🏘️ 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!

Ah, but Felpersham has to be modelled on somewhere. Why not Hereford as easily as Worcester or Oxford?

(Actually, I think you're all right and it can't be Hereford: didn't someone go to Hereford at some point to see the Mappa Mundi there?)

I have to correct myself: it's Catholic clergy who may not hunt with hounds or hawks. They may be present but "non clamore".

@AskingQuestionsAllTheTime

Ah, but Felpersham has to be modelled on somewhere. Why not Hereford as easily as Worcester or Oxford?

Because Hereford is much further away than Worcester. And Worcester has a university; Hereford doesn’t.

As to all this about ambridge being inkberrow - it’s clear that it’s in the Vale of Evesham/Borchester, and that Lakey Hill is Bredon

Inkberrow is convinced about being the place that is Ambridge; The Old Bull at Inkberrow is what has been used to model the Ambridge Bull:
www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00w47v9/p00w1tsj
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inkberrow#/media/File:Inkberrow_-The_Old_Bull-geograph.org.uk-_2696.jpg

Just listened to Wednesday’s episode. Brian said “1 out of 4 isn’t bad” or something along those lines to JD when congratulating himself on Ruairi turning out so well. I thought they had 5 children between them

Oh yes @Eastie77Returns!

Continuity, anyone?

You would have though at least one of the SW, editor or charles collingwood would have noticed that error

I thought they had 5 children between them
That's what I thought, too. But I'm so hacked off at TA these days that I couldn't summon the energy to say anything.

Ambridge is in the Worcester diocese. Ambridge is a mix of Hanbury and Inkberrow. LL is based on Hanbury Hall, St Stephens is St Marys at Hanbury and Brookfield is the nearby Summerhill Farm. The Bull is The Old Bull at Inkberrow. Grey Gables was Perry Hall hotel (now repurposed).
Ambridge is in Worcestershire!

@Eastie77Returns

Just listened to Wednesday’s episode. Brian said “1 out of 4 isn’t bad” or something along those lines to JD when congratulating himself on Ruairi turning out so well. I thought they had 5 children between them

And he's hardly likely to proclaim Debbie a failure, unless he views the fact that she works abroad that way.

If Shula thought being with Alistair was boring, surely being with Neil full time would be catatonic. Unless she fed him chilli all the time.

And he's hardly likely to proclaim Debbie a failure, unless he views the fact that she works abroad that way.
But that would be two (Debbie and Ruairi) out of ... either five (total) or four (JD's DC, but Ruairi - the subject of the conversation - isn't hers) or three (Brian's DC, but Debbie isn't his). It doesn't make sense on any level as far as I can see.

It doesn't make sense on any level as far as I can see.
Unless Brian accidentally admitted to another DC of whom we, and JD, are currently unaware.

He is truly the Boris Johnson of Ambridge.

I also wondered which four - thought he must mean the four he’d fathered but forgot Debbie wasn’t his either by blood. Maybe he meant one against four? But poor Debbie

Brian is only biological father to Kate, Alice and Ruairi ...

Ah well. Maybe Brian periodically thinks/hopes Adam no longer exists. After all he forgot his birthday.

What makes it even stranger is that the scriptwriter does know how many children Jennifer and Brian have, and their names, because Jennifer named Adam, Debbie and Kate in reply to Brian's remark, and I don't believe he can have been meant to have forgotten about Alice.

Maybe he’s just being the kind of father who periodically forgets how many kids he has because he hasn’t lifted a finger in raising them (although is frighteningly keen to employ them once they reach adulthood)

The only one he was ever keen to employ was Debbie, apart from offering Alice a job when she was out of work and Adam had a broken foot so Home Farm needed help.

He didn't want to employ Adam, and has shown for years that the only reason he did employ and keep employing the sullen brat was that Jennifer demanded it with menaces. She's the one who wants to keep all her chickens in her nest forever, not him.

If Shula needs any inspiration for her pilgrimage, this book is quite good.

amazon.co.uk/Travels-Donkey-Cevenne-annotated-Stevenson/dp/1517620260/ref=sr_1_6?crid=2HVPB1AC7OE9H&dchild=1&keywords=travels+with+my+donkey&qid=1628414274&sprefix=Travels+with+my+donkey%2Caps%2C156&sr=8-6]]

Am away from home this week and haven't yet caught up. You're not going to finish this thread before tomorrow evening, I hope? [alarmed EMOJI goes here]

Hoping to catch up later, but can't do it in private, and am surrounded by non-listeners. (The horror, the horror) Always find myself embarrassed if I listen to TA in company.

Au revoir!

Always find myself embarrassed if I listen to TA in company
And quite right too

@Terhou

Why were JD and Brine needed to babysit when Ruari was at home anyway?

Having heard the minibus, I think that I understand this now. JD was very insistent with her "you can tell us anything, Ruari". I think it was a stitch-up: Adam&Ian told JD&Brine that R was bi and they all engineered a situation where he could come out. JD and (particularly) Brine received the news with sangfroid and seemed remarkably unsurprised.

It seems to me unlikely in the extreme that Ruairi's announcement that he is bi will have the slightest effect on either Brian or Jennifer, given that neither is remotely interested in having him as a sexual partner. What exactly does this require them to do about it? say, "fair enough", I should have thought. What else?