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!

I like a Garibaldi. They remind me of the summer I had an internship at an oil company. We had a free three course lunch every day and a trolley came round in the morning with coffee and the afternoon with tea and two biscuits each. Nobody else liked the Garibaldis so they accumulated in a tin, until I arrived and ate them. We also had a free vending machine for fizzy drinks and snacks in case we were peckish in the short periods between official feeding times. Good times.

Squashed fly biscuits are Garibaldis.

The primo in primogeniture is modifying the word for birth rather than referring to the sex of the person born, and in any case as the first part of a compound word it doesn't change ending, only the end of the whole word does.

Primogeniture tout court can refer to either a firstborn male or a firstborn of either sex. The former is more common in everyday speech. If you want to specify, then agnatic primogeniture means the inheritence of the firstborn son through the male line. You can also have male-preference primogeniture, which as the name suggests, is where girls can inherit if there are no boys, which is what we used to have in the English monarchy until they moved to absolute primogeniture a few years ago. Lineal or absolute primogeniture means the inheritence of the firstborn child whatever their sex. Women inheriting before men (unusual, but some societies had it) is called matrilineal primogeniture.

Here endeth the lesson.

Garibaldis are a waste of biscuit calories. Give me a Nice or a Custard Cream or even a Malted Milk over them any time. All of the above are in the second league of biscuits anyway, but Garibaldis are in the equivalent of the National League South (will eat only if very hungry and nothing better is available), along with Fig Rolls.

I can’t stand any of those. I don’t think I’m the target market for biscuits 🙈

On a matter of neither biscuits nor primogeniture, I thought Spiritual Home was on Home Farm land ... wasn't the whole point about having to sell the Home Farm house that Kate wouldn't accept a less auspicious piece of land for her business and insisted on the special woo vibes of whatever field it's in? If so, where did the reminiscing about being on Home Farm planting trees come from? She's on Home Farm every day!

@iratepirate , me neither. Of the ones mentioned fig rolls are the least unpleasant.

Perhaps Spiritual Home is one a parcel of land a bit more separate from the main farm? Farmers do buy/sell random fields from each other.

In the early '80s orange creams were available as a variation on custard creams. Lemon creams too. We used to eat them by the ton as the tuck shop sold them at school. I haven't seen them for years. Lemon puff biscuits were also very tasty. Whether or not they are still available I don't know.

I'm still partial to an occasional custard cream to dunk in a cup of coffee. But it has to be timed to perfection.

About a second is about right. Just sufficient to enable a third to half of the biscuit to moisten and absorb the coffee and enable the biscuit to retain its form before sogginess ensures. Certainty to avoid the disaster of soggy biscuit end falling into the coffee.

Yeah … Wot Fink sez. Twice. Man thing and Spiritual thing.

Garibaldi biscuits are an abomination. I would have said the only shop biscuits worth buying were Chocolate Olivers, and Nairns Gluten Free Chocolate thingummies. But someone gave me some Fortnum & Mason Dark Chocolate Pearl biscuits for Christmas - and now I’m as ruined as a girl in a Georgette Geyer novel who’s looked at a bloke the wrong way; I’m going to have to marry them.

Heyer …

(Don’t know who the other woman is, but wish her every success in her writing career.)

Yes exactly @Fink - that's why I was confused as to what on earth Kate was on about. Spiritual Home is on Home Farm land. I can only assume Kate means she wants to go 'back' to farming (not that she's ever had anything to do with it... in a positive sense anyway).

I thought Stella was rude because although we know that Kate is having delusions of grandure regarding the farm and her general place in the world, Stella didn't know anything about that, and just had someone offering to help plant some trees. It's really not difficult - we've done it as a volunteer activity in the village recently and your average 6 year-old can follow the instructions, especially as Stella said Ed had already dug most of the holes. I suppose it is Kate interfering in Stella's work, but I felt she was unnecessarily grumpy about it, and could just have said thanks but no thanks, I'm waiting for Ed. (I recognise that Kate has a penchant for steamrollering over such reasonable entreaties, however).

Anyway, overall I'm bemused as to what Kate thinks her new calling in life is, given that it doesn't seem to be spending any time near any of her children, despite them being one (three) of her proudest achievements

Could be a pseudonym for someone in the Georgette Heyer gay fanfic subset. Actually, the Regency would be an ideal time for lesbian romance stories, now that I think - the short period of British history when women's fashion might make access to a woman's body slightly easier than the periods either side where clothes were much more restrictive. Plus, no knickers.

