Archers thread #145: The glue that held the Aldridges together is gone. Will they fall apart? 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, and of course we are always delighted to welcome back former or occasional listeners/posters. We don't all agree on all points, although we do mostly try to be civil about it.

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.)

Lillian and I both made the glue observation, so I thought that would be as good a way as any to kick off this new thread. We raced through the last one, for obvious reasons. This one may last until the funeral. Will Tamsin Greig find time to attend? I do hope so.

The poem Jennifer quoted in her journal is here: www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43775/rabbi-ben-ezra It's doubtful whether the last of Jennifer's life was the best, but she had plenty to contend with all the way through.

Over to you!

Hello, thank you for the new thread. Finally caught up with nearly 2 weeks of the film and the thread.

So sad about Jenny Darling and devastated for Brian.

Ruari's being an arse but I can't imagine having the life long insecurity of not belonging at home, so I cut him some slack. Hope he bucks up his ideas soon though.

I'm team crap cottage, though I also think it was likely a fudged version of both to give the effective of crap but also plausible deniability.

Oops, I see what you mean @KeepingTheWaterOut - perhaps would have helped with the triage, so maybe that is why she’s finding it so hard to come to terms with.

Just catching up. I imagine Raurie feeling a bit insecure, as Julianne obviously has a replacement lined up.

I thought Rauri did go to see Ben but ended up talking to Ruth as Ben was out?

I’d forgotten the Ben/Ruari exchange. I think that’s how it might come out - Alice chatting innocently to Ben mentions his much older girlfriend, Ben puts Alice in the picture. There’s also the whole, unexplored element of Ruairi’s bisexuality.

Does Ruairi know about Ben's psychosis episode?

Come on then, Mr Spreadshit @DadDadDad - how many posters do we have on an average thread? How many more posts would each person have to make to bring the average up from 40 to 60 posts a day? It could be like saving the village shop by each shopper buying one more item a week.

I will be very disappointed if I find it out the spreadshits are no more!

And thanks for the thread, Gaspode. I considered making that a separate post, for the sake of moving the thread along. But since some people still have difficulty loading the page I didn't want to fill it up needlessly. I'm sure I'll be back with some further inane comments later.

I suppose he may have heard about it through village gossip, but it’s not been mentioned on said afaik..

I appreciate Lilian had a traumatic time watching Jennifer die and she's in shock and grief. But she really is being horrible to all the people most able to comfort and support her.

^ forgot to add, Alice made a comment before London about how Ruari is never on his socials anymore so do we take that to mean that Julianne had been discouraging his connectivity with Ambridge life after laying down the law with him recently?

I’d imagine Ruairi’s absence from SM is mostly because he no longer has anything in common with his undergraduate cohort. He would just look odd if he posted stuff about the events he’s going to with Julianne.

And he can hardly invite the averagely financed fellow student round for a pizza …

Poor boy - he must be increasingly lonely.

I can’t abide Lilian or the way she’s acted, so that’s dampening any sympathy I might have felt for her. I know he’s being a brat but my heart really goes out to Ruairi. Alice talking to Ben about him ‘I’m so worried, Ben’ would be a neat way for the truth to come out.

In answer to someone’s question earlier, I was going to say ‘of course Ruairi knows about Ben’s breakdown’, but he hasn’t spoken to anyone in months by the sound of it. Jenny [sob] has been sending him breezy (unanswered) messages, but she may not have told him about Ben.

Oh, and I’m sure Ben and Ruairi made friends some time after the ‘you’re a prostitute’ comment.

Who would Ruairi have heard it from, unless it was Jennifer, and I don't think he was replying to her.

Exactly

If I were Ruairi and Ben betrayed me like that (and to Alice of all people!), I would have nothing further to do with him.

Have I completely imagined an interaction between Ben, Ruairi, and Paul around the time of Ben’s psychosis? Paul speaking kindly about having heard that Ben had been going through a lot, and then talking to Ruairi about how it was good he was supporting his friend? I guess that could have been post-Beth-break-up and pre-psychosis but I still had the impression they’d made up slightly.

I thought Alice had some inkling already about Julianne, didn’t she catch Ruairi out in a lie or something a few months ago? And either way she must have figured it mostly out after picking him up from London.

When Brian had his angina attack last June, Ruairi rushed up to Ambridge and Julianne either drove him or followed on in her car - because according to the Ambridge Reporter: *a message tings on Ruairi's phone, and he asks Brian to excuse him a minute, saying it's just a little something he needs to sort out…Outside in her car, Julianne asks after Brian, and is glad he's all right; she must make a move. She says she will see Ruairi on Sunday, and when he tries to suggest that he really wants to stay with Brian until he has his test results in a few days she points out that he might miss both a food festival and a gallery opening that have been in the diary for weeks; he says he will definitely be back by next weekend, but she is indignant: he can't just announce he's not coming! What does he think she pays his allowance for? She has kept her side of the arrangement; he needs to keep his.

As Julianne drives off, Ruairi presumably having agreed to her demand because he says 'All right, see you then', Alice startles him by asking who that was; she seems dubious about his saying it was just someone who hadn't programmed their satnav properly and needed directions*

So yes, I remembered that too - Alice had her suspicions then about something odd happening. Presumably she didn’t actually catch a good enough look at Julianne to identify her as the ‘girlfriend' in the flat a few days ago.

Yea that was it, and wasn’t there something else too, about the expensive gift for Brian and Jenny / catching him in some kind of lie? My memory is terrible.

Found it, it was 7th April 2022 and Alice telling R she knows he’s up to something relating to money and who owns the flat in Bath etc.

Got a bit fed up with the beautifaction of Jennifer. The cult of Saint Jenny it should be called.

Some of the crap the family come out with about how wonderful she was etc etc. Seems to be a bit of rewriting history.
She was not the nicest of people at times. Snobbish and peevish. As for her having had great abilities as a writer. Tosh! What ever megre talent she had she wasted. After publishing one book she settled down into being a housewife and social climbing.

Another melodramatic plot, cliché ridden drama with soap story scripting.

But I'm still addicted. Can't break a habit of over 50 years. One day I pray I will. I need to stop shouting at the radio whenever The Archers is on.

Oh, is Jennifer dead, what a shame. I haven't listened for a while but I remember she deserved better than Brian.

He tried to, but Ruth intercepted him so she could try to find out as much as possible about his feelin's, in her best carin' voice.

Clinically I'm not sure that it would have made any difference if Lillian had known about Jenny's heart. Presumably she either had an MI or went into crashing heart failure (or both) - either of these things can happen suddenly without any prodrome.

If Jenny was well enough that Lillian wasn't worried all weekend I'm not sure exactly what she thinks she would have spotted with extra knowledge. But it's understandable for her to think that she might have missed something and to lash out at those who kept the viral information from her. She can't be angry at Jenny (although she is, really) so everyone else is getting it in the neck.