🏘️ 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!

It’s true that Ruairi’s role in the plot has always been that of the archetypal “bastard”.

In this day and age we might choose not to use such a term, certainly when speaking about him as an (innocent) and fictitious individual. It has been used in very offensive and malicious ways throughout the ages and perhaps particularly in the 19/20th centuries, causing hurt to many.

I speak as someone born “out of wedlock” - although not because of an affair - myself.

Well, that’s that, then.

Though it all reminds me that Noluthando is twenty now - and there’s been no word that I recall as to how her life is shaping up. We have no reason to assume she and Sipho are any less clever than their half-sister. Their father must be way ahead of Roy in weight of brain. There will be name-calling from me if the SWs don’t remember them soon. (Don’t mind if they also recall Meriel.)

If we're going to demand a return of forgotten children... it would seem reasonable for Roy to remember that Abbie hasn't visited him in best part of a decade. With Roy on furlough for most of lockdown she could have moved back in with him whilst his ex wife managed to work.

On balance I'd prefer some news of Brenda and Bethany.

At least Baspofald can console himself that he's not The Bastard Son of Dean Friedman. That will never be embroidered in his socks. Phew, lucky escape.

@theThreeofWeevils

You migjt want to tick the SWs off too, then, Kimikos, because that's one of the things Alice called him.

It's a little different having a character saying it, as opposed to a real person posting on a forum. I agree that it's time for a change.

I ask this periodically: was anyone on umra (uk.media.radio.archers) on usenet back in the day?

And the very reason Alice used the word is the same reason we shouldn't use it. It is hurtful and crass.

[quote WhoppingBigBackside]@KimikosNightmare, aren't you going to say something about my fattist username?[/quote]
Is it fattist if it is the truth?

Also, gone are the days when the correct answer to "Does my bum look big in this?" is "No, of course not"

Multiple posts because I've just been away to a party, and this thread is helping me decompress

FFS. Do you really imagine he wouldn't have wondered why it was that JD took on 'her husband's b-word' in those exact terms before now? The boy's not an idiot. The really damaging things that Alice said were not that he was a b-word, which he knows and is a simple fact, but that he was not wanted, that they all pretended, and that his very existence 'destroyed ' JD.

Anyway, the mystic Ball and I were wrong about the grades (and I'm glad) but right about Puair Roori the Differently Legitimate getting out of Dodge as fast as his little legs can carry him.

@TheSilveryPussycat

And the very reason Alice used the word is the same reason we shouldn't use it. It is hurtful and crass.

Oh but it's just a simple fact according to some posters. Aside from being wrong, of course - it's not a "fact". There's no status of illegitimatcy in UK law. The point of Alice doing this was to show what an unpleasant, selfish, destructive person she is- but apparently she's just a speaker of truth- a role model perhaps?

That was a desperately sad episode.

I really liked Ben in tonight. And Brine actually, who obviously doesn’t yet know about what Alice said about him...

The primary meaning of the word "bastard" has experienced somewhat of a shift over the years, and is now something like "man who is gratuiously nasty." E.g. "DH is a bastard" (I don't think women get called "bastard")

It can also be used as a sort of term of endearment - eg "you've eaten all the chocolate, you bastard!"

Ruairi was 4 when he arrived to live with the Aldridges. My son is 4. I was practically weeping at Jenny's description of him standing in the kitchen being offered a biscuit.

(Though my little treasure would probably ask to be adopted by any woman who offered biscuits, without my dying first...)

I think the idea that the fact that he was not wanted, that they all pretended is patently untrue in JD's case. Of course she wouldn't have wanted the situation to have happened in the first place but once Ruari was there I don't think she ever wanted him gone. That was obvious from what she said tonight.

Alice is poisonous. She picked the most damaging thing to say. She wasn't speaking the truth about what JD thought about Ruari- she was speaking the truth about what a nasty piece of work she is. And I suppose she's now stuck in Ambridge- where else is going to go?

JD didn't want him and resisted Brian's (entirely unreasonable) wish for her to nurture a cuckoo like hell. Then she used him as a blackmailing lever, to get a better deal for her non-Brian spawn.
Alice was telling the truth about JD only taking Ruairi on to hold on to her husband, like it or not (it was probably also truth on the 'stopped clock' principle, but let that pass )
But being reminded of his, er, unusual birth circumstances was the least damaging thing in yesterday's tirade. Everything else had just a grain of truth in, too. Enough to fester. Good. Maximum Angst

And I suppose she's now stuck in Ambridge- where else is going to go?

If Alice has any sense she'll go back to rehab, and stay there.

