❓ 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.

My memory of Jazzers interview for Berrow was that he didn't really want the job but was using the interview etc to persuade Tom to give him a pay rise. He might be fr more interested in Neil's new outdoor unit than pigs kept inside.

Yes, I agree about fecklessness in a parent being significant. But Fallon was describing alcoholism with some violence. I might need to listen again to get the details right. So I'm just saying that there's a difference between being feckless and being actively abusive towards your family.

I think Alice's sense of shame and worthlessness has come over really powerfully. She has been let down by a system that has only offered her private detox and a buddy and support group which I assume is AA but can't be named.

I do understand why she has found it so hard to admit she has a problem. There is a lot of prejudice and misunderstanding about alcohol misuse. I won't write any more about last night's episode as Cecile hasn't heard it yet but it was really hard to listen to.

I would prefer to see Jazzer and Neil set up a pig business with Rex but I don't think we'll get that. I never get the plot lines I want, she wrote sulkily. However, as instead of Justin and Lilian alternately sniping and simpering at each other, they would involve the people of Ambridge uprising against Justin's plans, a bit like football fans protesting against the European Super League, it isn't going to happen. Justin's over privileged wobbly voiced entitlement makes me . Lilian is very 2 dimensional, which she wasn't when she was secretly seeing Paul. She is actually a more selfish character than Kate but she uses an air of bonhomie to hide it slightly better.

Well, I am just glad that she has left him though they will always be shackled together because of the child. At least she can start getting on with the rest of her life though she will have to stay in Ambridge so she can see Martha. Unless the actress runs off to Coronation St with Gavin which I think we were speculating on a few threads ago.

Chris will probably get custody and therefore keep the house I suppose and Alice will have to pay maintenance etc. But at least she will be able to breathe again and start to rebuild her life. And hopefully meet a new, more suitable, partner.

In the short term though I don’t know where she will stay. Options are limited. I’m not sure going to Peggy and Kate would actually be such a bad option. Peggy at least would have no illusions and understand what she was dealing with and Alice might find Kate’s annoying ways quite reassuring in her hour of need. Though it’s a lot to put a 100-year-old through. She would never give up drinking if she went to Adam and Ian. It would be the only way to get you through the day.

Cecile
The point that I was trying to make was my annoyance at Alice's tactic, rather than at her alcoholism and other problems. She does a sort of reverse-DARVO where she overdoes the self-hate and self-pity to the extent that people feel the need to buoy her up and go along with her pleas for secrecy instead of having a more considered reaction. Even Fallon, when she renounced the GM role, kept part of the explanation secret and didn't tell Chris about the snog.

[quote TheThermalStair]I remember him having an interview and not doing any prep. Here we go: www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/51WgWgSBpQLzxf7mb47C7sH/6-things-you-could-but-shouldnt-do-at-a-job-interview[/quote]
if people were to read the link I posted they would see the interview was indeed all about negotiating his pay.

I agree alcoholism is an illness and I'd never say someone who suffers from it was scummy or brought it on themselves. God knows there are enough insufferable pricks out there with nothing wrong with them except their decision to make other people's lives a misery. Alice is clearly going through the ringer and I think this storyline has demonstrated well that having a baby doesn't magically cure all your problems and can in fact be the biggest challenge to people with MH and other issues.

I do wonder how far they'll take this though and how they'll pull Alice back in. Will she run away and never be seen again until til she turns up years later when Martha is a child and announce herself cured? But that would be so similar to the Kate storyline. Kate and Peggy would actually be a phenomenal duo to "help" - one to detox you and one to go on and on at you.

Kate and Peggy would actually be a phenomenal duo to "help" - one to detox you and one to go on and on at you

That reinforces my opinion that to stay in Ambridge would be fucking stupid.
I favour a 'single to Eastbourne and then take the bus' strategy, personally

Sorry TheThermalStair I guess im too lazy to click links, prommising ill try harder next time

Do you think Kate has ever regretted abandoning Phoebe? I've never had that impression. I think she felt Pheebs was happy and secure with Roy and Hayley, plus Jenny nearby, happily freeing her from the more tedious aspects of child-rearing.

I can't believe the Martha plot can go the same way, or Alice accepting it.

