🏘️ 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!

Ooh that didn't quite work. Thank you, thank you @R4.

You can’t just blame the SWs for Shula, they are writing for her established character of sanctimonious busybody. Returning the secateurs is nice(ish), barging in on a row uninvited is not, by any stretch of the imagination. I’m surprised she didn’t offer to pray for them (while holding hands with Neil, obviously).

Hmm ... My feeling is the only justification for last night's nonsense is that Shula, hearing the raised voices, decided that her holy presence would pour oil on troubled whatever.

But I do hate all the completely pointless journeys Ambridge people make. Of course she would irl have texted him about the secateurs, and he would have gone to pick them up.

Solidarity, ILoveShula!

Why is nobody complaining about Neil. Or, rather, what the SW are doing to Neil? That is at least two times now that he has forgotten about Susan's carefully choreographed childcare rota. She is bearing the mental load while he is swanning off doing discretionary gardening.

Er, Marthyr is Kristiffur's child. It is he who should be doing the mental load, not the grandparents. The grandparents have offered to interfere, in Susan's case do their bit, but Neil and Susan have jobs outside the home and have already raised a family.

Kristiffur should arrange proper childcare.

If someone left their secateurs behind --I'd put them in my gardening tool box if they were any good- return them

It’s perfectly reasonable to return the secateurs. But Shula has a presumably full time job running a business, yet she wanders out in the middle of the day to return them, rather than texting to say that she has found them and ask what Neil wants her to do like a normal person. Then barges in in the middle of an argument.

Kristiffur should arrange proper childcare.
Oh, I totally agree. (Where is he, btw? He's been very quiet). But once Neil has agreed to do something then he should honour it. The first time I wasn't sure who was at fault - Susan or Neil - but I'm convinced now that it is Neil.
Susan isn't helping herself. She should rope in Emma or Clarrie. Or, of course, Lady of Leisure JD. It would actually be a kindness, to take her mind off Alish.

@Chemenger, shouldn't you be looking after the intern?

Maybe she was just passing?

It’s true that everyone in Borsetshire is in a perpetual state of just passing everywhere in Borsetshire.

But Shula has a presumably full time job running a business
So has Neil but he found time for a morning's gardening. He should have been getting the groceries in and running round with the hoover.

I don’t actually think Shula wants to have an affair with Neil or that she fancies him any more than she ever has ie v little but she likes the confidence boost of his endless admiration. I have known others with this dog in the manger approach. The woman doesn’t actually want to progress things with the guy but she likes knowing she has an admirer on tap should she ever change her mind. Not pleasant but very believable.

Poor Susan. It took me a few years to warm to her but now I LOVE HER and enjoy every scene she is in.

I’ve got three weeks off work soon (which will only leave another accumulated three weeks leave to take in the remaining available month before term starts), maybe I can get back in touch with the intern then. I imagine she’s hard at work reminding the SWs that they will have to write an extra episode a week soon. It’s the sort of thing they will find hard to understand, I’m sure.

Neil’s working hours do seem to be a moveable feast. Does he work on a shift pattern? If so who does the other shifts? I would have thought a management role would be more 9 - 5. To be fair to Shula she must work weekends giving lessons so may have time off through the week.

Yay! extra episode.

Thanks Chem.

It took me years to warm to Susan and Lynda.

I've always liked Neil.

I didn't like Shula carrying on with Dr Locke.

@Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g

Will Grundy was underkeeper when Greg was gamekeeper. He was with Brian when they became concerned about Greg and went looking for him. Greg had killed himself in a shepherd's hut on Home Farm land. Brian looked in there and IIRC told Will not to go in. It would be natural if Will had talked to his family about it. Brian was always on very good terms with Will, as I recall.

Will found the empty house and hungry dogs and rang Brian. Brian thought to look in the shepherd's hut. Will was not with him when he did.

Will and Eddie had very little to do with each other in May/June 2004 apart from Will agreeing to go with Ed to try to find favourable witnesses about Eddie selling condemned meat: Will was angry with his father for having put random people's lives at risk. They lived in different houses and rarely spoke because Eddie resented Will being a good gamekeeper, ie not allowing him to steal whenever he felt like it.

Eddie and Brian didn't speak with each other at all for several months that year, in fact I am not sure they spoke to each other at all during that year but I cba to check Lowfield for the whole time. And they were not friends at all: Brian refused to employ any Grundy at Home Farm, and wasn't all that keen on Will employing Eddie as a beater on the occasion that happened.

@R4

Solidarity, ILoveShula!

