🏏Archers thread #136: Howzat! Oliver’s bowled a googly, Kathy’s out, Grey Gables left with nightwatchman. Tracy knocked for six. Is Ambridge on a sticky wicket? 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 are entranced by new character Adil, 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.)

Apologies if anybody made a thread title suggestion and I missed it. I decided to mark the start of the cricket season in the hope that things will take a turn for the better for poor Tracy.

It feels like months since the last new thread, which was just after Phoebe departed for Scotland. Has she been mentioned since? I can't recall. Not greatly missed, by me, at any rate. Her fish gifts didn't last long.

I can't shake off the feeling that The Archers is going through a long dull patch. I don't feel greatly engaged by anything that's happening at the moment other than Tracy's plight. Such a good actor, which helps, of course.

What's keeping you listening? Habit? Genuinely enjoying it? Over to you!

(PS In the process of starting this thread, I've discovered that our custom-made Archers emoji has gone. You used to get it by typing . Not any more.)

Bit didn't Fabrice do a terrible job on Lillian's hair? (after she tried to get him to copy the makeover Chelsea gave Lynda, which she'd been highly snooty about).

Chelsea by all accounts is exceptional at hairdressing (Lynda, Russ, Blake) Why is she a waitress?

Because the SW need her at Lower Loxley

Thank you

I think I was thinking a hairdressers would give a convenient portal for stuff to occur - a bit like the village shop or pub plus Iots of villages have small salons ?

The whole situation with Tracy being unable to find a job is so ludicrous. Hospitality venues all over the country are absolutely desperate for staff, yet there is not one hotel, B&B, restaurant, pub or club in the whole of Ambridge and Felpersham with a vacancy? Seriously?

Well, there might be - but as we’ve seen, Tracy doesn’t do well in competition against younger, smarter (less anxious?) candidates. I can well imagine that (despite being lovely) she’s just never the best applicant, on paper or in person.

Stella’s influence over Brian knows no bounds. After a few carefully-placed words from his newly recruited farm manager, Brian is smiling benignly at his most annoying daughter and taking up yoga. I can’t believe he would have EVER forgiven Kate for forcing the sale of his farmhouse…

Beth is becoming tiresome- she is far too busy trying to be down-to-earth and lovable and should instead just relax and enjoy the champagne.

I did worry about the Horrobin household when Chelsea was writing a personal statement. The ‘norm’ amongst my own clan would be weeks (if not months) of constant discussion and advice from everyone in the family, most of whom would have taken the time to thoroughly investigate and update themselves on every single thing to do with PS writing. This is in addition to all the guidance and preparation offered at school. The prospective student would have spoken to as many relevant people as possible and devoured every website. (I don’t know if this seems excessive, it’s just how we are.) The developing statement would be read and reviewed several times, from a position of being fully informed on every eventuality. By the time it was submitted to their school, the student would feel confident that they had done their very best.

(I don’t know if this seems excessive, it’s just how we are.) I’ve read countless posts on MN from Nobel prize winners whose parents never exchanged a word with them past the age of 12, so I know active, informed family support with applications need not be crucial - but all the same …

Chelsea had a brief chat with Jazzer, whose academic credentials aren’t all that apparent. He did give her excellent advice! But she doesn’t seem to have had anyone else to talk it over with, with seems quite lonely and anxiety inducing.

I was like Chelsea when I did mine. I needn't have bothered doing anything because the teacher in charge of university applications scrubbed mine out and wrote a load of tosh about me, that I wouldn't have written then or now or at any point in between, and told me that left to me there'd be nothing on it. I was also told that none of the universities would look at me and to put different ones. It crushed me.

My family weren't supportive or interested enough, and hadn't been through the process. It was quite a while ago now and times have changed. They were interested but not enough to get the details right ('Grace wants to be an electrical engineer. It's not what we'd have chosen for her but it's her life.' Yes, thanks Dad. Too shit for you to even register that it was electronic engineering.)

I imagine that many go through this, some younger relatives did.

I can see a 17 yr old from a not higher educated family, not particularly confident family facing the same this year.

Tracy is in her 40s and the minimum wage jobs she's going for are going to people whose minimum wage will be lower.

My parents were interested in my education and my mum would have certainly tried to tell me how to write my personal statement but she wouldn't have had any clue from her own experience or the internet. I think we had some tips from teachers and then a friend and I read each other's over, my dad maybe proofread it for spelling before I submitted it finally.

Most families don't have any expertise in this and I think I'd have found the level of scrutiny you do @TottersBlankly really overwhelming, but I appreciate that it probably leads to a great result.

The issue in hospitality is that they can't attract any candidates, so the problem isn't usually who you're competing against. Someone with quite wide-ranging hotel experience would normally be welcomed with open arms. If all else failed, how young and smart do you need to be to clean and make beds?

I did worry about the Horrobin household when Chelsea was writing a personal statement. The ‘norm’ amongst my own clan would be weeks (if not months) of constant discussion and advice from everyone in the family, most of whom would have taken the time to thoroughly investigate and update themselves on every single thing to do with PS writing. This is in addition to all the guidance and preparation offered at school. The prospective student would have spoken to as many relevant people as possible and devoured every website. (I don’t know if this seems excessive, it’s just how we are.) The developing statement would be read and reviewed several times, from a position of being fully informed on every eventuality. By the time it was submitted to their school, the student would feel confident that they had done their very best.

My children would have absolutely cringed at that level of family involvement. They basically got on with it with the help of teachers, and didn't even tell us when they were doing it. They did fine without our input.

