🏘️ Archers thread #129: Casey, Macy, Lily, Alice – Decent types or full of malice? Discuss The Archers here.

[Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g]

Thank you, @PseudoBadger, for kicking off this long, long series of Archers threads, which has now passed 125,000 posts! (See below for further details.)

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 lust after Russ, 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.)

For the thread title I was very tempted to go with @R4's title suggestion of Come follow the exploits of Brine, Lily, Elizabeth, Usha, Ruari, George and Helen. Know collectively as bleurgh. because on the last thread @DadDadDad, our invaluable statistician, identified a post from @ILoveShula as the 125,000th. Many of us felt it was fitting that the post simply said Bleurgh!.

However, feeling that was a bit niche for the casual listener, I adapted @MayIDestroyYou's title suggestion in the end. Thanks, MIDY!

Back to Ambridge this week, after our enjoyable sojourn at Lower Loxley last week! Will we go with Alice to rehab? (Hope not.) Will the petulant Adam make good his threat to leave Home Farm? (Hope so.) What will Jennifer say? (Lots, I hope, and preferably to Brian.) Will the fete be a triumph? (Of course it will.) Will we ever return to Brookfield, or have they all fallen unnoticed into the slurry pit? (Let's hope Pip did, anyway.) WHERE IS PAT? (Can't answer this one.)

Over to you!

@HaveringWavering

All that stuff that Ian was saying tonight about secrets never being a good idea in a healthy relationship - Adam still hasn’t told him about resigning from Home Farm, has he? I wonder how this is going to play out?

And Chuckles McBroody did seem to have noticed that Edam is avoiding [situations in which he can talk with] him. 'Healthy relationship'? Possibly Edam is on an intergalactic cruise, Havers. In the farm office. Needless to say, I shall be disappointed if this plays out well. And talking of 'playing out', make it that Helen's odd spawn are shunned and harried by the neighbours' young hopefuls.

How old am I exactly? The SWs made Roy sound about 108 last night. How much do we think he has transferred to Laila’s account since he has known her?

Don’t teachers tend to be profiled on school websites these days? However low profile she wants to be online I am sure there would be some reference to her being head of year for the Upper IV or some such (ok, it’s a long time since I was at school!) For once Phoeble is right but I don’t generally think Roy is as much as a dinosaur as he was portrayed last night. I do remember him having trouble with his new phone a while back though…

Was Croydon mentioned, or is it just being used as an example of where she might be from? I'm not a million miles from Croydon and the state schools haven't broken up here yet.

Poor old Roy. Has Hayley remarried, or have I imagined that?

I liked the fact that the incomers whose houses were built on what had been agricultural land within sight and probably smell of a farm are all complaining about, guess what, farm vehicles blocking the lane, manure/slurry making a nasty smell etc etc. I gather this happens a lot. Like moving next to a church and complaining about bellringing.

The Fall of the House of Aldridge still has some way to go, then. Adam will have to confess all to Ian if his salary doesn't arrive in the bank account as expected. Another numpty. Ambridge is full of them.

SW1 - welcome to the monthly script review Zoom…
Intern (for it is she)- you’re on mute, but it’s fine, we can all lip read now.
SW1- is that better? .. Good. So young person, what’s the word form the Mumsnet street?
Intern - well, for once it’s positive. They enjoyed the Lower Loxley week and the Alice goes to rehab story. Negativity was down by 86% although someone called Weevils distorts that measure a bit, I’m not sure how to allow for them in my metric. My interpretation is that they like it when you concentrate on one set of people or a strong story and don’t chop and change too much in one episode. Oh and they still hate Shula, obviously.
SW2 - that’s great, we’re only introducing 127 new stories and 43 new characters, most of whom will never speak or appear again, this week. It will be interesting to see what that does to your (air quotes) metrics, whatever they are. They may think they like character and plot development but we know that isn’t true.

The Fall of the House of Aldridge still has some way to go, then. Adam will have to confess all to Ian if his salary doesn't arrive in the bank account as expected.

But that won't happen yet - Brian asked to stay at least till the end of harvest, and Adam agreed.

@AskingQuestionsAllTheTime

Maybe she looked it up on line and discovered that schools in Croydon don't finish term until 25th, or something. Whereas she knows that schools in Borsetshire broke up on 9th, because the place is awash with random Yoof rejoicing in their freedom and falling off walls.

I think, @Asking, that you are hugely overestimating the amount of fact checking done by the SWs . Whenever they write anything to do with education I'm astonished at the errors they make. I expect it's the same in other areas about which I am less knowledgeable.

Has Hayley remarried, or have I imagined that?

I am certain that a couple of years ago, or so, Phoebe was reported to have attended her former Step Mother's wedding.