JDdidn'twant him and resisted Brian's (entirely unreasonable) wish for her to nurture a cuckoo like hell. Then she used him as a blackmailing lever, to get a better deal for her non-Brian spawn.

That's true, but once she had decided to do it, whatever her reasoning, she was totally committed to doing the best for Ruari.

If Alice has any sense she'll go back to rehab, and stay there.

So she's stuck in Ambridge, then...

I wonder if Ruairi’s disappearance after Alice’s outburst will make Brian rethink his attitude to Adam (who has always been made to feel like the cuckoo in the nest, particularly since the arrival of Ruairi)

Home Farm is looking good this morning.

No Adam (soon. Apparently.) No Debbie. Not Kate. Drunk Alice. No Ruairi.

So unless Adam relents, Phoebe will be carpeting the place in knock-off tents and runaway cows. Perhaps Brian is on the phone to Noli and Sipho right now. (What time is it in SA? Though of course Noli could be studying or working anywhere in the world, for all we know.) Has Xander shown any inclination towards model tractors?

Maybe Debbie will return to fill the void

I'd love to see Debbie back but can't see it now that Tamsin Greig is so successful on TV. I recently binged on Friday Night Dinner, having never seen it before Paul Ritter's untimely death in the spring , and if TG did return, I might struggle now to hear Debbie rather than Jackie Goodman.

Good to hear Brian giving Alice a few home truths. Poor Ruairi, but it's long overdue for him to re-connect with his mother's family.

Pusillanimous of the SWs not to name the institution Ruairi is going to. Nobody, but nobody, talks about going to 'London' in that way. He'd be saying the name. Also, what's he going to study?

Options are:

UCL, Imperial, KCL, LSE, Queen Mary, City, SOAS, Courtauld Institute of Art. (Until told to the contrary, I'm going to assume he's at UCL, as that's where I went.)

Goldsmiths, Royal Holloway, Brunel, City seem less likely.

Birkbeck is a wonderful institution but not a likely destination for Ruairi at this point. Surely we'd have been told if he was aiming for Medicine or Veterinary Science, so that rules out St George's and the RCVS.

I think we can also rule out the specialist colleges for Art, Music, Drama and Theology, as you'd expect there would have been some discussion on air (I know, I know) about talent/vocation if he'd been headed in that direction. Architectural Association School of Architecture is an outside possibility.

Can't see him going to any of the post-92 universities with 3 A*s but I could be wrong, if any of them have really good courses in a specific subject he's interested in, with terrific links to industry/placements/employment prospects. Westminster maybe?

FFS. Do you really imagine he wouldn't have wondered why it was that JD took on 'her husband's b-word' in those exact terms before now? The boy's not an idiot. The really damaging things that Alice said were not that he was a b-word, which he knows and is a simple fact, but that he was not wanted, that they all pretended, and that his very existence 'destroyed ' JD.
Agreed. But worse than that. When he was a child he was merely an embodiment - of his mother, of the betrayal of two marriages, of otherness, etc. At age eighteen, he must have thought that he had got past that, where he was his own person and people liked him for himself. Alice tore down that edifice. What an utterly, utterly cruel thing to do to a teenager on the cusp of life.
I hope that it prompts JD to speed up the reconciliation with Peggy.

I think Ruairi has probably gone to study something in business or economics at LSE.

Another thing I've binged during lockdown is the TV series Unforgotten, where Nicola Walker and Sanjeev Bhaskar revisit old murder cases and finally solve them. (Recommended, if you like that sort of thing - police procedural, with a psychological thriller aspect.)

Anyway, I've noticed that every time they find out something discreditable about a person from their distant past, and that person has to tell their spouse/partner/children/friends/colleagues, she/he will say I'm so, so sorry'. It never sounds sincere or adequate, given the magnitude of what's been discovered. I thought the same listening to Alice attempting to apologise to Brian and Ruairi.

Oh dear - now I’m all over again at the faces of the husband and children - you’ll know which ones - in the final (or penultimate) episode of the last season of Unforgotten.

But, yeah ... so strange not to name the institution. Perhaps every real life university in the country is now so horrified at TA’s factual inaccuracies that they refuse to have anything to do with it?

It's not important to the plot save that he's going to a serious institution and it's in London- Big City and Far Away, so he'll have little reason to rush back to Ambridge, unusually.
And we're now to believe that he's rejected the Aldridges en masse thanks to Alice's mouth.

I'll be sorry to lose Ruairi as I like him and he's well acted.
Alice's acting btw is terrific atm.

I agree KimikosNightmare that it was such a sad episode. I suddenly felt quite emotional listening to Jennifer.