🧦 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!

Yeah! That was really refreshing

Nice to hear the younger women helping each other out and having fun

Do you think the scriptwriters have decided 2022 is the year they shake off TASWAMA?!

I thought that was laboured , fake and idiotic. Terrible episode.

Laboured, maybe, but there’s nothing idiotic about everyone discussing their plans/work issues and encouraging each other. My friends and I do that - usually work friends but it’s not a weird dynamic to me.

Although like others I did laugh at Lily doing a BA in Replacing My Brother.

I really hope it turns into a stepping stone of the 3 of them supporting each other in their careers.
It's ridiculous that Oxford PPE & Southampton Engineering graduates are pottering around on farming related stuff. Plus Lily who clearly has brains not having even been allowed to get degree so far.
Maybe the SW will step into the 21st Century and allow bright women to succeed and excel?

Give Phoebe a junior position at the Treasury. Give Alice a job with Siemens or whoever they are these days.

I agree with the general thought @TeenPlusCat, but not this bit "It's ridiculous that Oxford PPE & Southampton Engineering graduates are pottering around on farming related stuff." Farming is intimately tied up with engineering and economics, it's sort of at the basis of them. On the other hand Phoebe has no interest whatever in farming, it's a mystery how she got into what she's doing now. Sheer boredom I guess, possibly nepotism too (lost in the mists of time for me).

Maybe Alice would like to move to Bristol, there's a lot of aeronautical stuff there I think.

Come to think of it, I wonder if she went to Southampton because it's so cheap to get drunk there, IIRC they've been selling themselves on that for decades.

When the bit of the company I worked for was told it was relocating to Southampton, the site manger came along and told us how great it was because Southampton had 12% (or something) open space. That might have been a selling point had not we been located in a small rural market town surrounded by countryside.... I wouldn't know about drinks prices, but it's an OK area to live outside of and visit for the shops or theatre.

It was more the 'pottering around' than the farming really.

I'm pleased to hear that all three young women are looking to the future in terms of work.

I did laugh at Lily doing a BA in Replacing My Brother.

She said course rather than degree, though. I wonder if this is one of Felpersham's fabled short courses for people with no degree, as taken by Kate, whose only academic credentials were a handbook she claimed to have written for volunteers at a charity. Lily has excellent A levels, so will have no trouble with buckling down and studying. She will also have a ready-made placement where she can do whatever she needs for any case studies she has to write up.

I hope this is a precursor to hearing more of Freddie, Elizabeth and Russ. Russ is intensely irritating but extremely well acted. Freddie is one of the more interesting characters and also well acted. Elizabeth has been irritating for several decades now and Alison Dowling has her off to a T.

I'm finding it hard to imagine estate management being a sort of adult education thing though, I only know a couple of people who've done it but it's been a proper degree (and at the sort of uni that specialises in land/farming stuff as well).

Glad I'm not the only one who's pleased that the young women of Ambridge are giving each other a welcome kick up the arse!

it's a mystery how she got into what she's doing now Phoebe only got into rewilding in a desperate attempt by the SWs to keep her in Ambridge. I don’t understand why Freddie isn’t doing Estate Management if Felpersham offer it - isn’t that the classic route for many country pile owner’s son (or daughter). Too predictable that Lily would end up at Felpersham after her brief foray outside the Ambridge force field. I can see why the SW’s do it, but if they want to keep characters close to home why let them have stellar academic careers in the first place? Phoebe could still have been capable and competent, gone to Felpersham to keep costs down and live at home and still ended up rewilding. I’d like to have thought that Alice with her aeronautical engineering degree could find her wings and fly away, but now she has Martha that seems vanishingly unlikely. Lily was born to be a spare part at LL so I don’t understand why she has thrown away her chance to carve her own niche somewhere in favour of shackling herself to her ageing deputy head of sixth form (note to SWs - it’s not too late for her to throw him over and apply somewhere more prestigious than Felpersham).

Nowhere is more convenient as Felpersham though

@BowerOfBramble

I'm finding it hard to imagine estate management being a sort of adult education thing though, I only know a couple of people who've done it but it's been a proper degree (and at the sort of uni that specialises in land/farming stuff as well).

Glad I'm not the only one who's pleased that the young women of Ambridge are giving each other a welcome kick up the arse!

We know Pip did her farming degree at Felpersham so they do have an agricultural department, and might have "running a stately home" one as well. Is that Estate Management? because there is frod all farming at Lower Loxley, it's all woodland and parkland. The five farms are all leased out.

