Archers thread #142: Kill Jill? Is Ambridge heading for a Tarantino-style bloodbath on Stir Up Sunday? 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, although we do mostly try to be civil about it. Most of us are posting tongue in cheek a lot of the time, so don't worry about revealing that , 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/4636789-the-archers-spoilers-thread-7-cant-wait-for-702pm-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.)

Well, things have taken a turn for the better in the last few days! The SWs have re-discovered their form and the actors and directors have risen to the challenge. I won't say much more than that for fear of jinxing things. Over to you!

(Thanks to @JanglyBeads for the thread title idea!)

*re-enter

They keep encouraging Ben to talk, but they don't ask Jill if she's ok.
Ben doesn't want to talk, but he could do with being listened to.
Why don't they look for a therapist/counsellor for him, somebody neutral and not family or nearly family. Alan might be worth a try, if they don't want to push Ben to go to a counsellor.
Where's Aunty Shula when she's needed?

It also sounded as if David was the one who asked for (and got) a guitar for Christmas. Was he in fact the writer of the message in a bottle and does anyone actually care?

Good spot, @LillianGish . If things were as miserable as he suggests that would back up the bottlers comment about mum and dad arguing! I’m quite liking this view of Jill as the not-perfect-matriarch, even if it it revisionist 😀

I am always taken aback by men who don’t cook all year round and then step forward to do Christmas lunch for 12. I suppose it’s a good showing off opportunity which is why it appeals.

Also agree with this, @Roysnewshirt . See also: barbecues!

@WhoppingBigBackside , Ben’s tutor did suggest ‘talking to someone’ but he insisted he was fine. Just as he said to Rex. He’s going to throw everything away if he’s not careful. I do have sympathy for his situation, but I find my sympathy wearing out when struggling people refuse to seek help.

Where's Aunty Shula when she's needed?

Ministering to the heathen in the North-East. They are treating this as if she'd gone to the other side of the world a century ago on a tramp steamer with no phone and little chance of mail getting through. Surely she's not going to stay up there for Christmas? In reality she'd be fully conversant with all details of the recent bust up and the WhatsApp messageswould have been flying back and forth.

I didn't listen to TA when the Brookfield kids were growing up, but I was a listener when they were very young adults. I have the impression Elizabeth was always a handful but spoilt rotten because of concerns about her health. Shula was sensible and dependable. David was the favourite, or at least Kenton always thought he was. Kenton was written off as the black sheep from quite early on. No wonder he left for the Merchant Navy at the earliest opportunity.

Re Christmas dinner - I always do ours, the full works, very traditional. It's more work than my normal cooking, but not really difficult, just needs care and organisation. What I hope is that the scales fall from the Brookfield crew's eyes and they see that Jill does produce delicious food but makes an enormous fuss about it. It's actually possible to produce a good meal for a special occasion without playing the burning martyr.

Yes, I picked up on David's guitar and unhappy Christmas comments too. I can't really see how they're going to make any more of a story about it, but let's see how Lynda's box of memories (or whatever it's called) goes.

The role of Mary in primary nativity plays is habitually given to a child who can sit still for a long time but couldn't handle much of a speaking part. My dc's Catholic primary, very disappointingly, only did a traditional nativity for the nursery class. Every year after that had its own 'original' take (scripts purchased online, so not that original, from a database of school plays which are specially designed to have 1 line speaking parts for 50-60 children so that everyone gets a turn), including aliens, reality talent show, some sort of random hunt for letters (I remember that one because dd was the letter L and couldn't be found when the alphabet was assembled, leading to the hilarious pun 'no-L' segueing into The First Nowell), and a thing based in an orphanage. I think at least a faith school could have stuck to something vaguely religious! We have a proper one at church every year, but it's exclusively done by children of the parish primary, which is not the one my dc attended (we live in a different parish from where we worship).

I found David's insistence that he was going to do everything himself a bit strange. Surely in normal families (where all the cooking isn't done by a nonagenarian) Christmas dinner is a shared job. You have one person who's in charge, but each person has their own tasks to do. Even our weekly Sunday roast involves different people peeling spuds and making pudding from the one who does the meat and gravy. What's he trying to prove by doing it alone?!

Ministering to the heathen in the North-East.

I prefer to think that Shula has gone stereotypes-r-us native and is spending her time on semi-naked, drunken girls' nights out.

I envy Shula if that’s what she’s doing,@Gonners! I truly realised how ancient I’ve become on Saturday night, returning from an event in a ‘northern’ city. While I sat in the car in all my jumpers, hat and gloves the driver had to weave his way around joyful groups of girls in actual sleeveless crop tops and shorts. In the rain!

I don’t remember taking any significant part in the million nativity plays at school. Possibly because the various Home Counties institutions adhered to the belief that all the characters in the ‘Christmas story’ were straight out of a 16th century Rural England tableau. But that was the 60s / 70s - I’m sure things are different now!

David’s proclamation was infuriating. He’s eaten over sixty Christmas lunches - and never once had to trouble about how it arrived on his plate?

