🐷 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!

Agree with pp earlier that it was a corker of an episode yesterday. I loved Vince & Tom bonding over pigs with the sound of peacocks in the background followed by Emma delivering some rather accurate if unpleasant home truths to Brine. No, I wouldn’t want her as a neighbour let alone SIL, but as soap opera dialogue goes, it was riveting.

Did any others notice that when Brine directed Emma to The Nest to see Alice she replied that she’d tried that already & found her not at home. So where is she I wonder or was that JD’s way of getting rid of her?

Jennifer probably had the sense to keep the door locked and not let her into the house. Nobody needs Emma; all she is ever going to do is make matters worse than they already were.

I'm gutted that I missed the AIBU thread (and half of last night's episode).

I would like to think that Jenny has popped Alice in the car and whisked her off to some professional help (having phoned a few friends for recommendations). It's unlikely, but it is getting beyond ridiculous now that nobody has done as much as a quick google.

@Madcats

I'm gutted that I missed the AIBU thread (and half of last night's episode).

I would like to think that Jenny has popped Alice in the car and whisked her off to some professional help (having phoned a few friends for recommendations). It's unlikely, but it is getting beyond ridiculous now that nobody has done as much as a quick google.

That would be a relief but I’ve practically given up hope in that respect since Jenny’s wailing and crying, accompanied by the completely useless advice to Alice to simply, ‘stop drinking’. Odd, as you’d have thought Jenny would have friends who’d think nothing of checking into the nearest Priory for rehab or detox. Instead of which it’s as if she’s never come across an alcoholic before, let alone had a father who drank himself to death.

@MayIDestroyYou

No - the Amy incident was Alice! I know.

They're both as bad as each other.

Wait - she told her what?!

It was a long time ago, Deus, when Alice and Amy were best friends. (They were possibly both still at school.) Alice had been wittering about her horse, Amy made some mild comment - and Alice responded with something like "Well, you people don't ride horses, do you?" I think in the end, after a few days, the nasty cow apologised - but I've never forgiven her ...

I know Emma's outburst was extreme, however she had that vile message that Emma left last year when she'd been drinking (in fact it was the night Alice passed out I think). She's had Alice imply her husband tried it on with her and fallen out with her brother when she suggested Alice was drinking too much.

And having been told what Alice said to Amy I now have very little pity for her at all.

You people!!!

I do think someone needs to give Brian a good wake-up call, and Kate's and his responses to Emma were pretty contemptible (as well as wrongly contemptuous) ad hominem but... having just caught up, it struck me really strongly that Emma is basically just venting her anger by gossiping at the top of her voice. How exactly is it going to help anyone if she just goes around broadcasting the stuff with Harrison and Ed? Agree she has no particular obligation to keep it secret, but she wasn't shouting "Alice is an alcoholic, she's in serious trouble and needs help before she does any more damage to herself and others". The only possibly constructive suggestion - that Alice should stop drinking and go and mother her baby - has been categorically taken off the table by Chris, Susan and Neil! None of this is to say the Aldridges aren't highly flawed as individuals and a family, unjustly look down on people like Emma and are incredibly in denial but Emma just seemed to want to be angry and nasty about Alice in a way that Alice can never move forward with or make up for/get forgiveness for.

Tbf Emma and Ed hadn't been back together long when Drunken Alice decided Ed loved her. I don't recall that it caused the amount of trouble Emma suggested yesterday - but it might have done. Either the work issue or the possibility of infidelity could have broken them up again - if they hadn't thought things through. So I can see why Emma felt that Alice was threatening her whole life.

(Also, as she's never trusted the Aldridges, and kinda felt Chris was a traitor to her class war ideals - she must now feel vindicated, as well as horrified at Alice's apparent abandonment of her baby.)

@MayIDestroyYou

Hmm ... No, on consideration I would say that Havering has no connection to the poster formerly know as PPE.

That's someone else ...

I thought I’d identified TheArtistFormerlyKownAsPPE’s new disguise. They do have a distinctive writing style 😀

There is class war, and then there is naked envy of anyone who has something you don't have yourself.

Emma suffers the latter. Not just about money: any man Emma fancies who is with anyone else is also intolerable to her, and anyone who has a job she wanted.