Why is nobody complaining about Neil. Or, rather, what the SW are doing to Neil? That is at least two times now that he has forgotten about Susan's carefully choreographed childcare rota. She is bearing the mental load while he is swanning off doing discretionary gardening.

Or she has failed to tell him what she has decided he is to do. Given her exhaustion and generally confused and irritable state, and given that on the first occasion we did actually hear what she told him and then what she later claimed she had told him, and they were not the same, I'd say she is the one who is confused.

She is bearing a load of her own choosing. She has two unused helpers: Chris whom she doesn't expect to look after his child because of course his job is more important than her or Neil's, and Jennifer whom she refuses to allow to look after Martha at all. (There is also Kate, but I don't blame anyone for not trusting Kate with anything.) Susan has chosen to make a martyr of herself and a victim of Neil.

Jennifer whom she refuses to allow to look after Martha at all
As well as her martyrdom, Susan will be relishing the opportunity to deny Jennifer access to the All-Important Baybee. Jam! It would be nice if her exhaustion were to cause her actually, as opposed to almost, drop and damage it. Even better were Christopher to do so, but there seems to be little chance of that, as he's evidently not doing much of the brat-wrangling.

She knocks on the door, nobody answers. A normal person might assume that was a hint that the people inside don’t want to see them. But no, she wanders round to the back door, where she must hear that a row is in full swing. A normal person would creep off and come back later

When I lived at home, people who knew us would knock on the door, and at this time of year, if no one answered, they'd go round to the garden gate and come in to see if we were in the garden, so for me, it's fine up to that point. I don't think she wouldn't have heard the arguing, though, and I agree anyone would have quietly left at that point.

Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g - humble thread follower suggests you check yer inbox ...

@Chemenger

Ok Shula lovers, put her in a good light now. She knocks on the door, nobody answers. A normal person might assume that was a hint that the people inside don’t want to see them. But no, she wanders round to the back door, where she must hear that a row is in full swing. A normal person would creep off and come back later, never mentioning that they had been there at all. But no, she simply walks in, without, it would seem, knocking. Who does that? A normal person might just have texted Neil to tell him he’d forgotten his secateurs too rather than barging in on a household that they know is under a lot of stress.

Things are different in the country. I needed access to somewhere, recreational not job, phoned for permission, and he told me which barn he kept the key in - this is the only contact we’d ever had. On the day, looked for key, not there, knocked at the door, no reply, went away. Rang later, and he was astonished “I put it on the dining table for you, didn’t you come in?” He thought it quite normal for a stranger to come into his house when he wasn’t there.

And I wouldn’t text, I’d bring the secateurs round to save him having to collect.

Although on no reply I’d probably stow them somewhere and text to say where.

It wasn’t a row, was it? It was a Talk. Didn’t crossto row territory until shula’s intervention

When my parents moved from a northern city to their quiet island village, to a newbuild house, they ticked the box on the builder's list of optional extras to say yes, they would like to have a burglar alarm. This has caused much amusement to their friends and neighbours as it genuinely is the kind of place where people leave their doors and windows open and parcels can be left in the porch or the unlocked garage if the recipient is out. I doubt if the alarm has ever been set.

Of course she would irl have texted him about the secateurs - she wanted to see him that's why she took them round. Alistair sowed the seed in her mind when he found them together after the rain storm. Shula is driving this, Neil is genuinely clueless. She has form with Richard Lock and I think she is a bit lonely. He is exhausted by being on permanent grandparent duty due to Susan's reluctance to enlist anyone else's help and is using helping Shula as an excuse to get some time alone.
I think the significance of service stations in The Archers should be the subject of an Academic Archers paper - Elizabeth and Cameron Fraser, Heatherpet throwing in the towel at Trowell and now Alice and Brian.

You're right, of course, Lil'G ... So she's doing that thing that crops up on every single unsatisfactory man thread - 'targeting the vulnerable'? Though a bit reckless to assume Susan would be out. And surely she should have left when she heard that he wasn't on his own?

I did wonder, when I woke up this morning, just how much humble pie (no chilli on offer) Neil has eaten since we last heard him.

If the Shula thing goes any further it'll be George or Keira who does a Freddie on them. Let's hope Susan has killed it.

Shula is driving this, Neil is genuinely clueless. She has form with Richard Lock and I think she is a bit lonely.

Yes. Not long ago she was cosying up to Philip Moss too.

This is where we need Usha ... Part of me thinks newly separated Shula (months ago) consciously or otherwise saw vicardom as a way to spend more time with Alan. I really don't see what else she's getting out of it.