Archers thread #144: Window pains again! Light relief or dark times ahead for Ambridge in 2023? 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 you’d love to volunteer in the shop with Susan, 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.)

New year, new thread. Many thanks to @LillianGish for the window pains pun! Hoping to hear a lot less from the Caseys this year and a good deal more about farming and how Ambridge is coping with Brexit, cost of living crisis, ageing population and all sorts of credible character-based storylines. Yes, I know, but one can only hope.

Over to you!

Didn't Jenny have a brief fling with John Tregorran that may or may not have been revived for a time after the Brian and Siobhán affair. And then John died and left her his books on local history, causing slight coolth with Carol Tregorran during her brief return to Ambridge. Not I think that we've ever heard her leave.

I think calling him an 'unsophisticated farm boy' is a bit much.
He went to boarding school didn't he? Not many 'farm boys' do that!

Sorry posted too early. I would think in these modern times that a man having a paid escort would still be looked on different to a women doing the same thing.

I don't think he's a farm boy. He's not even interested in the farm.

I thought Ruari's reaction was pretty spot on. It's not uncommon for people to react violently to sudden and devastating news. Especially when losing a second mother which is a next level of bereavement frankly.
I've never got where the Julianne storyline is going. They clearly aren't sleeping together or she'd have been awake from the start.

I woke up in the night because I heard JD's voice saying 'oh Alice!!' As clear as anything!

I assumed they were sleeping together, she'd stayed in bed while Ruairi went to the door, then got up to see what was happening when he let people into her flat.

I was imagining her in a very expensive and flattering negligée hence Chris's bogglement.

They clearly aren't sleeping together or she'd have been awake from the start.

They very clearly are!

Don’t know if they can check who’s buzzing the door from their bed, but Ruairi got up to find out who it was. When he saw it was Alice he would have been alarmed about the prospect of discovery, but Julianne would just have told him to see what they want and then come back to bed. She only bothered to get up when she heard the shouting.

FWIW I’ve known a few public school and Oxbridge educated ‘farm boys’ …

I’m assuming it was Ruairi’s flat? Presumably rented. I recall an argument they had where she pointed out all the things he was able to afford because of their ‘relationship’ - specifically mentioning the flat and his car.

Besides, there’s no way Ruairi would have given Juliane’s own home address to Jenny.

Gosh, if she's paying for a flat for him no wonder he's worried about her taking someone else to the Barbican.

I still believe in the negligée, she'd keep clothes there, she isn't a walk of shame in yesterday's clothes woman.

They told us an awful lot about Julianne in a couple of short scenes - that she wasn't interested enough to find out about Ruairi's family, that she's got an understudy for him on the side, that she didn't want him around being miserable if he's not up to escorting or shagging her ... I agree and was coming on to say exactly the same thing. I think for this plot to work we need to accept that Ruairi still feels a bit like an outsider in the Aldridge clan (he always felt a bit like that to me as he was away at boarding school so we didn't really hear him) - Alice's outburst was about reinforcing that so he could stay away and be pushed further into his arrangement with Julianne. One thing that slightly doesn't ring true is that I can't imagine Ruairi would be short of money - presumably his mother left him some money and Brian is not exactly strapped for cash. Jenny's death is going to turn Ruairi's relationship with his family on its head - he is Brian's longed-for biological son, but Brian's never exactly been a hands-on dad. He always "left that sort of thing to Jenny" - in fact I can almost hear him saying those words. I'm so sad that Jenny is gone, but I love this plot because for me, this is the Archers at it best - when you care so much about the characters you almost believe they are real. It's also about dynasties - something I think @TottersBlankly was talking about a few threads back. Brian's heir returns, Jenny's son - the presumed heir (to the running of Home Farm) until that point - has already sidelined himself. The balance of the family has subtly shifted. The scene is set.

I wonder if Julianne will end up with Brian through the Justin connection 😬

Excellent acting and writing this week. I had to drive to London to tell my younger brother that our dad had died suddenly after he wouldn't answer his phone, and experienced that same disbelieving response.

It's a shame it's so inconsistent recently. I keep reaching the point of giving up after forty years and something interesting happens.

My understanding has been that she pays him handsomely for his escort services, so he can afford a lifestyle most students cannot.

I dunno … The escort narratives I’ve seen on screen recently involve working class young women (‘Mood’, ‘Alma’s Not Normal’) whose lives are on a knife edge of precarity. They can buy nice clothes but if they dare to indulge in expensive rentals and cars they’re likely to lose them in the next episode when their generous client dumps them.

