🐷 Archers thread #127: Discuss the boars and sows of Ambridge here - or should that be bores and soused? You decide.

[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 live opposite Joy, 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.)

These threads normally last around a month. When I started the last one, we were bracing ourselves for the Mystery Play, but that storyline, which had never exactly set the airwaves on fire, fizzled out and has (I hope) gone away, never to return.

@LillianGish proposed a new thread title which I'll use instead as a scene-setter for this thread. What a carry on - Nurse (Ben), Sergeant (Harrison), Camping (Kate), Jack (either one of them), Regardless (all of us for continuing to tune tune in)

What a carry on, indeed! Other storylines sputtering away:

• Alice, Chris, Martha - Have they split up, and if so where is Alice living? Will there be a christening and who will be godparents? When will the Aldridges and Carters find out about Alice's drinking? Too much to hope that Alice will get blind drunk at the christening party in full view of the entire village, I suppose. I'm still clinging to my hope that she lamps Alan after a suggestion that they pray together.

• Will Rex find a new home for his pigs? If Elizabeth weakens, will the pigs escape and disrupt the Lower Loxley life drawing event on Monday? Might they stampede, knock Ross out and devour him?

• Will Jazzer go to work for Neil? (This isn't exactly a cliffhanger. Of course he will.)

• Will Justin bury Lilian under the patio? Not a jury in the land would convict him, I feel, if they were played a recording of that appalling cackle and her gloating about the daffodil photograph.

• Will the life drawing event on Monday be a brilliantly amusing interlude, exemplifying how to write character-driven drama, with both comic and more serious moments? Answer: No, obviously. I may have to listen from behind a cushion.

There are more. I find myself struggling to care.

Oh, and one final mention - I've proposed a webchat with the Archers editor. @MayIDestroyYou's idea. You'll find it here: www.mumsnet.com/Talk/site_stuff/4231475-Webchat-idea-The-Editor-of-The-Archers-Or-another-Archers-production-team-representative

Over to you!

Yes, I know that.

But why is he?

(Someone probably explained while I was thinking about something else.)

I mean - he's no particular friend of Chris or Alice. Nor a colleague - Chris doesn't shoe pigs, Alice doesn't often take taxis. And he's surely not the only suitably middle class male person in the vicinity.

Maybe in years to come Martha will be in the national rugby team, all thanks to Godfather ...

Cricket team?

We haven't heard from Toby for months, have we. I wonder if he's going to be written out.

Rex and Pip or Rex and Lily or (god forbid) a Rex/Pip/Lily love triangle?

@MayIDestroyYou

Yes, I know that.

But why is he?

(Someone probably explained while I was thinking about something else.)

Because Chris and Alice had to find someone in a hurry when Harrison backed out on 20th April, I expect. There doesn't seem to be any other reason really.

I'm finding it difficult to believe a hardened drinker would get that drunk and almost drop a baby after drinking a miniature

Me too. Or even two or three.

Alice isn't very good at the secret drinking, really.

There was a lot of clinking from that bag though.

Having been in a relationship with The Drinks Police, I can tell you that TDP will accuse you of being drunk if you've eaten a chocolate liqueur.
She had probably had a few miniatures, but wasn't that drunk.

I suppose if she is staying off the booze for ten days or so at a time and then binging, it might take less booze to get her to the point at which she nearly drops her baby.

bingeing

???

yep, 'bingeing'.

Any fule knows that one decants vodka into a clear plastic bottle and stashes it in one's make-up bag? 'That? Just my toner, darling.'

Ooh. Thanks for the tip daaahing. (Cackle)

daaahling. Think I'll fill the mouthwash bottle too and the nailvarnish remover.

I thought that about the miniatures - they'd be neither use nor ornament to an alcoholic! And where do you even buy them? Far easier to buy half a bottle of vodka - no rattling around every time you move your handbag!

She was probably still fooling herself that she could drink just one of them to brace her nerves -- which leads to wondering why there were so many in her bag that it clanked when it was moved.

By the way, the spellchecker on this machine is convinced "bingeing" is a spelling mistake but binging is ok. Even though most dictionaries seem to say both are equally acceptable.

