🧱 Archers thread #128: Alice lobs a brick, Emma hurls brickbats, Neil is a brick. Cement your relationship with The Archers here.

[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 collect superhero figures, or other unusual things.

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.)

Apologies for not using any of the suggestions offered for this thread's title. I'll paste them in here instead to get us started.

I like the leeway pun here from @ThePawtriarchy: Bacon, Bores and Booze. Elizabeth needs convincing, Helen needs some leeway and Alice is in crisis.

@nettie434 gets to the nub of what's been happening recently: Beechwood, Batman and Booze: Rex's pigs and Helen and Lee have new homes but will Lee's collection of action figures plant the apple of discord in their sylvan idyll? Alice's alcohol problems continue to cause friction between the Aldridges and Carters. Has anyone warned Borsetshire Children's Services what awaits them?

Great one liner from @PseudoBadger - ‘Nobody puts Captain America in the corner’.

And a timely bit of advice from @JanFebAnyMonth: If this evening’s episode has raised any issues for you, please call the BBC Helpline post on this MN thread for details of organisations which might help you.

So, off we go again! We may get back to five episodes a week before the next thread. Here's hoping that it's Friday we get back, not Sunday.

Age discrimination, I expect.

Mind you, he has almost twenty years' experience on a farm, about half of it as a manager, which ought to be good for something on a CV. Though there might be awkward "why did you leave your last (and only) farm employment?" questions to answer.

Foxgloves...too obvious! Surely Hemlock Water Dropwort instead (Oenanthe crocota for the cognoscenti). People have dug it up thinking they’re foraging parsnips or horseradish, or nibbled the green bits thinking it’s parsley or celery - a more obscure way go!

It’s the most poisonous plant in Britain, so the BBC would be fulfilling its public information “remit”, if they killed off someone this way (may I suggest Pip).

@Gh0stontoast

Foxgloves...too obvious! Surely Hemlock Water Dropwort instead (Oenanthe crocota for the cognoscenti). People have dug it up thinking they’re foraging parsnips or horseradish, or nibbled the green bits thinking it’s parsley or celery - a more obscure way go!

It’s the most poisonous plant in Britain, so the BBC would be fulfilling its public information “remit”, if they killed off someone this way (may I suggest Pip).

Good call!

Foxgloves on a family campsite seems like a bad idea to me.

Alternatively I would really enjoy an "Archers/Clare in the Community" mash up.

Clare could move to a community substance misuse team and have Alice as part of her caseload.

The Adam actor's voice and delivery remind me of Stephen McGann in Call the Midwife. To me, they both come across as overly deliberate, pompous and patronising. There have been times when I've quite liked Adam, but mostly he annoys me. I felt a bit sorry for him in that exchange, but Brian is a much better (and more enjoyable) character.

@Taswama

Foxgloves on a family campsite seems like a bad idea to me.

There are umpteen plants which are poisonous, and unless a child is to be kept carefully locked in a nursery the entire time, it eventually needs to be taught not to eat whatever it finds growing about the place. We had foxgloves and lily-of-the-valley and laburnums in our garden when I was a child, but I knew not to put them in my mouth -- probably learnt that before I was toddling.

We also grew daffodils, crocuses, tulips, narcissuses, rhubarb and tomatoes. They are all poisonous.

Welshwabbit
There have been times when I've quite liked Adam, but mostly he annoys me. I felt a bit sorry for him in that exchange

you mean when the poor little fellow was called out for having stolen five grand and only paid it back when he was found out? Nasty Brian not apologising to Adam about having been angry because of Adam's peculation?

Ah yes, the fearful scourge of foxglove poisoning.So many tragic tots found stiff and cold. Odd that it never makes the news, really.

@AskingQuestionsAllTheTime I think he's right that Brian treats him less leniently than the others, and of course Brian's not one for seeing the log in his own eye. But clearly what Adam did was not ok.

I think the other siblings are not perpetually graceless, rude, unpleasant, patronising and critical in their dealings with Brian. That might explain why he finds them more congenial than Adam, who is.

There are umpteen plants which are poisonous, and unless a child is to be kept carefully locked in a nursery the entire time, it eventually needs to be taught not to eat whatever it finds growing about the place. We had foxgloves and lily-of-the-valley and laburnums in our garden when I was a child, but I knew not to put them in my mouth -- probably learnt that before I was toddling. It's always seemed to me that it's possibly more dangerous to try to clear your garden of poisonous plants. You can't control what plants other people grow. So better to have drummed in the message "don't eat without showing Mummy first", and you're more likely to do this if you're not secure in the knowledge that everything in your garden is harmless.

It enrages me to come across "toadstools" that have been kicked over by people who believe they are all poisonous and to be destroyed. Eve if those particular ones are dangerous, they're not exactly tempting (except perhaps to teenagers).

More strange is people who have clearly had to jump quite hard to get at fungi growing on the trunks of dead trees well above eye-level in order to destroy them. It can't be to protect the kiddies; it has to be just enjoyment of destruction.

Kicking over a toadstool doesn't mean it won't still release spores anyway.

Alright I have no idea if a foxglove has any killed anyone by accident! I just associate them with digitalis and Agatha Christie. And I needed to say something to mark my place now my listening has finally caught up with the thread

Foxglove depresses the action of the heart, according to one of the Mersey poets, probably Adrian Henri.

Not sure if anyone has actually died from eating a foxglove, but derivatives are poisonous (digitalis, as mentioned above, is a toxin). I think that's the case with most poisonous plants - I doubt Socrates actually ate a hemlock plant.

No, because he drank the hemlock as a tea, which would have been concentrated and given a quicker death. Probably preferable to any of the alternatives he might have had available once he'd been sentenced to death.

There was a thread on here some time ago by someone whose toddler had eaten foxglove leaves and was very, very ill indeed.

Here it is - I remember it partly because the family is local to me and the thought of driving the long way to the bigger hospital so as to not be out of reach of any hospital on the way stuck with me.

outfoxgloved.wordpress.com/2016/01/26/esmes-adventure-with-foxgloves/

Good grief that was a traumatic story.

Where's Carol Tregorran when you want her to offer Pip a nice cup of hemlock tea?

Do we have any idea when 5 or 6 episodes a week will resume? I’m not sure what the justification for 4 is any more and it means there’s no episodes for almost half the week!

@AskingQuestionsAllTheTime

Foxglove depresses the action of the heart, according to one of the Mersey poets, probably Adrian Henri.

Digoxin, though presumably now manufactured rather than derived from Digitalis purpurea, is used to slow the heart rate and to deal with arrhythmia. My father's on it. Which comes full circle as after school he used to help my grandfather in the pharmacy, rolling pills in the days when pharmacists made some of their own medicines (although adhering to the British Pharmacopoeia) and medicines were still used that were derived very closely from plants, and named in Latin, eg Ulmi Cortex (Elm bark)

there’s no episodes for almost half the week! More than half the week. From Thursday 19.15 to Monday 19.00 is 15 mins short of 4 days, whereas Monday 19.15 to Thursday 19.00 is less than 3 days.

(I don't want to hear any quibbles about repeats, Sundays etc. This is one thing I'm determined to be disgruntled abut)