🧦 Archers thread #133: Woolley socks it to them! Discuss The Archers and its Woolley thinking and plotting here.

[Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g]

Thank you, @PseudoBadger, for kicking off this long, long series of Archers threads.

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 would love to take part in the Mysteries, or other unusual views.

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.)

Thanks to @ButtonSister and @BorsetshireBanality for title suggestions. I went with their idea in the interests of keeping the title fairly short.

@LillianGish and @FoxgloveSummers made cracking but longer suggestions, which (mashed up) will do a great job of kicking off our new thread.

Evictions (Tom and Tash), depictions (Bridge Farm Christmas card), conniptions (entire cast and crew of the Mysteries), convictions (Philip) and addictions (Alice) - what are our predictions for 2022 in Ambridge? All sure to make this the Best Ambridge Christmas Evah!

This thread should take us through to early January unless something very exciting happens (ha ha, fat chance). My predictions: this is a bit left field, but I wonder if Peggy will offer to buy the shop and flat so Tom and Gnasher (great coinage, whose was it?) can stay put. I don't believe Hazel is sincere about wanting to live in/regularly visit Ambridge. She's always been utterly two-faced and rotten to the core, why would she change now?

The Mysteries will, of course be a triumph and briefly borrowing the🔮 (sorry, Bore!) I expect we are going to hear them at some point over the New Year period.

Over to you!

🤣

We’re happy to enjoy these notes from the Mailbox meeting room, Chemenger - until the police roll
up to deprive you of your recording equipment …

Honestly can you imagine a more depressing life than being the only local solicitor for that bunch of weirdos then coming home to Alan and AMY? I hope she loves the “media room” whatever the flip that is.

I can see why Alan likes Shula now. She would seem like a good option compared to Usha.

The media room is either just a room with nothing but a big telly with surround-sound and cosy chairs or a full-blown studio set up just like the 'Kumars at no. 42"!

Well that was a very silly episode.
Absolutely cannot abide the yearly Christmas performance performance.
I do have a very tiny smidgeon of sympathy for Usha living with a workaholic spouse, but her reaction was totally OTT. Going by Usha's delivery was that episode recorded after the cast's Christmas party?

@Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g many posts ago you asked if the depiction of twins rang true for my own experience.
Nothing Shula does or says rings true for me and I refuse to give her and Kenton any headspace.
Frilly are close in age to my own twins and I think they do have a believable twin relationship. I was unconvinced in their very early months when their parents were up in the early hours feeding them and having a lovely chat at the same time about what a wonderful experience it was - at that time DH and I did well not to grunt at each other and threaten divorce when we were both awake with crying babies in the night.

That episode was full of disconnects: it made no sense.

How/why did Evangeline wossit know about the Brookfield cows? Knowing about them, how did she know that reporting them would upset Lynda, who doesn't live at Brookfield? How did Lynda know so surely that the only person who could possibly have reported the cows must be Hilary Noakes rather than one of the other 800 silents living in the village?

It was like a murder mystery in which during the last chapter after all the looking for the right suspect to pin the crime onto, we are told by the detective in the library that it was done by a passing tramp with a psychopathic hatred of bald men, or something of that sort.

Usha. What a twat.

It's Lynda, @Chemenger.

Off to find my reindeer antlers

I didn’t say Linda, SW1 did.

Of course! Silly me.

I expect they write Gill, Tracie, Chelsey, Ciara etc
but not Cathy as they have forgotten about her being in the Grey Gables Linen Cupboard all this time

I think they should try to avoid names ending in a as they sound awful in a mummerset accent.

Stellur, Shuler, Mere, Keirur, Usher, Marthyr, Lyndur, ...

I think someone smuggled a list of name-spellings out of the script conferences....

ambridgereporter.org.uk/Spellings_of_Proper_Names.html

I don't know if it's me or them, but I ended that episode baffled by what was happening. What does Hilary Nokes have to do with Evangeline? Have I missed some vital explanatory nanosecond? Do I actually care?

Usha - words fail me.

Thanks for the twin comments, @ButtonSister. Whenever I come across twins in fiction, I remember Mrs H, my excellent English teacher. Every Friday our English homework was to write an essay over the weekend. We could choose from two or three titles. One week one of these titles was 'Twins'. When Mrs H gave the essays back the following week, she had some trenchant remarks for those who had picked that title, thinking it would be the easy option, and had produced a sub-Enid Blyton adventure story featuring a pair of children who were introduced as twins but could just as easily have been friends or non-twin siblings. She said the only reason for making a pair of characters twins was because you had something interesting to say about the twin relationship. What a pity she was never an Archers SW.

