🎲 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!

Daveed will be useless if she goes (I mean that sympathetically). I think maybe a close call. But head injuries can be mysterious and I did do a mini prediction of this kind of thing. Feels too close nic's sudden departure, but perhaps not

Surely the only justification for the ineffable boredom of the last few episodes is to lead to something exciting like a dedding?

Dedding 🤣

Ruth is not going to die. The only purpose of this dramatic interlude is to put speculation about the identity of the Brookfield inheritor back on the agenda. I don’t think the nuts and bolts of the plot have ever been so visible - or to such tedious effect. I’m fully expecting attention to swing away from Brookfield now while the SWs to some previous scenario they’ve clumsily set up (Tom and Natasha’s eviction and move the Bridge Farm anyone?) I never hate The Archers more than when you can see the gears grinding.

I really enjoyed last night's episode.
Pip, Josh and Alistair working together to save the pregnant cow and David and his siblings having fun playing games together.
This is why I listen to TA for the gentle - not dull! - farming and family matters. I don't enjoy the traumatic events.

This is why I listen to TA for the gentle - not dull! - farming and family matters. Me too. But last night felt like such a set piece - the older generation occupied with childish things and returning to their old childhood rivalries while the younger generation rose to the farming challenges to signify that the baton is ready to be passed (and goodness only knows what they've done to Jill - she's been turned into a twittering idiot) There must be loads of good farming stories to be written after Brexit - the most significant change facing farming communities for generations yet the SW seem to actively shy away from anything too topical in favour of half-baked melodrama.

The Jill actor sounds different to my ears.

Jill definitely got new teeth a few years ago (guessing - and why the hell not) - she sounds different to my ear also assumed it was this.
I once listened to a multi part book series where the reader had not only Aden significantly but there also teeth issues I think. Oh it was the incomparable Ian Carmichael who read one of the Dorothy l sayers books much much later to complete the full set. Didn’t affect my absolute enjoyment.

There must be loads of good farming stories to be written after Brexit - the most significant change facing farming communities for generations yet the SW seem to actively shy away from anything too topical in favour of half-baked melodrama.

Well there might be a teensy weensy little bit of pressure on the BBC to pretend the Tories are wonderful and their Brexit is a brave new era for all. Possibly.

I’m intrigued about Jill and Leonard. I should have known Jill’s age but I was still taken aback when they said she was 91 the other day! Most 91 year olds I have known need significant care, have dementia, mobility issues etc. and these are people who were very healthy and active all their lives. How old is Paddy Greene?

Are we supposed to assume that Jill and Leonard share a bed on occasions and have an, ahem, active physical relationship?

There must be loads of good farming stories to be written after Brexit - the most significant change facing farming communities for generations yet the SW seem to actively shy away from anything too topical in favour of half-baked melodrama There was a teeny mention of electronic fences (or similar phrase) which I took to mean the system where you draw in on your smart phone where you don’t want the cattle to go, and the device on their collar sounds an alarm if they get close (followed by an electric shock if they go too close). Lovely bit of new tech

I think David called them "virtual fences".

Those'll keep Pip from letting cattle roam loose all over Borsetshire!

Does TA have an agricultural advisor these days?

HaveringWavering
How old is Paddy Greene?

Paddy Greene was born in February 1931. Jill Archer was born on 3rd October 1930.

Are we supposed to assume that Jill and Leonard share a bed on occasions and have an, ahem, active physical relationship?

Perhaps they are allowed not to be preoccupied with sex; it's rare in soaps, but might be possible. Not everyone is Peter Stringfellow!

TA does not need to be encouraged to include that sort of thing. Tickling in the haystack is too much for me. We don't want another shower scene

I had an aunt who was still living alone and doing everything for herself before her sudden death (heart attack) at the age of ninety-six, after she'd just finishing writing a book. She'd condescended to allow one of her great-grandchildren to live in her house, which was in a convenient part of London, but otherwise made no particular allowance for her age apart from getting her groceries delivered; I remember her being a bit scathing about my father having no staying-power when he'd died at a mere eighty-four three years earlier.

@HaveringWavering

I’m intrigued about Jill and Leonard. I should have known Jill’s age but I was still taken aback when they said she was 91 the other day! Most 91 year olds I have known need significant care, have dementia, mobility issues etc. and these are people who were very healthy and active all their lives. How old is Paddy Greene?

Are we supposed to assume that Jill and Leonard share a bed on occasions and have an, ahem, active physical relationship?

My grandfather was still running when he was 92 and at age 95 was still walking his dog a couple of miles a day and still driving... so I l've always assumed Jill is simply one of the lucky people who are healthy and active in their old age!

Well, since we're comparing older relatives :

My parents are now 89 and nearly 88 and still managing perfectly well with no help in the house at all and no family anywhere nearby. I think it would be a different story if they didn't have each other, though.

My paternal grandmother lived to three months before her 100th birthday but was in a residential home for the last few years of her life, after slowing down a lot as she moved through her 90s. Compos mentis to the last, though, which was a great blessing.

All her sisters lived into their 90s and their brother was well up in his 80s when he died. (They did have another brother who died in the great flu pandemic in 1918-9, as a baby, poor little soul.) I can't think of anyone else in that branch of the family who died under the age of 80. A couple of cases of dementia, which was sad. A long life with no quality of life is not a blessing.

My mother's family have a much wider range of ages at death, but the ones who avoided cancer usually made it into the late 80s at least. My great-granny on that side, who had an exceptionally tough life after being widowed in her 40s with several children to support and no money, lived to 98, by which time she was frail but still fortunately free of dementia. She lived at home to the last, but had a lot of family pitching in to look after her.

Jill and Peggy therefore seem perfectly credible to me. Long may the actors continue to be up to the work.

There's this lady who is 100 and going strong.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-england-london-60092168

On my mother's side of the family they tended to die at or before 67 of weak hearts; she fully expected to do so, but instead my brother died at 49 and she survived to mourn him.

I would have died at (counts on fingers) 56 in the same way as my brother, except that modern heart surgery had moved on since his death and what killed him had become a "routine procedure" for me; I didn't even have a general anaesthetic, only a local, and they let me watch the whole thing on a screen over my head. Fascinating. It took longer to get to the hospital in the ambulance than it did to have the stent fitted.

Very sorry about your brother, Asking.

Stents are amazing. My husband had a heart attack some years ago. I dialled 999 at 8am and by 2pm he was having angioplasty and then having a stent fitted. He's been as right as rain since then. Hope the same goes for you.

Hmm. I wasn’t suggesting that we should hear the details of Jill and Leonard’s physical relationship on air, merely wondering if they are simply companions or something more.

It’s nice that so many of you have relatives who have remained so well and active into their nineties. Sadly my family does not have such a track record so perhaps my view was skewed. Scots do not have great health or life expectancy.
Of course Paddy/Jill is a mere child compared to June/Peggy. Acting must be good for the heart!

So many people at Brookfield talking to each other using first and surnames today - Beth, Leonard and Pip. Found it irritating!

@LobsterMoth

So many people at Brookfield talking to each other using first and surnames today - Beth, Leonard and Pip. Found it irritating!

Ah you grouch, I liked it, it was as if the ghost of Joe Grundy was there!

No dedding then? I love a spoiler!