@TherapistInATabard , she did, but telling Ben to go and talk someone isn't what he wants to hear. He's probably in a dark tunnel and can't see the light at the end of it.
Rex was best IMO as he suggested a break, but Ben doesn't want to take a break.
He doesn't want sympathy, he wants solutions. His relationship with Supergran is broken, his relationship with his 'soulmate' is over, his family's finances are in a mess, his career is in jeopardy, all because of his one stupid mistake, and he is not in control of anything.
Maybe Alice would be a good person to try and speak to him, or to Ruth. He needs a break, from his surroundings or his tangled-up mind. She might be able to explain how it helped her to remove herself from a bad situation, and turn things around.

**I am not an expert on psychological/medical issues, just a human being with, I hope, some insight into how i'd try to help.

I have had many conversations similar to that between Ben and his tutor. Her sigh after he left was telling. Students believe that they just need to put their head down and work at academics and everything in their lives will be better. Which is the wrong way round. They need to address what is wrong in their life and then their work will recover. I hope that tutor has recorded their meeting carefully to show that she tried to help. It is an awful feeling to watch a student struggle but we can’t make them do anything to help themselves.

David’s proclamation was infuriating. He’s eaten over sixty Christmas lunches - and never once had to trouble about how it arrived on his plate?

To be fair, the same (adjusted for years) could also be said of everyone else who lives at Brookfield. They are farmers and farming doesn't stop at Christmas. They all go out and sort outto check on livestock, fences and so on, and back at base Jill gets the meal ready. Ben has probably helped to the limited extent Jill allows. I am currently chez Gasparents and my mother, only slightly younger than Jill, is constantly jumping up and down to get/do things which I am perfectly capable of getting/doing, and it doesn't make any difference how many times I point this out. I am almost as old as David, but I am still a little girl in my mother's eyes, I think.

(Pleased to report that my Dad seems much improved after his various health scares in Sept/Oct. Phew.)

Very pleased to hear of his improvement, @Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g.

(My own DM still selectively treats me as if I’m 8 years old!)

Good to hear that the Gaspparents are ok, Gasp

I can assure you that cows need milking on Christmas Day, and livestock still needs feeding, and that farmers have to make sure that they do as much as they can before Christmas Day to free up some time to spend enjoying the festvities.

David isn't clueless in the kitchen, and Ruth and Pip will be there too. Probably not as good as Jill's Christmas feast though, and probably shop-bought cake and mince pies. We can probably look forward to some talking whilst eating.

Ben will probably not have much of an appetite and Josh will be silent, as will the Fat Fairchild.

At my DD's nursery she went from ox to Wise Man to Mary over the years. And what swizz part the BVM is - never says a word. Beats 3rd Angel from the left, back row.

Sorrowing, sighing, bleeding, dying,
Sealed in the stone cold tomb
I love really miserable hymns and carols, especially if they have a tune to match. For example Ravenscroft “Remember O thou man
thy time is spent:
how thou art dead and gone,”

I am always taken aback by men who don’t cook all year round and then step forward to do Christmas lunch for 12. I suppose it’s a good showing off opportunity which is why it appeals. DH is one of those. I don’t think it’s showing off, more that his taste for cooking is doing every little detail to perfection, whereas my forte is producing an edible meal in 20mins flat from whatever needs eating up in fridge or larder.

They are treating this as if she'd gone to the other side of the world a century ago on a tramp steamer with no phone and little chance of mail getting through. The mail bit is true at the moment

Shula at well into her 60s in the provinces may not do Whatsapp. It’s a minority skill amongst my friends of similar age.

@Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g Does your “full works” include proper bread sauce?

For anyone who,saw The Last Kingdom, I am envisioning Shula as an older Hild, the nun who also ended up ministering in the NE

@MereDintofPandiculation, it certainly does, and I credit MN for that! We never had it when I was growing up but when other people mentioned it as one of their must haves for Christmas dinner a few years ago I thought I'd give it a go. My daughter and I loved it so it's become a fixture.

Re WhatsApp, most people I know of all ages seem to use it quite a lot now. My parents don't, of course. They are still of the mindset that mobile phones are for switching on in an emergency to make a call, and for nothing else. No smartphones, no smart TV either! I think that's a rapidly dwindling group, though. Other very elderly people I know seem to be better with technology.

"It will then hang forever more like Banquo a the Brookfield table"

I was rather more thinking King Lear as Jill imposes herself on different children - didn't she flounce off to Elizabeth's at one point?

On a separate note, the teachers told me I couldn't be an angel in the nativity play because angel's don't have dark hair. Still pretty annoyed about that one 40 years later

Bread sauce is the highlight of the dinner for me.

My DPs (92&86) have a similar attitude to mobile phones. In fact 2 of their SIM cards have expired because of non-use...

That is my favourite verse of that carol, I don't know why.
(do I will the prize for today's most pointless comment?)

The thought of eating bread sauce makes me heave, but apparently I am very good at making it. See also bread and butter pudding.

Also, excellent news re GaspFather

Gah! My posts are out of sync with everyone!