❓ 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.

I imagine Harrison to be about 6' with sandy hair.
Fallon is about 5'7" with mid-brown hair.

Jerlene is a light auburn from a bottle.

The algorithms are working overtime on my Twitter feed. I think somebody I follow commented on something that another liked....

Anyway, is this bloke moonlighting as Harrison?
twitter.com/InspGadgetBlogs/status/1383717595501662215

I seem to recall that Alice was conceived as a result of makeup sex after an affair. Who is to say what vibes she picked up over the years? It might not be the affair itself but the emotions around the relationship between her parents.

Yes the dynamic between Jenny and Brian is weird enough to register I would have thought.

@theThreeofWeevils

I also thought the bit about making a pass at Harrison was very credible

...except for it being, well, how can I put this, Harrison. There's not enough booze in the world for that.

Ooh, I hope AC12 get onto him and he becomes disgraced ex-Plod.

AC 12? Harrison? Is it all over for Line of Duty???

Alice was very shocked and distressed by the revelation of Ruari. I wonder if her marriage to the ultra loyal Chris was a reaction to that. She prized "not the sort to have an affair" so highly at the time that it blinded her to the utter dullness of being married to him. And then drinking together and being "party Alice" compensated for the dullness.

Whilst trying to remind myself what happened in Ambridge Extra, I chanced upon the episode where Alice gets blind drunk and wakes up in Chaz's bed.

She hasn't really changed much in 10 years.

Alice is just a drinker - I thinks it's far more of a cautionary tale if she doesn't have some huge trauma to blame it on. She comes from a family with the alcoholism gene, her father and aunt are big drinkers and she has drunk a lot over the years including no doubt at university (my dd dropped out of university in the UK not so long ago because she found the levels of bing drinking incomprehensible). No doubt having lost her job (as a result of her drinking) she is now looking back and wondering where it all went wrong, but really there's nothing to say that wherever she'd worked and whoever she'd married or not married she wouldn't have ended up drinking to excess. I think what Alice's story really shows is that it can happen to anybody and that there's no easy solution. Detox is just that - detox. It doesn't mean you won't start drinking again. It is a very sobering tale (if you'll pardon the pun).

Couldn't agree more Lillian

The real trouble is that drinking and then drinking to excess, unlike many other of the common character traits people grow up into, is so bloody destructive to all around you as well as yourself. Using drugs is as bad, and depression, but mostly someone taking after one of her parents isn't going to wreck lots of other lives in the process or kill anyone by accident as a direct result of it. Drunks driving are quite likely to cause deaths in accidents; hoarders driving are no more likely to do so than any other random member of the general public is.

@BoreOfWhabylon

Couldn't agree more Lillian

Agreed. There doesn't need to be any excuse for why poor, hard done by Alice is the way she is.

Can someone remind me what social event it was where Alice was spectacularly rude to someone? I can't remember what it was.

Nic's funeral. She was mouthdroppingly awful that day and also blind drunk.

@Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g

Nic's funeral. She was mouthdroppingly awful that day and also blind drunk.

Well, a bit mouthdroppingly awful, but I thoroughly enjoyed it (and felt retrospectively vindicated when 'Bev' turned out to be utterly obnoxious).

Oh, I enjoyed it too! Would have been hideously embarrassing and nasty in real life, but I like that sort of thing in Ambridge.

She seems to have been being a bit of a drunken liability for a while.

That was on 20th March, 2018. She had previously stated her intention of getting drunk at Kate's and her birthday party on 29th September, 2017, and done so (not that I blame her: Kate was vile to her on that occasion). And before that she was noted as being drunk on the occasion she dragged Ed in to be her token yokel for her workmates to meet and be impressed that she knows, on 29th September, 2016. ("Alice is really keen that he meets her new workmates. They hardly ever get to meet real people who work on the land. They will be so interested to meet him." says Lowfield.) Back in 2005 "Alice and Amy are caught - very drunk - raiding Brian's cellar", but I don't think that counts: she was what, seventeen at the time?

And then there was 7th January, 2019, her mother's birthday party in their new cottage: Lowfield says "The party gets under way with much alcohol to loosen tongues and much loud music. Adam and Alice fall out over their identical presents for Jennifer and Alice quickly becomes drunk. She discusses the surrogacy loudly in Justin’s hearing and Adam, embarrassed, ends up explaining it."

I can't remember when it was that she got drunk and crashed some new bit of agricultural equipment in the farmyard; reasonably recent.

when it was that she got drunk and crashed some new bit of agricultural equipment in the farmyard; reasonably recent
Summer 2016, apparently.

@Madcats
Thanks for that. I don't think I heard that, I started listening about then but it must have been prior and I wouldn't have done Extra. Who was Chaz though and fill me in on what happened next?

Chaz was the Loan Goldfish (not important or frightening enough to be a shark, said some genius on another board) who offered to lend Alice (and possibly Chris though I don't think he knew him) the money to buy the forge. Then the loan goldfish beat someone up for not paying back a loan and asked Alice to alibi him, and she lied to the police for him and told them he'd been in her bed all night of the night it happened, as far as I remember. At some point while this melodrama was going on, Chris said "absolutely not" about the loan, but I can't remember the exact circumstances: it was all a whirling load of foetid old dingoes' kidneys and I lost interest.

Delurking to admire " whirling load of foetid old dingoes' kidneys", and planning where to first use it.

I'm rather excited for 7pm, I do hope we're not going to have a comedy/change counting episode

I think I remember a drunk Alice jumping out of a tree and being caught by Ed. Emma was furious that Alice had risked injuring Ed.

Alice claimed that the loan shark guy was in her bed (as alibi for him) while married to Chris? I remember the shark but not the alibi bit.

Yes, Dulcinae, that did happen. Literally out of her tree.
Did a search of the Lowfield summaries 2015-2019 for episodes featuring Alice, and a high proportion involved Alice + (too much) drink.

Literally out of her tree

so maybe they really do plan stuff years in advance

Cat amongst pigeons now. Can't see Fallon keeping quiet about this for long.