual abuse with Jim.

Ah - that's easily distinguished as something that happened long before the character became a TA character.

I dont know. Not child abuse because of Jim. I think it might be rape. There were a few hints about someone at work although that was probably a story to cover up the drinking. And she was already drinking by then so that doesnt add up. I suppose I think that the SW arent subtle enough to do a storyline over a womans failed ambition. By rights every women in TA would be pissed out of their head all day long.

I didn't listen to Ambridge Extra but I understand there was a storyline there that focused on Alice while she was at Southampton. I can't remember whether she got married to Chris before or after she graduated, but she was definitely involved with him while she was a student. Long-distance relationships have obvious challenges. From mentions others have made, she was teetering on the brink of sleeping with a male friend, but I don't think it was supposed to happen in the end. Can anyone confirm?

Wouldn't surprise me in the slightest if the SWs now re-visit that and reveal that something nasty happened back then that tipped Alice into drinking as a coping mechanism. Might explain her otherwise very odd decision to go to Felpersham for her Master's, rather than the best place for her specialism.

(Side note, but - occasionally someone mentions TA on another thread, and when I point them in this direction they say they've looked at this thread but it's too intense and they don't feel sufficiently confident in their knowledge of the subject ... I'm feeling exactly the same right now about the LoD thread! Twice this morning I've written half a post, (bit rambling, alluding to non-AC-12 matters,) and then sheepishly deleted it, because it's all so serious there. Ho hum ...)

How did Alice react when Ruari first turned up? Did she feel (even without recognising it), knocked off her 'darling youngest child and apple of her father's eye' pedestal? Did she sense his delight at having a son of his own? That would surely have unsettled her, even if outwardly, she was fine, so much older and busy getting on with her life.

Alice always seemed to be the Aldridge who got things right (in contrast to flaky Kate) and won genuine respect from her parents for her pursuit of her talents and career path. I remember a parental wobble when she decided to go to the local sixth form college, instead of staying on at her private girls' school but that was all about her being down to earth, able to get on with and see the value in all sorts of people and secure and hard-working enough in her study / work choices that she could succeed anywhere. She was being set up to succeed in the workplace.

something nasty happened back then that tipped Alice into drinking as a coping mechanism. Might explain her otherwise very odd decision to go to Felpersham for her Master's, rather than the best place for her specialism.
arf.

Does it need to be a trauma; are we not just going with the 'alcoholism gene' theory? Jack v1.0, Lilian, Alice, Martha.

Did any significant story attach to Alice's MSc at the world class Felpersham University Aeronautical Engineering Department? As that must have been the reason the SWs placed her there.

It's entirely gone from my memory.

Re Alice. It would be enough to be raised an Aldridge with all the draaaama of being an Aldridge. Brian's numerous affairs (including pony club Mandy which could have impacted on Alice in her competitive years), Jenny's two children with other dad's (especially the ever-worshipped Debbie), Kate running away, Kate's child with local boy Roy, the whole Ruari thing.

And the huge investment in her being The Clever and Successful One while being under tectonic pressure to stay in Ambridge and have children.

I have an idea it is quite common to "slip" right after attending a meeting. And praise can be another trigger. Especially if she doesn't think she deserves it.
She won't have even started to recover until she can face and start getting treatment for her fundamental issues which are pushing her to drink. A dry out session and will power can only go so far.

lottiegarbanzo
How did Alice react when Ruari first turned up?

When she was told immediately after she had finished taking her A-levels that Ruairi was Brian's son and that Jennifer had agreed to bring him up, Alice threw the hissy-fit to end all hissy-fits, ran away from home to sofa-surf first with Adam and Ian and then (when Adam said she couldn't go on like that) with Alan and Amy, and refused to talk not only to her father but also to her mother, whom she was punishing for it all.

I think it all went wrong for Alice when instead of greeting her with open arms the RAF did the totally unexpected and said they didn't want her. Up to then she was completely self-assured; afterwards, not so much so. It was probably the first time in her life that she had been found wanting by objective judges.

Darker
Brian's numerous affairs

Two of the three affairs that Brian had (Caroline in the early 1980s and Mandy Beesborough in 1988 while Jennifer was pregnant) happened before Alice was born, and she had no idea that the third, with Siobhán, had been happening during 2002 until five years afterwards. So they won't have had any affect on her at all.

Alice was a toddler and very much around (including being left in the car in a hotel car-park on one occasion when Jennifer just went in to tell him she hadn't been able to dump the child on her mother that day after all) when Jennifer was having sex in hotels with Roger Travers-Macy, Jennifer's ex-husband: she may have noticed that going on.

Alice would have known her father had had affairs, though. Ruarie is living proof. It's not when it happened that matters but when she found out.

We have no reason to think that she knew that both her parents had had affairs until she was no longer a child, and was planning to leave home for university anyway. That was when she found out about Ruairi, and his being Brian's was a complete shock to her, not something she'd ever thought possible.

I have to say it would have rocked my world to find out about something like that.

@R4

something nasty happened back then that tipped Alice into drinking as a coping mechanism. Might explain her otherwise very odd decision to go to Felpersham for her Master's, rather than the best place for her specialism. arf.

Does it need to be a trauma; are we not just going with the 'alcoholism gene' theory? Jack v1.0, Lilian, Alice, Martha.

Why does there need to be some terrible trauma?

The causes of alcoholism or dependency vary and may include aspects of nature and nurture. It's not 'one' disease.

Alcoholism isn't dependent on trauma. I'd be disappointed if they suddenly introduced something. Alcohol dependency can just happen. She's grown up with parents that regularly drink. The self loathing can simply come from promising yourself you will stop and failing. The guilt of doing so, lying, letting down those you love.

Some people use alcohol and drugs to dull pain. It could be the pain of intrusive thoughts, boredom, frustration.....

@Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g

I have to say it would have rocked my world to find out about something like that.

Oh yes, mine too; but I was responding to Darker's suggestion upthread that "It would be enough to be raised an Aldridge with all the draaaama of being an Aldridge. Brian's numerous affairs". She wasn't raised knowing anything abut his affairs, two of which happened before she was born and were never mentioned to0 her that we ever heard.

I don't see how something you don't know and have no idea exists can have any particular effect on you one way or another.

When she did find out that Brian had had one of his three affairs it made her behave unpleasantly towards both of her parents, and her shock and outrage made it fairly clear that until that precise point she'd had no idea of it as a possibility.

The knowledge gained by me during my twenties that both my father and my maternal grandfather had at least one affair each, and each for a while left my mother and my grandmother to pursue them before being allowed home again had no effect on my childhood whatever, because neither was known to me when I was a child.

Similarly for Alice; her childhood was not shadowed by her parents' affairs. Actually, apart from Kate's behaviour blighting bits of it I think she had a fairly undramatic childhood, with school and ponies, a much-loved and loving elder sister, and parents who clearly loved her and made no secret of it. She did well at school and got her own way a lot of the time; the worst row I remember her being involved in was Jennifer being furious with her when she got her belly-button pierced in 2003 and Jennifer had not been expecting it.

As an aside, I have recently been watching the original Tracey Beaker TV series and have just realised that puckish, still growing into his feet, trainee care-worker Nathan, grows up and turns into... PC Harrison Burns! (All wrong. Harrison is clearly 5' 9" or 10", fairly compact and dark-haired, whereas Nathan is 6' rangy and fair / bottle-blonde).