I don't think I saw either of my DD's university personal statements. They did them and then reviewed them at school. I am a university lecturer and have been involved in admissions in the past, but happy to leave it up to school (mostly because we never read personal statements for the purpose of making offers anyway). They both got into the RG university of their choice so it worked out fine (even though one of those universities turned out to be, in my professional opinion, crap at pastoral support).

Oh, I should say I have no reason to believe one approach necessarily leads to a better outcome than the other!

I just hate to think of Chelsea stewing in her room with no one to ask for help when she wanted it.

A good few years ago now I was the administrator for a popular Master's course at a Russell Group university. At that time (it's all different now, I believe) admissions decisions were taken by each department with minimal central involvement. In our department the arrangement was that I looked in detail at every application against agreed criteria and the programme leader only looked at the ones that got through that first sift. Both the academics and I paid very little attention to the personal statements. The key things we were looking for was solid academic attainment in a relevant first degree subject, good standard of English (we got quite a few overseas applications) and ideally some relevant work experience. References were very important. We'd cast an eye over the statement to check the applicant appeared to be able to write clear, grammatical English and wasn't saying anything concerning about their reasons for wanting to do the course, but I can't remember a single case where it was a dealbreaker.

Nowadays I believe most admissions decisions at my old employer are taken by the central admissions department, following criteria set by the departments running the programmes. They pay even less attention to personal statements than we did as they are under huge time pressure.

In Chelsea's case she is applying to stay on for another year on a course she's already doing, where we assume she's doing well. I don't know much about FE colleges but I'd be really surprised if they turn down bums on seats unless the bum is either struggling so badly they will probably fail or an absolute pain in the neck to work with. Her personal statement can surely be kept to the absolute minimum. It's just a box ticking exercise.

Why are you all talking about personal statement for university? Chelsea's is I think just for the level 2 (I think she said) course following on from her Level 1 one. That will just need to show some interest in the course, and won't require crafting , elegance or multiple reviews by loads of people.

x-post.

I made a very stupid mistake with my own personal statement for university applications, a million years ago when it was UCCA, not UCAS. Probably in response to the advice from school, I thought I needed to put down more interests than just reading, so I said I enjoyed playing chess and backgammon. I didn't. My best friend did, and she and her Dad had shown me how to play both games, but I hadn't taken to either of them. After submitting the statement, I had that stomach-dropping moment when it finally occurred to me that someone might ask about these 'interests' at an interview. Fortunately they didn't, but lesson learned and dinned into my children - I've never put down an outright or near lie on a personal statement since.

I was just musing TeenPlusCat - I know Chelsea isn’t applying to university, and that her PS isn’t a high stakes thing, and that, as Gasp0de observes, even if it were a university application her PS would be far from crucial.

Even so - it’s important to her, and I know how it feels not to be within reach of help. Despite my long tract above, my parents were unavailable while I was applying to university, though they were ferociously interested in my educational progress. So I’m peculiarly sensitive to Chelsea’s general situation.

Although the SWs have been a bit inconsistent with her. She’s received advice, useful or otherwise, from both Lily and her hanger-on recently. And Lynda is a fan of hers. So there were more obvious people she could have spoken to than Jazzer.

After a few carefully-placed words from his newly recruited farm manager, Brian is smiling benignly at his most annoying daughter and taking up yoga.

I found Stella’s account of witnessing her Dad die in front of her to be very powerful and moving. It was clear that it jolted Brian out of his flippancy and really brought home to him the potential consequences of his attitude. You could also hear him picturing Stella as a person for the first time, a daughter, not just a professional farm manager. Until she told the story he did not even know her father was dead; it was evident that she only shared this personal information because she felt so strongly about it, not being one to chat generally about her private life. I thought it was well done.

Agreed. That was a good scene.

@TottersBlankly ’s post shows one of the many ways in which children of families without HE experience are disadvantaged. I’m not the first of my family to go to uni, but I’m the second, and my dad wouldn’t have a clue about PSs, nor about the interview process. And no-one seeks advice unless they know they need it.

@TeenPlusCat , probably because that's when we wrote a personal statement.
i don't think that Chelsea would have thought to ask someone like Lynda, and she might have forgotten that Lily went to university.

I found it almost impossible when doing my CV when much younger

I was a sixth form tutor in an 11-18 school. It was apparent from reading PS, whether for uni or vocational courses, that very few had any help from family members.

Having worked in both secondary and HE, the biggest waste of time IMO is people waffling on about their extra-curricular activities. It just seems like unecessary bulk. Unless it's relevant to the course they want to study, I have no interest. Avid reader for a literature course, fine (indeed, pre-requisite). Grade 8 musician and county athlete, utterly pointless. Maybe worth two sentences at the end, if that. It's not something I would ever use to distinguish between candidates, except maybe in the vanishingly small possibilty that there were two who were completely equal on everything else.

When I was an undergraduate, our tutor used to read out personal statements and teachers' references at our finals dinner, and we had to guess whose they were (and laugh at how pompous we all sounded as 17 year olds from the ripe old vantage point of 22). There was one no one owned up to. It turned out to be my best friend's, but the school had somehow submitted the one for his schoolmate who was applying for the same subject at the same uni, under the wrong name. The other guy hadn't got in and my friend spent years afterwards questioning whether it was based on the reference as they both had similar grades. After working in the sector for a few years, I was able to reassure him that it almost certainly had had very little effect (espcially since both were interviewed).

I smell a rat with Stella. I think she's up to something.
That story about her father was probably not true

Someone wake me up when they’ve finished with the unutterably tedious Steph stuff.