Just pondering about the impending custody battle. There’s a general presumption that a young baby is better off with its mother. So Chris is going to have to demonstrate that Alice is unfit. And there’s not a lot of evidence of that, apart from having attended a detox unit. Most of it is Chris telling other people,which doesn’t count. The detox will demonstrate she had an alcohol problem, but not that she can’t look after Martha.

Quite, MereDint. And as far too many tragic real life outcomes attest, the bar for being judged an unfit parent seems to be set pretty high.
Plus the Aldridge side will be able to afford better legal rep.

Crap storyline about Alice and her drinking.

At detox and AA they would have told her about how important it is for the family and friends to know she is a recovering alcoholic. So they won't keep offering her drinks etc. Without that support she's got no chance.

Also Chris would have been Encouraged to join a group for spouses/partners of alcoholics. It would help him support Alice, understand more about the disease and give him support also.

I remember the scene where he was shocked when Alice said that she thought about droning every single moment of the day. He doesn't have a clue about addiction and Alice is an addict.

He should have told the family and friends even if Alice didn't want to. Make it a condition of him staying with her.

He is completely out of his depth, and she has made him give her promises which he ought not to have kept but has loyally done so until it all hit him too hard all at once and he went into meltdown.

I think this was pretty-much inevitable given the impossible position she's been keeping him in. Pity it had to be so very public, but that too was likely.

The shame is that it gave Emma her self-righteous opportunity to kick Alice when she was down.

And there’s not a lot of evidence of [being an unfit parent]
Apart from being so drunk when pregnant that she passed out in a ditch.
And asking Harrison to rescue her from being drunk in charge of a vehicle ... oh dear, is it going to come to light that H didn't follow proper procedure. hope so

He is completely out of his depth, and she has made him give her promises which he ought not to have kept but has loyally done so until it all hit him too hard all at once and he went into meltdown.

But because he doesn't know about addiction and has been to Al-Anon or similar he doesn't yet understand how out of depth he is and just how little he knows. He's at the very beginning of a Dunning-Kruger curve.

Hasn't been to Al-Anon...

@Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g

Delighted this is out in the open now. Lots of possible ramifications.

Peggy: Oh dear, this is what I've feared all along. I did my best to warn Chris when we were watching the Christmas lights being switched on all round the Green ...

Jennifer: WHAT DID YOU SAY, MUM? YOU'VE KNOWN THIS SINCE DECEMBER AND SAID NOTHING TO ME?

🎆🎆🎆🎆🎆🎆🎆🎆🎆

Brian: I knew no good would ever come of Alice marrying that boy. He's half Horrobin, you know. I said at the time 'Jenny, we have to just think of this as Alice's starter marriage'. It's lasted longer than I thought, but now she can start again. Plenty of decent chaps around who won't make such a fuss about Alice needing a touch of Dutch courage before a big event.

Lilian: Couldn't agree more, Brian. Pass the bottle, darling, that G&T hardly touched the sides. I need another one pronto.

🎆🎆🎆🎆🎆🎆🎆🎆🎆

Susan: I knew no good would ever come of Chris marrying that girl. She's always thought she was so much better than us, just like her mother, but just look at how her father's carried on over the years - one affair after another! And her aunt, propping up the bar in The Bull, night after night, cackling away, and that Kate, running away time after time, abandoning children on every continent. No shame, any of them.

Neil: Pack it in, Susan! We've got to think of Martha now, and our son. Badmouthing the Aldridges and the Archers won't do any good at all.

🎆🎆🎆🎆🎆🎆🎆🎆🎆🎆

Can they give you a job as a writer please, @Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g? You’d turn them around for us!

@EBearhug

Hasn't been to Al-Anon...

I suspect that going to Al-Anon might have been turned into "you can't do this to me!" and a loyalty testing thing as well, given that Alice has been so consistently hell-bent on secrecy. (While at the same time behaving in a way which made it certain that more and more people were certain to find out what was going on, almost as if she wanted them to.)

The thing is, he hasn't yet accepted that nothing she says can be relied on apart from the one thing: I don't want to stop drinking, I think about drink all the time. Unless and until he gets his head round that being a statement of fact unlike all the other protestations, he won't be able to come to grips with any of the trouble which from his point of view hit him out of the blue and overnight destroyed everything he had thought was secure and stable in his entire life.