Actually, the Regency would be an ideal time for lesbian romance stories, now that I think - the short period of British history when women's fashion might make access to a woman's body slightly easier than the periods either side where clothes were much more restrictive. Plus, no knickers.

Wasn't John Cleland's Fanny Hill written round that time?

Why is Freddie going to inherit, and not Lily?

Because that was what Nigel wrote in his will.

GoldenCupidon
not sure why Stella was so awkward and rude with the recently bereaved Kate though, she sounded like a sulky teenager not a farming professional dealing with her employer’s daughter.

Dealing with her employer; Kate is one of the partnership that employs her.

Spiritual home is in the middle of Home Farm; Kate's absolute rejection of the idea that an outlying field or two could be sold off was because Nasty Tractors (as opposed to the nice cuddly home farm ones) would have to drive past her special bit of the farm to get to the tract that had been sold.

Bahlsen Choco Leibniz biscuits (dark, for preference) are the best biscuits. I have to restrict myself to buying them for Christmas or I'd be even more circumferentially challenged than I already am.

Squashed fly biscuits feature in the Swallows and Amazons series, which I love, so I feel very fondly towards them. See also: corned beef (pemmican).

NICE biscuits should be prosecuted under the Trade Descriptions Act. Pink wafers are the airheads of the biscuit world, quite pretty on the outside, but no substance. Custard creams are just a bit dull.

I haven't had a lemon puff for years. Lovely. Good all-butter shortbread, ditto.

Final note on biscuits: Iced Gems were always on the table at parties when I was a child. What a disappointment they were.

Slightly earlier, I think, in the mid-18th century, around the Fielding and Richardson time. Before the Empire line dresses, back with the tight corsets and huge skirt hoops.

Also, I was envisoning something considerably more understated and less sexually graphic - lots of the fan waving and eyes locking over a game of whist and only small amounts of actual sex. And I don't remember that Fanny Hill has much lesbianism in it, maybe one or two fumbles when she was very young - she's mainly straight.

I used to eat Choco Leibniz as a substitute for Petit Écolier when they weren't widely available in the UK. Now Petit Écolier are in mainstream UK supermarkets I've reverted to them. Same idea but, IMO, an indefinable superiority of taste. Same price.

I actually wondered about that Asking and then thought it was more fun to leave it out and then see if you came and corrected me - thank you!

"...she now has Kate trying to stick her oar in on the basis that she and Alice once ate a bag of crisps under a tree up what is apparently not even a hill". 🤣👏
Kate is annoying but I agree that Stella seemed inappropriately grumpy - possibly they are trying to indicate that she is stressed about work, she was obviously struggling with Brian's 'management style' before?
Surely Adam will eventually take his rightful place as the person best suited to being in charge of Home Farm? Maybe in time he and Ian can rebuy and move into the house...?

Very fair assessment of garibaldis.

I listened again this afternoon. I didn't think Stella sounded particularly grumpy to start with, the initial interaction where Kate insisted on coming with her to plant the trees was relatively civil. She did then come across as a bit short with Kate, possibly, once the first lot of trees had been planted and Ed had arrived (silently) and Kate was on her queen of the manor chat ... but presuming there were a reasonable number of trees they had probably been together for a fair period of time by then (and Ed was very late!), there's only so much Kate BS one person can take. I don't think Stella was overreacting to Kate sticking her oar in about what should be planted and what type of cover to use, as well as the heavy hints about reliving her idyllic childhood. We probably only got the tail end of an hour or more of her wittering on like that. I certainly would be a bit tetchy if I'd been on the receiving end of all that. I'd have tried to cut her some slack given that her mother has just died, but there are limits to my polite biting my tongue. I actually thought Stella did quite well to restrain herself.

To add to the Biscuit Review there is the whole subsection of Cookies. We had a visitor stuck with us after 9/11 and for a week she taught my DC to bake chocolate chip cookies the American way. They were so delicious they ruined us forever for Maryland choc chip cookies, previously known to the DC as Hairyman cookies and taken with a glass of milk.

Changing the subject, I've just been looking at the Wikipedia page for Sally Wainwright, writer of Happy Valley and several other cracking drama series. Guess where she cut her teeth as a writer back in the 80s! 1986-88, apparently. She wrote the episode with the raid on the village shop.

In the early '80s orange creams were available as a variation on custard creams.

@Iloveabaconbutty it’s very strange you should mention orange creams. I go to a sewing group on Tuesday nights and we always have tea and biccies. Last night there was a new selection of biscuits and among them? Orange creams! I exclaimed that I hadn’t seen them for years and here you are mentioning them as well 👀