🏘️ 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!

WheresThatCatGoneNow
And don't get me started on Phoebe! She's outdoing Pip just now in the 'sounding annoying' stakes

Steady on now. She's got a bit to go on that score.

This week's episodes were just too ridiculous.

@drivinmecrazy

I'm a complete newbie to the Archers, but so happy to find this thread. I'm not quite au fait with all of their names yet and am boring my family with it all. My 15 year old just raises her eyebrows when I have it on and I want to scream at her (often do!) wait til you're 50 then you'll get it!! TBF that's true of everything I listen to on radio 4, where has it been all my life?? So I'm reading this thread and listening daily. Have been for a few months and just about getting to grips with the relationships. Nothing further to add but I'm reading And learning all the time

Heh! Welcome to the madhouse!

If anything has really baffled, asking here will probably get you an answer, or more answers than you really wanted...

Details like "who the blazes is Alistair in all this?" have been known to leave strong men reaching for the bottle, mind...

We could re-write that as 'Asking here will probably get you an answer', actually! AskingQuestionsAllTheTime is a walking archive of The Archers.

@HaveringWavering

It was all terrible but Roy and Layla’s longhorn encounter did remind me of this, which is a particular favourite of DS at the moment…sadly I think that this is about the level of literary inspiration the SWs are drawing on these days.

Gosh @Havering, I think you are on to something there. I mean, that is almost exactly the episode we have just listened to. Soooo, how old exactly are the two SWs who wrote the "carry on camping" sketch? Do you think TA are using work experience yoofs? Cos that would explain a lot.

Ok I realise I’m an outlier but I loved the tent/cows/relations date farce with Roy. Particularly his reaction to his daughter and ex. Anyone who’s lived in a village or small town will know the impossibility of avoiding your relatives when you really want to. Poor Londoner Layla’s reaction to “everyone” being related was very realistic.

@WheresThatCatGoneNow
And don't get me started on Phoebe! She's outdoing Pip just now in the 'sounding annoying' stakes

Nobody could be more annoying than Pip.

@FoxgloveSummers

Ok I realise I’m an outlier but I loved the tent/cows/relations date farce with Roy. Particularly his reaction to his daughter and ex. Anyone who’s lived in a village or small town will know the impossibility of avoiding your relatives when you really want to. Poor Londoner Layla’s reaction to “everyone” being related was very realistic.

So did I. It made me laugh. The "who else are you related to" was very realistic.

@TheSilveryPussycat

Must have missed that Jim's academic was a philologist. Rats.

I suggested Mary Beard. I don't hold much credence for the discipline being accurately represented and it's not entirely outwith Mary Beard's scope.

Lynda would furious if she found out she turned her nose up at Mary Beard.

@FoxgloveSummers

Ok I realise I’m an outlier but I loved the tent/cows/relations date farce with Roy. Particularly his reaction to his daughter and ex. Anyone who’s lived in a village or small town will know the impossibility of avoiding your relatives when you really want to. Poor Londoner Layla’s reaction to “everyone” being related was very realistic.

I found the camping episode borderline bearable (it was yesterday’s fainting farce and browsing of escort sites that sent me over the edge).

I particularly liked the observation made by somebody upthread that Roy has a dodgy history with women and tents. If he’d never gone to that festival with Elizabeth and got jiggy in the campsite he would not be in this sorry single state right now. I’m surprised he didn’t get some sort of PTSD flashback when he leaned in to Layla just before the longhorn barged in.

Sadly, however, I suspect that the idiots writing this week would have no idea about any of that and it was total coincidence.

What an appalling waste of 13 minutes last night's episode was.

KimikosNightmare
Lynda would furious if she found out she turned her nose up at Mary Beard.

I have a feeling Jim told her the name and she didn't recognise it. We didn't hear his side of that communication, only her reaction to it.

Oh my goodness. The last two episodes. Cringe. Criiiinge.

The famed philologist - Suzie Dent?

I've just done catch-up and am relieved I'm not the only one who found it all a bit silly. I'm glad I was doing something else useful while that drivel poured out of the laptop.

Emptying the dishwasher since you asked.

Oh, thankyou AskingQuestionsAllTheTime!

Your 'No, no, no and no' post made me giggle so much!

I haven't had such a good laugh for ages

I found the camping episode borderline bearable (it was yesterday’s fainting farce and browsing of escort sites that sent me over the edge).

Oh? I assumed Tinder ...

(No knowledge of either, so ...)

I'm a complete newbie to the Archers, but so happy to find this thread.
I'm not quite au fait with all of their names yet and am boring my family with it all.

Always nice to see new people! If you haven’t already, you may find it helpful to browse here:

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/profiles/3VLG6MxxfQpKXF2Chky4Fmh/characters

Because Monday's episode took a while to load onto my podcast app I listened to the full week at once. I can remember other weeks that have been boring, other weeks that have stretched credulity and other weeks in which the whomp whomp comedy styling has been excruciating to listen to. In combining all of these I think I can safely say that this is the most dire example of will this do-ness that I have had the misfortune to encounter. And I have listened on and off since John died. Who on earth is greenlighting this dirge? And why? Is it some kind of defund the BBC fifth columnist?

Well at least we know why they’re returning to 5 episodes weekly for the 15th August - the date of the fete! I can’t decide if it’ll be too dreadful to listen to. Fete episodes are usually pretty dire anyway, but now it seems Lynda has finally lost it. Unless it’s a cunning (!) double bluff by the SWs where we all think it’s going to be a dreadful Lynda-non-celebrity episode and then - last minute - a real celebrity appears and saves the day. Hurrah

@Edmontine I thought Tinder did have people in it who wanted serious relationships, but maybe you can filter to those who expressly say that is not what they are after- fortunately I had just met my husband around the time it took off so never had to go there. You are right though, escorts would be a step too far - and too expensive for Roy!- must have been nostrings.com or something (I made that up).

The only point of having a sleb at a fete is that you can use them in publicity to entice people to come to the fete. Why would anyone imagine that the prospect of seeing Lynda would be a draw?

Am I right in thinking the funding Jill provided for the rewilding project was a one-off? If so, surely it's all been spent by now? What is Phoebe supposed to be living on, other than her relatives' charity?

It sounds as Peggy who provided the cash, I’m not sure how much they have burned through. The campsite infrastructure and the cattle are the only building expenses I can think of?

It was Peggy (I don’t know where sounds came from).

I suppose the R4 powers that be might find 💴 to pay for a celeb on fete day. It will be good publicity for the return of the Sunday episodes.

@Chemenger

It sounds as Peggy who provided the cash, I’m not sure how much they have burned through. The campsite infrastructure and the cattle are the only building expenses I can think of?

Didn't they rent most of the land from Borchester Land (greenwashing)? I don't remember the "fab 3" ever doing any physical work, so perhaps the Grundy family do it for them. Presumably free range longhorns still need a degree of fencing in.

I remember they had a handful of biodiversity consultants at some point (and presumably a land agent to help them apply for various grants).

I do wonder what the original plans were when they gave Phoebe a decent PPE degree? "Let's send her to Oxford. Then she can come back to Ambridge, sponge off the family for a year or two and run a little campsite".