Ruairi appears to be earning more than they do - but equally, he’s spending more. So yes, I’d imagine it could all disappear very quickly if she tires of coming second to his family. (Which would be a good thing.)

I was a bit annoyed at Kate's selective memory of how much she loved her mum when she was the cause of her having to give up her beloved kitchen.

Julianne. That could go so many ways. Brian doesn't last long and Rauri gets an inheritance so he doesn't need J's money?
He comes to his senses in Ambridge and sees that he is instantly replaceable, J doesn't want a flaky sad toy-boy to cart around to these events (how people must be sniggering at her, tho).
Julianne knows Justin. There has GOT to be something coming there. (And Stella knows Justin - maybe there is a BIG THING coming there?)
Rauri feels so Spare Part at the funeral etc that he goes off for ever and we never hear the daft Julianne story again (please please please)
She turns up at the funeral and Justin wrestles her away?

So much potential. But whatever happens, SW, please end it soon.

@TeenDivided It was a bit mean but I am a farm girl (literally- I grew up on a farm) and like Ruari moved to London for university at 18. I was shy and wide eyed about everything to do with the city. I wouldn't have been good company for a 40 something at corporate events

I wonder if J and R were in R’s flat or actually in J’s.

Even if J is paying for R’s flat it would still be full of PlayStations and boys’ trainers and the plush cushions would regularly be flat and lifeless on the expensive sofa if he actually lives there.

If I was J, I would want to entertain - or for my TB to entertain me - in surroundings where I wasn’t constantly gritting my teeth about stuff lying around the place. Unless may be there is a cleaning clause in their contract- and the flat is decluttered and bed made with fresh sheets whenever she is due to stay over…It’s all about the details in this sort of arrangement…

J was very practical about finding a back up plan for the Barbican. May be she is not as attached to R as he (and we) think…

I usually listen on iPlayer at bedtime but have been tuning in live this week…such a treat to be hooked again!

Slow typing - was responding to @DeanVolecapeAKAelderberry !

But yes, the dynastic shifts are what makes TA so absorbing.

I’m pretty certain Adam will be returning to the bosom of Home Farm. The way he stepped between Brian and Stella, to protect his stepfather from the outsider … And Brian will want to draw his family close right now. It’s not as if Ruairi could take over the farm, however biased Brian might be to his brilliant ideas. He’ll surely feel the need to have Adam with him.

He’ll surely feel the need to have Adam with him - I think so too. And in fact - contrary to previous comments - Ruairi is not really a farm boy. He has not been involved with the farm at all. Is he studying business? I can't remember.

Is he actually studying?

I know Adam’s had a shock, but I thought he was quite rude to Stella when she tried to empathise by saying that exactly the same thing had happened to her father (which we knew, of course, from previous episodes).

Kate also conveniently edited out the time when she went missing for an extended period and Jenny and Brian were faced with the horrific experience of going to identify the body of a teenage girl, who of course turned out not to be Kate. I remember that really clearly because it was when I first started listening properly to the Archers with my parents at home and I remember how much it upset my Mum.

I thought it was absolutely chilling that Julianne even saw fit to mention something as trivial as an event at the Barbican in the context of what was happening.

I betcha the upshot of all this is that after Ruari is forcibly severed from the clutches of Julianne, he also turns out to be failing his course and drops out, then decides to start again next year at the Oxbridge of the Shires, Felpersham Yooni, doing “Business for Farming” or some such.

On the subject of the double loss of a Mum for R, it was all very sudden but it was not exactly unpredictable that the 78 year-old woman who had been a (grand) mother figure to him was not going to be around forever. He was lucky that he made it to his twenties before it happened.

If I were Stella I would be hugely put out that the death of her boss’ wife, who had no practical role in the farming business, prompts her boss to bring back the old farm manager as her new boss, without retiring definitively himself. Brian has to step back completely if Adam is to return to Home Farm, so that Adam replaces Brian in the structure. Shoehorning him in as an extra would be a very unattractive proposition for Stella, no matter how sympathetic she may be.

I agree that Brian's very likely to turn to Adam to step in on the farm now. They’ve positioned it so that Stella's already in Brian's bad books over the expensive kit she wants to buy. He’s been massively huffy with her over that, so in his current bereaved state, is he going to be prepared to deal with her over anything farm-related?

Mind you, given her 100 year old mother, people could be forgiven for thinking she'd be around for quite a lot longer.

I can’t see them writing Stella out completely though- they have been working very hard to embed her recently. If she leaves HF, where does she go- nameless neighbour farm but still lives at Brookfield and pops into the village shop?