🧦 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!

My careers officer was similar Whopping. But less interested. This was a school that finished at 16 and she basically just wanted to check you weren’t about to go on the dole and after that didn’t care. I started to answer by saying I was hoping to do a levels in… and she cut me off saying great, next!

Also had teachers with university educations themselves discourage us from applying to top unis. Thankfully others (including those without a degree) had always been encouraging so my friend and I weren’t put off.

My personal profile was erased and the careers teacher made me write a different one that was IMO not me at all. It probably wasn't as crap as mine but it was no reflection of my personality or aptitude, and the words used weren't those a teenager would use

I was told to not even think of applying to the universities I put down as they wouldn't look at me.

I felt such a failure and I struggled my way through the rest of the year

It probably happened to many students every year.

I think that @BorsetshireBanality's acquaintances might have gone to the same school, although from what I remember, the boys studying A-levels were encouraged to go into Law/Medicine (but not Engineering, Architecture etc) whereas girls were encouraged into physio/nursing or a non-vocational degree + teaching

This is only my version of events, but if i had been in Ambridge, I would probably been an Emma or a Roy - local tech at 16 or local uni at 18. Alice, Dan or Phoebe would have been encouraged to apply to Oxbridge/Med/Law etc

I know that the teachers on MN are nothing like the ones at my school. They never judge a child by name or background or attractiveness, never have favourites, and they work damned hard 24/7x52 etc

I was just unlucky enough to go to Borchester Green High

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

Be careful what you wish for.

I was at such a school until I sensibly managed to get expelled at thirteen; one of my erstwhile classmates had killed herself by the age of seventeen because she didn't think she would pass her exams well enough to get to Oxford. They expected at least six Oxbridge places every year, and had decided she would be one of them.

No, it wasn't a "public" school; it was direct grant. Just insanely driven to try to beat the local public school.

How awful @AskingQuestionsAllTheTime

There aren’t any families like mine in Ambridge I think, are there any couples who didn’t go to uni but are still bright and like reading etc? Maybe Lizzy and Nigel without a fancy house or any money haha.

I am thinking of trialling a couple of new names:

Lilysglitteringbodice
Susansvelvetrobe

The only good to come out of the mysteries…

Don’t get me started on the careers advice at my school…

Some of the teachers were wonderful.. The head was a good headteacher.

Where the school is located is unpopular despite being an attractive location and a few have said that they wouldn't consider living there because of the clique of teachers who live there (affecting the nature of church/WI type communities).

My background would probably have been more Bridge Farm-ish

No wonder I am as batshit as Helen.

@FoxgloveSummers, Lynda and Robert perhaps?

Or Deyveed and Ruth - both went to Ag College, now universities

Does anyone other than Jim read in Ambridge?

How long before Aimless ends up with Kristiffur?

What's going on with Alan & Oosher?

I was wondering about Lynda and Robert but thought he might have some qualifications in computer stuff?

Don’t say DEEEvid and Ruth! Definitely not them, they are proudly a bit thick or at least David is.

You were expelled Asking? Are you like Kate Madasaboxoffrogs?

At my careers interview at school I was told that I should forget engineering and go to university instead. Luckily I ignored that.

Jennifer reads. In fact, I have a dim memory that she may be a published author and possibly used to run a reading group. She went to teacher training college.

I'm sorry about so many awful experiences at school. My secondary school was direct grant and girls only, with all-female leadership and an almost entirely female staff. All teachers were graduates except for Art, Music and PE, who had the appropriate specialist college diplomas for their subjects. It was a very good fit for me, but I know from the WhatsApp my year group has had since a reunion a few years ago that it was far from ideal for some of the others, for various reasons. In some cases they'd been in the school since the age of 3, which is of course far too early to have any idea of how a child is going to turn out academically. Those of us who started there at 11 with LEA scholarships or heavily subsidised places, transferring from state primary schools, seemed to get on better on the whole. There was a lot of pressure but from memory it wasn't really from the staff, it was from girls themselves and in some cases from extremely pushy parents (thank god mine were never in that category!).

Thanks for the heads up about Alice, @FoxgloveSummers. Is she going fall off the wagon at Christmas?

Susan is insufferable. Good for Clarrie for standing her ground and refusing to pander to Susan's endless niggling demands.

Some of the teachers at my school had been to that school, then gone to TT college/uni then spent their working lives at the same school. I suspect that the careers teacher was one.

One girl at school left at 16 and became a secretary. After a few years, having done A-levels at night school she trained to be a doctor. She was really nice but not one who would have been encouraged by teachers

Some of the ones who were encouraged by teachers to go into Oxbridge, Law or Medicine ended up with quite ordinary or completely different careers

I do hope Clarrie is going to tell Kirsty and Lynda to fuck off with their demand that she magic up another batch of costumes for all the extras.

Jennifer used to write a newspaper/country life magazine type column didnt she?

She did. And she had two detective novels published before she married Brian. And she wrote a history of Ambridge with John Tregorran: An English Village Through The Ages.

I don't think she ran the reading group: if she had, they wouldn't have read the book, Mistress of the Paddocks by Carinthia Hart, that was a thinly-disguised account of Brian's affair with Mandy Beesborough (which didn't happen, on air, but was retrofitted for the book).

Oh yes, I had (of course) forgotten all those details. I don't I've imagined that there was a reading group, though, have I? Many years ago.

There was, started by Usha. She called iut the Book Club. Ruth was in it, Lynda, Jim, Caroline, Pat, Susan and Jennifer. The point of it was that in the end Jennifer should unwittingly select the book about Brian's affair, and be quite badly upset when she realised what it was meant to be about. How we all laughed. Or not. Mostly not, I suspect. Oh, and Joe turned up to it because he'd heard there were good refreshments and had seen the film, or a film of the same name, or something. It was a laugh a minute, the reading group

It happened in 2011, I think.

I remember discussing Mistress of the Paddock in the good old ML days

Goodness me. Does Kirsty really have a sewing machine? Do Roy and Phoebe not mind her using it in the small hours and keeping them awake?

She's in the west wing of Willow Farm

The Ambridge Property Fairy has been busy

@GoodPrincessWenceslas

I do hope Clarrie is going to tell Kirsty and Lynda to fuck off with their demand that she magic up another batch of costumes for all the extras.

I should have known a sensible reaction like that was never going to happen. I do wish more people would have the balls to tell Lynda to get lost when she's making ridiculous demands.