Gosh, she sounds brilliant, Gasp0de! Would that we all had such perspicacious teachers.

Shula and Kenton are useless - the only way a new listener would ever discern they’re even siblings is that Kenton is contractually obliged to use the word ‘Sis’ three times in any conversation with her.

She was indeed, and she wasn't the only excellent English teacher I had. I was very lucky with my school in many respects.

I had an excellent English teacher for one year and another good one for part of a year. The others were dreadful.

We seemed to have two teachers for many subjects and they taught different parts of the syllabus. There was usually a decent teacher and a rubbish one. Sometimes both were great, and it made the subject much more alive if the teacher was good.

I particularly remember one teacher who was vile, and some who seemed to be completely bored of teaching. There was one who would fancy one of the students - one of my friends was stunning and I think he tried it on with her, but am not sure. CMR reminds me of him.

The overall impression I had of teachers was that many of them had gone into teaching because they couldn't think of anything else to do.

After I graduated, I was asked by almost everyone where I would do my TT (yes, I'm old). [What else could one possibly do with a degree?]

I still think of some of my teachers fondly. Some are dead now, some died far too early

Thinking of my stunning schoolfriend - naturally blonde, tall slim but with an hourglass figure and beautiful face, and really nice... I also worked with someone blessed with film star looks and she was picked for projects on looks by lecherous married middle-aged men.and not on her ability

Some problems I haven't had to endure

I had some staffordshire oatcakes the other day. Delicious.
Far more memorable than recent TA episodes

The overall impression I had of teachers was that many of them had gone into teaching because they couldn't think of anything else to do. Perhaps not given the option. I was at a girls’ grammar school in the 60s. The successful ones got to university, the failures went to teacher training college. I doubt whether many of them had the slightest interest in being a teacher

I was much luckier than that, Mere, in the late 70s. Most of my year group went to university, to do a wide range of subjects, including a lot of STEM subjects. The others went into nursing, occupational therapy, physiotherapy, art college, secretarial college followed by working at the BBC and embarking on successful media careers (two of them!), and yes, teacher training college, mostly for primary teaching. The ones I know about who went into secondary teaching did a degree course and a PGCE.

Haven't heard tonight's episode yet - any good?

I can’t understand why Lily can’t just lead Susan in on a horse. She can’t be so stupid she’s scared of sitting on a walking horse?

Alice is back, Gaspode!

@MereDintofPandiculation

The overall impression I had of teachers was that many of them had gone into teaching because they couldn't think of anything else to do. Perhaps not given the option. I was at a girls’ grammar school in the 60s. The successful ones got to university, the failures went to teacher training college. I doubt whether many of them had the slightest interest in being a teacher

At my school it was Oxbridge University Polytechnic Teacher Training college Nursing/civil service/banking

At my school it was
Oxbridge
Law/Medicine
University
Polytechnic
Teacher Training college/Technical College to do IT
Nursing/civil service/banking

Nobody from my school went to Oxbridge. Many were discouraged from applying to medical schools and directed towards courses like physiotherapy, radiography or nursing

I got the overall impression that the occupation of your parents or your father was considered a factor. If your parents were teachers, or if your father was a doctor then you were brainy, otherwise you weren't. If your mother was a GP you weren't unless your father was a GP/solicitor/teacher.

The careers officer at school was the worst. I was discouraged from applying for uni, and was told to apply to local unis where I might get in because of my [background]

I wouldn't mind but when my DNiece was at the school she was told when she expressed an interest in studying Medicine, 'Oh [Name], you couldn't be a doctor'. She now has a PhD in a scientific subject.

You were encouraged to apply for a course that you would get on to even if you failed your A-levels, and I think that this was so that the school could boast that everyone got on to their chosen course.

It was a state comp and for those of use whose parents were not educated past 16, i.e most of us, the system let us down

When people complain about the 11+ (I passed at age 9), they say that children are written off as failures at age 11.

Is that worse than writing them off at 17/18?

Oops, 9 am. Rant over. Time to start my Big Important Job

I’m glad some of you went to schools that encouraged ambition.

A teacher wrote on one lad’s university admission form that he wasn’t suited to a university eduction - and he already had an ‘A’ in one subject he had taken early. Another clever and driven lad failed to get a place at any he applied to (had the same teacher so who knows). He got top marks in his ‘A’ levels, and is now is at career level where he sits Government/university committees.