Shula used to work for Rodway and Watsons Estate Agents, who I think were more about running estates than selling houses? Did she have any qualifications or just go there from school?

She did a course of some sort. Not chartered surveyor, I think. Probably Land Agent exams. It was a looooooong time ago, probably well over 30 years ago. Then she did Running A Livery Stables exams. She struggled with all of them and now she's making a huge deal out of Becoming A Vicar as a Pre-retirement Project exams.

Oh gosh - I vaguely, vaguely recall Shula struggling with making progress at Rodway & Watson! It suddenly dawned on me they were portraying a young woman who was Not Clever - which seemed weird. I guess most of my listening and viewing until then had involved a strangely feudal idea that rich people were all clever and never struggled with anything.

I cannot think of a single thing to suggest for a thread title. Ambridge As Human Boardgame didn’t last long!

I don't think the Archers have ever been rich. Very comfortably off by most people's standards, yes, but even then with the proviso that they have to work pretty hard to keep the farm going and most of their wealth is tied up in capital which they can't access without either selling up or taking out huge loans.

I've got 35 posts left to think of something for the next title. It will probably come down to which emoji I fancy using this time, I'm afraid!

Suggestions: 📣 🆘 💔???

Oooh!
“Who’s going to live behind this door?🚪”

I guess rich depends on perspective. Definitely comfortably off to educate 4 children privately. (They were all private weren't they? I remember Lizzie getting expelled I think?)

Thread suggestion - include the phrase 'Musical Houses'

They don't sound terribly bright do they? Given that one's an Oxbridge PPE graduate, one's an aeronautical engineering graduarte and the other has top A-level grades

TeenPlusCat
I guess rich depends on perspective. Definitely comfortably off to educate 4 children privately. (They were all private weren't they? I remember Lizzie getting expelled I think?)

They didn't educate four children privately, though.

None of them was at a private prep school, unlike Aldridge children. Kenton and Shula went to local schools: first the Ambridge primary, then Kenton got a scholarship to Borchester Grammar, Shula wasn't bright enough for a scholarship but managed to qualify for a place there. David was bright but lazy and I think he failed the 11-plus at the Ambridge primary, or perhaps was too interested in the farm and not enough in school; anyway, he was sent to boarding school, where he failed his maths A-level and therefore couldn't go to university, which Phil had hoped he might. Elizabeth couldn't go to the Ambridge primary because it closed the year she was born, so sh went to Loxley Barrett, failed the 11-plus and was sent to a boarding school called Cherrington Manor by her despairing parents, got expelled for being found in a pub underage and squiffy by a member of staff, and failed most of her O-levels. So she went to Borchester Tech to do English Literature and environmental science A-levels.

Sorry: Elizabeth took GCSEs, not O-levels.

Ah thanks. I knew Lizzie had, and though David, so sort of assumed the twins had too (they were before my time).

(I would have expected Lizzie to do O levels not GCSEs as she is my age)

I think Phil and Jill were not terribly well off in the sixties, when the elder two were first going to school; they didn't own Brookfield at that point, nor live there until shortly before Elizabeth was born. David came a year after Shula and Kenton, and I think his being sent to boarding school was for some definite reason but I can't remember exactly what it was. Elizabeth was simply a nightmare they were quite glad to get out of the house to give her mother a break...

@TeenPlusCat

(I would have expected Lizzie to do O levels not GCSEs as she is my age)

I thought she was the first year of GCSEs, because I have a vague memory of her citing the changeover from O-levels as an excuse for having done badly. But it's quite possible you are right; I'd long left school by that time, so I wasn't paying an enormous amount of attention to what exams I didn't have to take were being called.

@BowerOfBramble

I'm finding it hard to imagine estate management being a sort of adult education thing though, I only know a couple of people who've done it but it's been a proper degree (and at the sort of uni that specialises in land/farming stuff as well).

Glad I'm not the only one who's pleased that the young women of Ambridge are giving each other a welcome kick up the arse!

It's a proper degree at agri.college or university. There's various names/ options in the chartered surveyor sector. Aberdeen University used to run a Bachelor in Land Economy degree.

@WhoppingBigBackside

They don't sound terribly bright do they? Given that one's an Oxbridge PPE graduate, one's an aeronautical engineering graduarte and the other has top A-level grades

They all sounded very dim. They sounded like 12 year olds being asked about their dream jobs. They might as well have said rock star , astronaut or run away to join a circus. It wouldn't have been less plausible.