🎲 Archers thread #134: Ambridge as human board game. We’ve had Pandemic. What now - Game of Life or Trivial Pursuit? Go! Discuss The Archers 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 warm to Hazel Woolley, 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 @LiterallyKnowsBest for the thread title idea. I also liked @LillianGish's suggestion which was Conversions abound and it’s not just Harrison - Lily’s kitchens, Hazel’s flat, Jazzer’s finances, Bert’s bungalow...come and discuss The Archers - are you a convert or could you be converted? and that seems like a good place to kick off this thread.

Who'll get the bungalow? Pip, Josh or A. N. Other?

Will Lily leave the cold calling behind and launch a bid to run LL when Elizabeth hangs up her clipboard?

Will Jazzer become a financial whiz after mastering Tracy's state of the art budgeting techniques, viz, writing it all down in a little notebook with a kitten on the front?

Over to you!

Chelsea and Jake are now certain to get back together and be a permanent item in the future (maybe years from now).

@CaptainMyCaptain

Chelsea and Jake are now certain to get back together and be a permanent item in the future (maybe years from now).

You reckon?

Otherwise what was the point?

That was done well. (Kirsty and Tom).

Alice is going to be raging when Chris and Amy become a couple (which will be soon, as predicted way back by the 🔮). She doesn't want him but she won't want anyone else to have him.

It was beautifully done. 😢

Made me angry that Alice got a baby and Kirsty was picked to do the “raise awareness of late miscarriage” storyline. But they are not real, I have to tell myself.

@BoreOfWhabylon

That was done well. (Kirsty and Tom).

Alice is going to be raging when Chris and Amy become a couple (which will be soon, as predicted way back by the 🔮). She doesn't want him but she won't want anyone else to have him.

I really hope they do. I'm fairly indifferent to Chris, although a bit puzzled at the amount of criticism he gets on here, but I can't stand Alice, so anything that upsets her is fine.

Last night's episode managed to do the impossible: show that Tom actually does have more emotional intelligence than a teaspoon.

In fact I generally hate that the Kirsty character always gets picked to do “raising awareness” and also has to be married, completely out of character, to the slave master.

Still, at least she dodged being killed by sepsis.

I wonder what’s next. Cancer, most likely.

Anyone else think it’s TOTALLY unbelievable that Neil and Susan (esp Susan) would leave their boy in his flat all alone ill & not come to help?

Didn’t Susan pop round with meals earlier in the week? Not sure what else she or Neil can do to help. He has made it clear he doesn’t really want visitors.

Although he sounds like a petulant child at the moment, Chris is in his mid thirties and has a mild illness so perfectly reasonable for his parents to leave him to to it.

Perfectly reasonable for his parents to leave him to to it except that he lives above a shop run by his mother who has never been known to leave him to it in the past.

I wonder what’s next. Cancer, most likely

Oh God, don’t say that! Even I felt sorry for K last night even if the whole thing was slightly mawkish. I was surprised Natasha was so understanding - she really does blow hot and cold. Utterly insensitive to poor Tony and Pat but then handling Tom’s belated grief with the height of sensitivity. I wonder what’s next. Cancer, most likely

Oh God, don’t say that! Even I felt sorry for K last night even if the whole thing was slightly mawkish.

I was surprised Natasha was so understanding - she really does blow hot and cold. Utterly insensitive to poor Tony and Pat but then handling Tom’s belated grief with the height of sensitivity. I genuinely can’t work it out as I have no idea whether that is a true representation of someone with bi-polar, which we have been led to believe she may have, or if it’s just that the SWs have not quite decided how to write her. Any thoughts?

Funny that Amy has only just realised how lucky she is that Alan and Usha aren’t charging her rent. She’s been there several months already, hasn’t she?

But she has popped up to give him home cooked meals and checked on Alice for him.

I’m still not sure else she is supposed to do to ‘help’ in between her two jobs. Housework? Wash his clothes? He doesn’t want anyone else in the flat to do those things. He isn’t even particularly ill now. Just grumpy, tired and bitter because undeserving Alice is getting to see her daughters milestones.

Sorry for cut and paste mix-up

Funny that Amy has only just realised how lucky she is that Alan and Usha aren’t charging her rent. She’s been there several months already, hasn’t she?

Lucky, really? How many parents / step-parents with secure salaries and home would demand rent from a returning adult child, so swiftly? Particularly given pandemic circumstances - there must have been a long period of time when they didn’t get to see her at all.

Perhaps if she said she intended to live with them permanently they might want to put things on a more formal footing (though I don’t know how that works with tied accommodation), but I cannot imagine Alan feeling Amy is an unwelcome financial burden at the moment. (And I’m perfectly sure that outside the 13 minutes we hear she makes herself useful in the vicarage.)

Hasn’t Amy been back nearly six months, already? I remember we had quite a discussion at one point about how much it was fair to expect her to help around the house. She had failed to make dinner for her father and Usha who had been working all day while she was loafing around watching daytime TV.

She’s not just back from university and did used to be a grown up with a job until recently. I think it was her decision to give up her job so presumably she had some savings to fall back on as a safety net. May be she contributes in other ways to the Franks household and keeps her father and Usha supplied with excellent wine and chocolate.

I thought last night's episode was remarkable, given how bad they've been recently. I've been in the same situation as Kirsty and it's taken (now ex) DH thirty years to acknowledge it and discuss how he felt. It actually rang true, just wish I could say the same about every other episode.

Chris was unremakable for years. The only unusual thing about him was that he was gorgeous despite having been born with a cleft palate.
Then he was replaced by a 'you are moi woife' version.

• I have no reason to assume that a cleft palate at birth would affect someone's gorgeousness but this was not mentioned before or after Marthyr's birth, and there is a hereditary factor

@TwoBlondes

I thought last night's episode was remarkable, given how bad they've been recently. I've been in the same situation as Kirsty and it's taken (now ex) DH thirty years to acknowledge it and discuss how he felt. It actually rang true, just wish I could say the same about every other episode.

Sorry you're in the same situation @TwoBlondes

I genuinely can’t work it out as I have no idea whether that is a true representation of someone with bi-polar, which we have been led to believe she may have, or if it’s just that the SWs have not quite decided how to write her. Any thoughts?
I have various close people with bipolar and she doesn't seem at all typical of it to me. But we don't really know much about her.

Weren’t we told that Natasha’s dad (?) has bipolar, rather than any specific suggestion that she has the same. I think possibly there were inferences that she might, because of her interesting attitude to debt and her slightly weird personality. She doesn’t come across as bipolar to me, more inconsistently-written (not necessarily a real-life diagnosis but certainly common in Ambridge!).

I found Tom and Kirsty very moving last night, and actually the first time that I remember thinking there was genuine affection between the two of them, even when they were together. Hopefully Kirsty can get some real focus and purpose in her life with the new rewilding job.

Just caught up on last night - I don’t think I’ve ever cried at the Archers before. So well written and acted (Kirsty is actually a bloody good actor).

Yes, really good acting and beautiful writing by Katie Hims

Poor little Wren

Agreed, a good episode.

As an aside, I read somewhere that Helen George, who plays Trixie in Call the Midwife, has two daughters called Wren and Lark. I'm not normally all that keen on unusual names but I love those. Both such beautiful birds. We have a wren sometimes in the back garden and I love watching it.

@BowerOfBramble

Just caught up on last night - I don’t think I’ve ever cried at the Archers before. So well written and acted (Kirsty is actually a bloody good actor).

I cried when Ruari listened to Siobhan’s recording. Last night was the second time.