I really cannot imagine accepting the pain of relinquishing such a young baby to the care of others, even if you believe yourself to be a damaging influence. But, I do remember the bond with a baby being both powerful and fragile; needing to be nurtured and reinforced by others, the sense that my baby could become 'the baby' and taken over by family members, altering my relationship to her irrevocably, surprisingly easily. That was a momentary thought not a real prospect in my case but I do remember how that thought felt and that the baby's needs were central, everyone else a satellite, their status depending on the active reality of their role in providing care.

Does Kate ever regret anything?

Not that she's done herself, despite being terribly sanctimonious towards everyone else. Which is why I think she'd be a terrible advisor to Alice.

But Alice cannot possibly live with Adam, Ian and baby Xander.

ISTR a storyline way back when Kate announced she was taking Phoebe back - in fact I think it was the one that sucked me into TA, because her behaviour made me so cross. However, I'm pretty sure that her motivation had nothing to do with maternal instinct and missing Phoebe and was, as usual totally selfish.

Yes, I vaguely recall that. Mostly, I think Kate liked the idea of being 'super-exciting dynamic independent globe-trotting mother' and swooping in from time to time, then becoming best pals once Phoebe was old enough to be interesting and she swapped globe-trotting for being ultra-grounded, while allowing others to play nanny while she was young.

In fact, having been watching Tracey Beaker recently, she shares Tracey's fantasy of a mother.

Has Kate ever actually detoxed in a way that involves not drinking, though? Her veganism has never excluded wine to my knowledge...
@nettie434 please don't let me stop you! I won't be able to catch up for a while and would hate to hold up discussion, sorry!

@ILoveShula

Does Kate ever regret anything?

"Only when it suits her, dear." Peggy, slightly misquoted because she actually said it in reply to Kate indignantly saying of Phoebe "But I'm her mother!"

Jazzer had an interview at Berrow to which he went in order to frighten Tom into giving him a pay-rise and which he threw most obviously and deliberately. He was proud of having chiselled the pay-rise out of Tom by this means. There was no point at which he was actually interested in the job at Berrow back then.

What the point would be of lying to Tracy about this I cannot imagine: she would have applauded his cleverness in fooling more money out of Tom.

Brian and Jennifer deliberately got themselves a cottage in which there was no bedroom for Kate, who was furious with them for having thus made her homeless, leaving her with only her holiday cottage to live in and all her own food, drink and utilities to pay for now she could no longer have it all paid for by them. She never mentioned, and they didn't either, that she had been the reason they had to sell the farmhouse in which she had been living free (and completely uninvited!) for some while.

I have known alcoholics who when drunk have remained the reasonably pleasant people they were when sober (though inclined to single-minded argument of a point nobody had been disputing), and others who have felt able when drunk to give free rein to the really rather nasty person they had always been under a veneer of bonhomie and good behaviour. I fear that Alice has always tended to be a somewhat snide, bitchy person who told lies easily, and drinking to excess has let that side of her personality loose.

Didn't Kate say"I'll always be your sister" to Alice the other day?

Maybe she'll be the one to stand by her, give her tough love, or something.

That wasn't regret about her own actions though was it Asking.
The kates of this world are never wrong, it's always someone else's fault.

Alice cannot possibly live with Adam, Ian and baby Xander
I cannot imagine that anyone, sloshed or sober, would want to.

Notwithstanding what Adam & Ian are like, I cant imagin eithor new(ish) parents keen to take in an alcoholic who deems herself unsuitable to be around her own child... Or that a depressed alcoholic whos left there baby would want to be around someone elses young child

Or that they'd want someone occupying a spare room they don't have?

The Ambridge bedroom fairy could fix that in a flash.

Maybe Plod & Felon (Fallison?) have a spare room.

I've never understood how Lower Loxley is placed for (bed)rooms. It would be a super storyline to have Alice throw herself at CMR, who is then banished.

Where did Julia live and what happened to that bit?

Maybe Alice will go to visit her friend in Bath.

@AskingQuestionsAllTheTime

Or that they'd want someone occupying a spare room they don't have?

When was the last time someone did an extension, apart from Jim?

R4
When was the last time someone did an extension, apart from Jim?

I suspect it may have been Tim and Siobhán Hathaway, who had an extension added to tiny Honeysuckle Cottage in order to have a nursery there for the baby Siobhán was expecting at the time. (Not Brian's, the one she miscarried shortly after they arrived in the village.)