🎲 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!

@CaptainMyCaptain

It was Amy's idea to call on Chris after the dull date with Rex, he didn't coerce her into doing that. I would assume the sex was consensual too. Alice chose to end things completely with Chris, it is a bit soon but this is soap world where life moves on quickly.

I'm not getting the Chris hatred.

Alice is a silly, spoilt, manipulative brat. She dumped Chris and has been trying to engineer Amy and Rex.

Amy is the so called best friend who crept up the stairs to Chris after the unsatisfactory date set up by Alice; before that Chris had made no approaches at all to Amy

The birthday party idea was bonkers.

Team Chris and Amy here too.

I think that Alice has been slightly more pleasant since rehab. I wonder if she'll use Ruairi's 'gift' for a break at some point in the near future (I don't recall if that was mentioned again).

I preferred the old Chris actor, but maybe he didn't want to go on with an acting career. Chris as a character leaves me cold, but we can't all like everyone. I'm not that invested in Amy or Alice either.

The current Hannah, who as previously mentioned is now like she was originally umpteen years ago, is good and I'd like her to stay. Much more interested in the Berrow Farm story than the love triangle.

Management buyout would be good, but it would mean Brian using the money they were supposed to be holding onto for a new house purchase for his share, surely.

Is the problem with Berrow the lack of abattoir capacity because of the lack of vets because of Brexit, or have I imagined that?

Alice at the lych gate?

Undoubedly. Hoary old soap device there.

I used to be able to type and spell. What it is to be old.

UNDOUBTEDLY.

Welcome to my wolrd Gasp0de

It's a soap

IRL the knowing that you shouldn't be doing something would make it more exciting

Given that Amy and Kris are both free to have a relationship, they aren't technically in the wrong

Alice has nothing in her life so that's why the birthday party and Amy's lovelife are of interest to her

I'm on team Alice

Undoubedly is probably … new - but undoubledly must have a use.

(Pointless musing.)

It's taken the SW's months and months to catch up with the pig situation.

The problem is a lack of trained slaughterers, butchers/meat processors. Not so much for "farmers" like Rex. It is the supermarket/factory/lower end of the market that is suffering most. Some staff went home pre Covid, others caught Covid,

Pigs grow fast and are usually slaughtered at about 12 months (bacon can be a few months older). If they get too big the supermarkets don't want them.

During the first lockdowns supermarket prices for pork (certainly tenderloin and mince) plummeted. I'm not sure that they have recovered.

Thanks, @Madcats. Must look into this further.

Definitely a soap-opera style cliff hanger tonight, but somehow it didn't feel dramatic in the sense of engaging!

Oh God the storyline continues to enrage me.

So we are supposed to believe Amy called to Chris unprompted, shagged him, and was ok with all that.

By until following day, she was overcome with shame at what she had done, best friend Alice etc.

Now she sounds like she's having a nervous breakdown because someone saw them. It's so ridiculous.

Fallon screaming & roaring at them was ridiculously OTT.

Grr. 😡

@EarringsandLipstick

Oh God the storyline continues to enrage me.

So we are supposed to believe Amy called to Chris unprompted, shagged him, and was ok with all that.

By until following day, she was overcome with shame at what she had done, best friend Alice etc.

Now she sounds like she's having a nervous breakdown because someone saw them. It's so ridiculous.

Fallon screaming & roaring at them was ridiculously OTT.

Grr. 😡

It's completely ridiculous.

I sort of believe this storyline if Amy had got a bit drunk at the pub and maybe bumped into Chris. Going up to see him fairly soberly and ending up in bed just seems weird and stupid. But if she’s been involved with a married man before maybe she’s just got wobbly morals.

Chris is being a sleaze now, he’s made it perfectly obvious he just wants more sex. And amy is in the cold light of day where she’s aware what a small village is like etc, she wants to be considered a good person and she actually wants Alice to stay sober. So I’m not surprised she’s acting like this now. But I think really she’d be sodding off ASAP rather than loitering round at Chris’s with a glass of wine.

I'm annoyed by the storyline, too soapy and not enough of an archers slow burn. They don't have a spark, it's just for convenience.

I also think Fallon would've gone to see Amy, not Chris, that's who her anger was directed at.

Agree it’s turgid soap - and not even the good stuff. Kiss today, outrage the next day.

I guess in any real world scenario Fallon might approach the person she’s most familiar with - Chris. But it’s hard to see why she should be so violently over-invested in the love lives of her friends. I can’t imagine anyone I know behaving like that in the circumstances.

Fallon was completely OTT.

Fallon is clearly a better person than me. If a friend has thrown herself at my husband, I’d be smirking if said friend’s ex-ish husband and mate were at it behind her back, not outraged on her behalf.

@BeardieWeirdie

Fallon is clearly a better person than me. If a friend has thrown herself at my husband, I’d be smirking if said friend’s ex-ish husband and mate were at it behind her back, not outraged on her behalf.

Quite.

Chris is being a sleaze now, he’s made it perfectly obvious he just wants more sex

That's not he came across to me. He was however clearly very upset at hearing about Amy's date with Rex and that was before they had sex. If anyone was being "sleazy" it was Amy.

@TottersBlankly

But it’s going to be brilliant if it brings a sort-of new bit of Ambridge into focus. Does anyone else have a boat moored there? Is it a thriving community? Or will it just be Rex?

In any event it should mean new conversations, fresh vocabulary, legal / practical or etiquette-al (what’s the word for that?) issues and alarms! Potentially exciting.

Potentially.

My thoughts exactly! I also think Kirsty rhapsodising over the boat augurs well for her getting together with Rex and may play a part in persuading her not to move to Plovdiv (as if!) All good and much more engrossing a storyline than the Chris/Amy/Alice thing which is just too soapy for words.

Fallon was completely OTT

Fallon is generally the voice of reason. She would never have shouted her head off like that. She also is a bit of a gossip and is sure to know you get far more info by taking a softly softly approach…

I think it's quite realistic that those around Alice are feeling the responsibility for keeping her off the booze. In normal life Fallon might be a bit yucked out by Amy jumping on her friend's ex, but I think the rage is due to the fear that something will trigger Alice to self-destruct again.

I know alcoholics cannot help it but honestly this is one of the huge impacts alcoholism has on those around them - it's awful. The idea that someone has "pushed X back to drinking" or "didn't do enough to keep X off the booze", it's so unfair on the people around.

Fallon was taken aback at Amy being there when she turned up at the flat.

Given that the flat is above the shop, how come nobody has seen Amy come and go? Is this why so much fuss was made of the steep staircase?