🏘️ 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!

I was fuming that on the opening roll of the game he'd made it to the conservatory which is definitely a 2 roll trip minimum and only if you're Mrs Peacock (which I sincerely doubt he was.) Me too. I thought they must be playing with two dice, in which case I suppose you would almost certainly expect them to overlook the rule that Mrs Peacock starts. I can't believe that I am nitpicking to this extent, but it's part of a wider lack of attention to detail on things which should be easy to get right - such as the number of children Jenny and Brian have between them - and it smacks of a disregard for listeners (because presumably the SW think we pay so little attention we won't notice). Excellent scene yesterday with Alice, Ruari and Jenny, but we don't just want good set pieces we want all the little nuts and bolts around them that hold them together.

@trews2019 I think that when Siobhan’s CD for Ruari’s 18th was sent to them, Jenny was struggling a bit with her emotions around it and confided in Kate and Alice. They possibly had an afternoon round at one of their houses and wine was almost certainly drunk. Jenny of course got her head straight and was able to support Ruairi wonderfully, and we have no reason to think that anything that she said to him was not genuine.

Ruari is a sensible boy. Hopefully he will reflect on what was said/and who said it and weigh it up against the years of love JD has given him. I don’t think he would go off in a huff to uni and not speak to JD for years IRL, but the SWs will do anything for a cheap plot twist these days so who can tell…

I think it’s pretty amazing really that Ruairi has got to 18 without really thinking about what an upset his existence must have caused in the family and how Jennifer might feel about Siobhan. They’ve done brilliantly to protect him from that as a child but really it’s time he came to see his “mum” ie Jenny as a person in her own right and consider that she’s allowed to have private negative feelings about Siobhan (and Brian!) if she wants.

Ruari is a sensible boy
If that is the case, then it must have occurred to him by now that JD would not have been particularly fond of Siobhan. It might even have struck him that it is rather odd that JD gave her husband's bastard house-room. Note that JD lost it at the point when Alice was saying that Ruairi was only there because JD wanted to hang on to her husband [SLAP!], which is not inaccurate. 'The truth hurts!'

Anyway, he's going to miss his required grades by a whisker; that, and taking Alice's rantings to heart, will cause him to run away to London and make his fortune. (How, you ask? Details, details). Somehow, that will be Brian's fault as well. JD will continue to wail.

X-post with Foxglove.

It’s such a shame this has happened because that episode when J watched the video with R was a wonderful example of sacrificial love. I do believe that’s the right term.

Anyway, he's going to miss his required grades by a whisker; that, and taking Alice's rantings to heart, will cause him to run away to London and make his fortune. (How, you ask? Details, details).

The 🔮 agrees with you Weevils. It is of the opinion that Ruaruariii may go the way of Auntie Cardboard's Peter, who has been conducting his orchestra in Berlin for many a long year.

It thinks R will pop up in Ambridge from time to time to stir the pot though.

Anyway, he's going to miss his required grades by a whisker; that, and taking Alice's rantings to heart, will cause him to run away to London and make his fortune.

Ah ... Was that the point of Brian & Jenny’s cosy self-congratulation regarding his upbringing, the other day?

I can see how that would work, logically - but I’d miss him. And so would Ben.

And would his exit mean a Brian / Adam reconciliation? I honestly can’t see Adam leaving TA.

Until last night I was convinced Ruairi would do spectacularly badly, or at least badly enough to scrap the idea of a distant university in favour of The University of Favoured Home Farm Heir ... But, clearly, he’ll want to be packing his bags sharpish now.

I wonder if he’s disinvited Jenny from the 8am School Results Trip this morning.

I think the real question is what will eventually be the thing that R wants to do with all the family land. They haven’t set up this complex family for nothing. At some point he’ll be wanting his share/the whole thing whether that’s for farming, to run a massive hotel, build a solar farm or mine for gold.

If he ends up at Felpersham I'll be incandescent.

Congratulations on Alice full of malice, Gasp0!

Are you going with a straight Fall of the House of Aldridge this time?

Good prompt, Edmontine, it is indeed getting close to new thread time. Hmm...

The long-ago predictions that Baspofal would bring about the Fall of the House of Aldridge are slowly but surely coming to pass.

(Wasn’t intended as a completely unnecessary prompt was just thinking aloud ...)

Baspofal?

The 🔮 agrees with you Weevil
Evidently I speak fluent Balls, Bore

Bastard Spawn of Aldridge, I think, Captain

Bastard Spawn of Aldridge

Yes. Dates back to when his conception was first known of, as no one yet knew if he'd be a boy or a girl.

Some of us have been hanging around the various boards for over two decades.

I meant Baspofald. Bastard Spawn of Aldridge.
From Mustardland, about 19 years ago. Tempus fugit.

Jenny listened to Siobhan's tape with Ruari - in fact they had both been reluctant to do so, but they both found it a comfort (as far as I recall - awaits intervention from AskingQuestions). Ruari knows this - if he sits down to think about it for even a second, it doesn't take someone predicted 3 A*s to work out that she might not have been overjoyed when Brian first broke the news. Alice's interpretation of Brian and Jenny's marriage is neither here nor there. A far greater concern is how the family can even begin to help someone so poisonous (and poisoned) - what will Alice's rock bottom look like?

@theThreeofWeevils

Ruari is a sensible boy If that is the case, then it must have occurred to him by now that JD would not have been particularly fond of Siobhan. It might even have struck him that it is rather odd that JD gave her husband's bastard house-room. Note that JD lost it at the point when Alice was saying that Ruairi was only there because JD wanted to hang on to her husband [SLAP!], which is not inaccurate. 'The truth hurts!' Anyway, he's going to miss his required grades by a whisker; that, and taking Alice's rantings to heart, will cause him to run away to London and make his fortune. (How, you ask? Details, details). Somehow, that will be Brian's fault as well. JD will continue to wail.

Can you drop the use of "bastard" please. It's a vile expression. I know you love writing offensive posts but it's not funny or clever.

Oh and the comment applies to all of you who seem to think it's hilarious to use that foul term about Ruari.

@theThreeofWeevils

Bastard Spawn of Aldridge, I think, Captain

Ah. Thanks