I do;t think she would recognise class war if it were presented to her on a plate with parsley round it.

her class war ideals
Emma doesn't have ideals.
Envy, bitterness and a nasty mouth on her, yes. An agenda, certainly. Ideals, not so much.

I don't actually know because I stopped listening during the monologues and only started once dialogue had been back a bit but was this deciding Ed fancied her a one-night thing while she was drunk? Or a sustained, well-evidenced campaign to convince him which continued while she was sober? In my view, while upsetting the former would pose absolutely no threat to Ed, Emma or their partnership, especially once the nasty voicemail happened (was it in the nasty voicemail? If so it was even more of a dubious one-off).

I have just missed this evening's episode. My favourite aunt rang at ten to seven. I couldn't put her off. (Though why I have an aunt in my life who's not an Archers fan is a serious puzzle.)

Sorry, was laughing at the AskingWeevils mash-up!

the AskingWeevils mash-up
You can ask a Weevil anything
And the chances are good
It will respond to you. In Weevil, so you'll be none the wiser, mind)
...
Shiny and proud by your side
Holding your hand
While the neighbours decide
Why is a Weevil
Something to hide?

@MayIDestroyYou

It was a long time ago, Deus, when Alice and Amy were best friends. (They were possibly both still at school.) Alice had been wittering about her horse, Amy made some mild comment - and Alice responded with something like "Well, you people don't ride horses, do you?" I think in the end, after a few days, the nasty cow apologised - but I've never forgiven her ...

2003.

Alice said something to the effect, "Well, you wouldn't understand..." (the subject was hunting, I think) and didn't finish the sentence. It might as easily have been going to be a reference to Amy being a townie as to her being black, but Amy decided what she had been going to say, and some days later telling her father (untruthfully) that Alice had been racist as though that were a fact.

Alice did not, when she was crying about it to Jennifer later the same day, say anything about colour; she just said she'd been horrible to Amy but she hadn't meant to be.

@CeciledeVolanges

I don't actually know because I stopped listening during the monologues and only started once dialogue had been back a bit but was this deciding Ed fancied her a one-night thing while she was drunk? Or a sustained, well-evidenced campaign to convince him which continued while she was sober? In my view, while upsetting the former would pose absolutely no threat to Ed, Emma or their partnership, especially once the nasty voicemail happened (was it in the nasty voicemail? If so it was even more of a dubious one-off).

Ed had noticed Alice being drunk at work, and having been an addict himself was concerned for her. He tried to tell her that he understood and would help if he could: I think the words he used were along the lines "care for you" like those used by Harrison. Alice, never one to think herself less than irresistible, assumed that he meant he fancied her. She later (also when drunk) sent a horrible voicemail to Emma about how Ed probably thought about her when he was in bed with Emma, but Emma simply realised she had been drunk when she sent it. No trouble was caused between Ed and Emma by this at the time, because they had already discussed the matter.

(I have the text of the voicemail somewhere if it is wanted.)

Nah mate. I know what I heard - and what she meant by it. Trust me on that. I do remember Jenny had an opportunity to whack her daughter into an alternate universe take Alice to task for racism, but she weaselled out of it with some fluff or other. Probably something about 'being kind'.

Why would she be upset about calling her a townie? If she was crying about it surely she knew she had said something out of order.

@AskingQuestionsAllTheTime Alice specifically mentioned colour. She said Amy wouldn't understand because Black people do not hunt (or ride horses - I can't remember which but it was something along the lines). Alice eventually told her mother the the truth, JD was absolutely mortified and made her apologize.

I clearly remember the episode so unless there were two versions of it, and you heard the one I didn't, Amy's upset had absolutely nothing to do with possibly being called a Townie.

Ugh, with friends like Alice, who needs enemies? I hope she doesn’t get unsupervised access to poor Martha.

I like globe artichokes but it's a huge faff to prepare and cook them myself, so I've only done it a couple of times What are you supposed to do with them? I usually just steam them and serve with butter, a plate for the abandoned scales, and kitchen paper/finger bowl.

Jersalem artichokes are lovely, provided you don't pig out on them. 2-3 per person only.

You have to remove the hairy bits before cooking them and you only eat the juicy bits. I think I let them stay on the plant too long, but have had the same issue with bought ones.