🐷 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!

Oh Jenny. Angela Piper plays her so well. I am exasperated with her, fond of her and sorry for her all at the same time (as I have been for about 20 years).

Liked the bit with Lilian and Tony.

I liked Lilian's sudden bit of self-questioning, which I'm sure does happen in scenarios like this, swiftly shutdown by Tony "it's not about you Lilian'.

I thought Chris being mean about when Martha first smiled (or whatever it was) was very well done.

Boop to the petty meaness of a bumpkin who is feeling his powerlessness.

Aha- Helen said that Lee had “hung up” his Bruce Lee poster in the bedroom- finally, proof that it is in a frame!

@FreezerBird

I liked Lilian's sudden bit of self-questioning, which I'm sure does happen in scenarios like this, swiftly shutdown by Tony "it's not about you Lilian'.

Tony also said “you have a career and a successful relationship”- so just like Alice then?

And to be honest Lil’s relationship history is pretty patchy compared to Alice’s…

I would have liked to hear the Kate / Alice discussion.

I think they are going to explore Lillian a little more re unhealthy drinking. It will make a nice contrast with can't function any longer alcoholic Alice with a functioning alcoholic Lillian.

So Peggy hasn’t admitted to her chat with Chris at Christmas then.....

I imagine I wasn’t the only one shouting “AA, you fool!” at the radio when Jenny said “I just don’t know where to turn!”?

I quite enjoyed Tony's notion that spending a day at Bridge Farm - Bridge Farm, ffs - would distract Alish from thoughts of Drink. A three-hipflask mission, minimum, for a Salvation Army Colonel, that.

I love scenes with the three siblings together. They don’t have them very often but they are always very believable.

Shame we had to resort to slap-stick with the yoghurt-making. The scene in the dairy reminded me a bit of the day Joe Grundy’s porter-loo emptied its contents over Emma. Absolutely hilarious...sigh...

Did Jenny completely fail to hear Chris and Alice arguing outside the church on the day of the doomed christening? I thought at one point Emma warned Chris that she was approaching. Even if she only heard a small part of it how could she clajm, as she did this evening, that she thought it was just a minor marital tiff? Her grandchild's christening was abandoned moments before it was due to start. The child was whisked away by her dad whist her mum was left behind, weeping uncontrollably. Most people would see that as a sign of a very serious problem. JD concluded Chris and Alice were just tired new parents. Nothing to see here

Lilian seemed to suggest the village was gossiping about Social Services involvement. How would anyone apart from Jenny and her immediate family known about that?

I thought the village was gossiping about the brick through the window of the village shop (as Clarrie was earlier in the episode).

Lilian seemed to suggest the village was gossiping about Social Services involvement. How would anyone apart from Jenny and her immediate family known about that?
Wasn't Lilian just pointing out, in the immediate wake of Clarrie flapping her gums with great relish, that Alice is currently the talk of the village? Heaving a brick through the window of ye Olde Village Shoppe will do that for you; frankly, squadrons of concerned and caring social workers are pretty small beer by comparison.

Only a matter of time now until Lilian tries to give up boozing, only to she can't.
Or
She goes into liver failure.

There are any number of unfortunate potential medical consequences of even moderate drinking. A very high cancer risk is another - compounded by Lilian's smoking.

Interesting observation by Jenny that when she thinks Alice is ‘herself’ she will soon be finding empties. A big penny dropping that this has been going on a long time unnoticed.

'Lilian seemed to suggest the village was gossiping about Social Services involvement. How would anyone apart from Jenny and her immediate family known about that?'

Because they would have contacted the Carters as well.

So Peggy hasn’t admitted to her chat with Chris at Christmas then.....

To be fair, she did try last week, but Jenny wasn't listening at all and then cut her off to comfort Alice after Chris stopped her visit with Martha.

The apparent non-existence of AA or Al-Anon in Borsetshire is becoming increasingly incredible. I could totally believe the Aldridges preferring to pay for a very expensive, private place instead, but for no one in the village at all to appear to have heard of it seems odd. After all, Alistair went to his gambling addict meetings, so the concept isn't unknown in Ambridge, and I would have thought more people were aware of AA than of the equivalent groups for gambling, drugs or whatever. Mind you, Alice did go to one meeting, didn't she? Because it was after that that Harrison went to pick her up from Leader's Wood.

I found it somewhat incredible that Tony was happily offering for Alice to come to Bridge Farm without consulting Pat. In fact it seems slightly surprising that she wasn't involved in the conversation anyway.

@Zzelda

I found it somewhat incredible that Tony was happily offering for Alice to come to Bridge Farm without consulting Pat. In fact it seems slightly surprising that she wasn't involved in the conversation anyway.

No more surprising than Justin not being involved. It was a sibling thing and, like Justin, Pat would have been neither use nor ornament. Not that it seems likely the siblings will be much use either. But where is the big problem now anyway? Alice is fine with the baby being with its father, and says 'no, thank you' to intervention. Her family don't just want her not to drink, they (bloody JD particularly) want her to be A Proper Mother. Not surprising, I suppose, since JD's entire self-worth is built upon baby-rearing and the money she married but it would be refreshing were Alice to go on, drunk or dry, not being guilted into pretending that Martha matters to her very much. No doubt Heroic Daddy, once he has finished exploiting his parents, could find a Proper Woman to take on the rearing of Martha (a thankless task, since she is likely to be both sickly and dim) for the dubious privilege of bearing him her own child/ren ( cf Hayley, the sainted). Not really sure what Pat could bring to the party, really, except 'Oh, yes, Tony and I were pretty blind about Rob what a piece of work Helen is. Still are. But the cheese money is, mysteriously, vvv important to the farm'.

Alcoholics Anonymous only works if you actually want to give up drinking. I don’t think Alice is at that stage yet. A residential 8 week programme which would help her establish why she drinks and would give her coping mechanisms for dealing with stress other than alcohol would be more use. I think Alice has quite a way to go before she accepts her life isn’t going the way she thought it would. I wonder if she’s been hiding since she was rejected by the RAF? Was that before she married Chris, I can’t remember the timing?

I suggest that the Aldridge’s would prefer private because they think private = better and more discreet.

Surely even if Alice isn’t ready for AA Jennifer could be getting support from Al-Anon? I have no experience of alcoholics but I’ve heard of it. Why does Ambridge have to exist in a vacuum, cut off from normal life? Unless of course they said they didn’t want to be referenced when the research was being done.
I listened to the “From Our Correspondent” piece and I’m still not convinced my version of the script meetings isn’t more realistic.

I lived with an alcoholic for 25 years before finally going to AlAnon.... I always thought he wasn't enough of an alcoholic.... I left him shortly after the one and only meeting. I think the slow realisation by family members is actually quite realistic. DH's family used to tell me to lighten up when i objected to his drinking.

No more surprising than Justin not being involved. It was a sibling thing and, like Justin, Pat would have been neither use nor ornament.

I didn't have the impression that they had specifically got together as siblings on a "let's keep the partners out of it" basis, and by virtue of working together Tony and Pat have, at least in the past, always tended to be in each other's company. It's particularly crass to say an alcoholic capable of heaving bricks around when crossed can come to live with you without checking whether your partner is OK with that.