I'm thinking the peerless Intern has now rather outgrown her placement! Can the BBC not offer her a proper job? In the meantime, perhaps she'll need to train up her TA successor ...

I liked the fact that the incomers whose houses were built on what had been agricultural land within sight and probably smell of a farm are all complaining about, guess what, farm vehicles blocking the lane, manure/slurry making a nasty smell etc etc. I gather this happens a lot. Like moving next to a church and complaining about bellringing.

Happened in my village, @Gasp0de. Small estate built a few years ago; residents complained about the heavy machinery driving past at harvest. They were ridiculed on the village FB page, which I didn't think was a particularly constructive response.

Why are the Grundy komedy kapers always awful?

Edmontine The interns usually pass on to their successors in around September, they are doing sandwich degrees with the Archers internship as their year in industry.

I wonder if Kyle knows Rob?

Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g
Was Croydon mentioned, or is it just being used as an example of where she might be from? I'm not a million miles from Croydon and the state schools haven't broken up here yet.

On April 1st Roy told Kirsty about having "met" Layla, a South London science teacher with teenage sons, and I'm fairly sure she was mentioned as coming from Croydon last night.

Edmontine
I am certain that a couple of years ago, or so, Phoebe was reported to have attended her former Step Mother's wedding.

If she was, Lowfield doesn't seem to have mentioned it; and you'd think, seeing how much everyone has always been interested in what happened to Hayley and why Roy never seems to see one of his children, that the Lowfield summarisers would have put that in.

The name Hayley appears in Lowfield once in 2017 and twice in 2018 (she had a new boyfriend so Roy didn't want to go over at Christmas when he would be there), and not at all since then.

“Hayley”s Wedding” sounds like fan fiction to me! I like it. Does anyone who used to frequent the old BBC Mustardland boards years ago remember that they had a whole board devoted to fan fiction- I think it might have been called “Alternative Archers”? The time and effort that people put into it was phenomenal.

Given that Beechwood Estate is at the edge of Home Farm and built off a lane along which there is no reason whatever for anyone from Bridge Farm to drive in a tractor, since none of their land opens off it, I don't know quite what the Beechwooders are griping about. Bridge Farm is self-contained, and access to all their fields is through the farmyard and off a track leading out of it. They must be being delayed by someone else's tractors: Home Farm or Brookfield, maybe.

@HaveringWavering

“Hayley”s Wedding” sounds like fan fiction to me! I like it. Does anyone who used to frequent the old BBC Mustardland boards years ago remember that they had a whole board devoted to fan fiction- I think it might have been called “Alternative Archers”? The time and effort that people put into it was phenomenal.

Fantasy Archers.

Thanks, Asking! That mention of Layla had passed right over my head.

Lovely to hear from the intern. Tell her that latest report made me laugh out loud in a cafe, @Chemenger!

I'm not convinced by Gormless 1.0 and 2.0's cleverness. They may have fleeced YY out of £100 but hasn't YY gone off with a suit worth at least that, which they will never see again.

I thought that, even without the suit. They drove him back to his house in an unsuccessful effort to get him back there, kept an eye on him during the night, got him up, ready and dressed in time for his wedding and delivered him there. I'd have thought that little lot would have cost him at least £200 in official taxi charges.

Is this the first time the Dopeys have bought cows?

I liked Helen, Lee and Joy tonight

I think it is now the third time Ruth has unilateraly decided to change the cows, having on the first occasion insisted they get rid of the herd which David, his father and his grandfather had been carefully breeding since 1961 -- before she was even born. Then there was the stuff about replacing the cows she got in, and now there is the herd expansion so they can stop being a mixed farm at all and put all their eggs in one basket, since Josh's hens are his not Brookfield's really.

I do hope these new cows are the sort that can stay out all year round and be milked in the field, which I vaguely remember was her last brainwave. That lot were the reason they had to spend three quarters of a million pounds on a new, different milking parlour in 2019, I think.

Oops, sorry: the new milking parlour was a mere quarter of a million, not three-quarters.

Ruth has unilaterally
Now she can't really help that...

Oh, hang on, she had reconstructive surgery, didn't she? And Happy Laughing Dayveed suspected her motives for it.

Deevid was cheerful. Is he ill?

I like the development of Joy's character; well-inteioned as always, but showing that grit in kicking Kyle's arse while not prying into the details of Helen's life.

I still Do Not Believe in Joy. At All.

I guess it's difficult introducing a new, solo, character. Unless they very quickly get jiggy with a willing Ambridge resident, the only way for them to be heard is if they get their face in other people's business, far too soon - thereby inevitably looking like the sort of person one wouldn't want to know.