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Original poster

Archers thread #145: The glue that held the Aldridges together is gone. Will they fall apart? Discuss The Archers here.

978 replies

Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g · 29/01/2023 22:36

Thank you, @PseudoBadger, for kicking off this long, long series of Archers threads.

Archers 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.

Archers 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!

Archers 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!

OP posts:
FallonsNewCoat · 14/02/2023 21:40

Mourning is clearly not really something to be taken seriously by the young in Ambridge. It seems astonishing that Alice and Ruarhi feel ok enough to have a night out and Nolly is definitely more sad about the end of her relationship than she is about her grandmother dying.

OverArmour · 14/02/2023 21:57

It seems as though the SWs might have heard the discussion about Freddie’s asexual similarity to a Lord of the Manor dressed Ken doll…

Minimammoth · 14/02/2023 21:59

I’m not quite seeing how Kate can sell Spiritual Home. Surely the land belongs to the farm, she has a couple of second hand yurts, and a list of customers. Goodwill is pretty worthless. Not a lot of asset there.

OverArmour · 14/02/2023 22:00

CatnaryReturns · 14/02/2023 20:15

@TottersBlankly I just wanted to reply quickly to your kind message after I said "I think I’m done here, to be honest. It’s too much about trying to catch the scriptwriters out".

You said:

"I meant to respond to this yesterday - hope you haven’t disappeared already!

Could you not see it as (mostly) joyful critical engagement? Presumably people who frequent this thread do actually care about the programme and need want it to be as good as possible. I’ve no idea whether any of the creative team read these threads - but certainly at the back of my mind , when I express a view on the writing I … would like them to know where they’ve gone wrong! And it’s always fascinating to read other listeners’ criticisms - I always find there are things I’ve missed or not fully understood."

Thing is, @TottersBlankly, I've been on these threads under various names since PseudoBadger started the first one, and I was a Mustardland user in the past too, so I'm very very familiar with "joyful critical engagement" and have indulged in it myself for perhaps decades! What I am picking up more and more on these threads, and MN in general to be honest, is a dog-with-a-bone lack of willingness to agree to differ and move on when someone disagrees with a criticism, and heaven forfend a SW should be given the benefit of the doubt. It's like the tone/attitude of AIBU has spread everywhere.

I've also realised that the nitpicking is actually affecting my enjoyment of the programme because I'm noticing flaws that I otherwise would not have. I used to be up there with the best of the nitpickers, but I'm suddenly over it; I've gone soft. Perhaps Jenny dying has triggered an epiphany?

I used to enjoy analysing the Archers in a sarcastic way with my Dad. He died 23 years ago. Message boards were only ever a pale substitute for that anyway.

I'm giving the whole of MN a rest for the foreseeable. I'm 50 this year, I feel like making some changes! Bloody hell, I sound like Kate- kill me now! Smile

If you change your mind at any point, I’m sure we will all be here gently bickering into perpetuity. Onward! Said in the voice of Lynda. Or maybe she’d go with a bit of Gatsby spoke with ‘vim’ and ‘vigour!’ ‘So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past!’

Abra1t · 14/02/2023 22:19

FallonsNewCoat · 14/02/2023 21:40

Mourning is clearly not really something to be taken seriously by the young in Ambridge. It seems astonishing that Alice and Ruarhi feel ok enough to have a night out and Nolly is definitely more sad about the end of her relationship than she is about her grandmother dying.

I’ve observed my two and their cousins at various grandparents’ deaths and funerals and they often get very emotional at the time and then they’re planning outings. I think it’s true to life for them to dip in and out like that.

AskingQuestionsAllTheTime · 14/02/2023 22:25

Can someone remind me: apart from Jennifer, who is dead, and Phoebe, who is not in Ambridge at present, which of the Ambridge dwellers who is not his mother has Sipho met since he was there for three weeks at about the age of three?

It's just that he was said to be missing everyone there, and I couldn't think why he would be since they are all, essentially, total strangers to him.

Gonners · 14/02/2023 22:29

... answers on a postcard to the scriptwriters, please?

BoreOfWhabylon · 14/02/2023 22:56

Well, they've probably all been Face timing and the like regularly over the years.

TottersBlankly · 14/02/2023 23:05

It did seem quite odd when Freddie so casually said it would be great to see Sipho - as if he were a mate about to return from a gap year trip! I’ve allowed myself to assume that all the Aldridge clan are in constant contact with Kate’s SA family via FaceTime and WhatsApp. And we know Freddie and Noluthando are friends, as well as family, and have kept in touch. But it’s a stretch to imagine he’s on such close, good terms with Sipho.

MereDintofPandiculation · 15/02/2023 09:51

FallonsNewCoat · 14/02/2023 21:40

Mourning is clearly not really something to be taken seriously by the young in Ambridge. It seems astonishing that Alice and Ruarhi feel ok enough to have a night out and Nolly is definitely more sad about the end of her relationship than she is about her grandmother dying.

To be fair, Jenny wasn’t a big part of Nolly’s everyday life. My experience, having lost many friends and relatives, is that depth of mourning is determined more by impact on everyday life than by degree of relationship.

she has a couple of second hand yurts, and a list of customers and the brand name.

Maybe Freddie is just being polite. Not every expression of desire to meet again is to be taken literally

Original poster
Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g · 15/02/2023 10:07

Nolly was in Ambridge for quite a long spell - weeks? months? - a few years ago when she and Freddie went out looking for magic mushrooms. I can't remember too much of the detail now, but I didn't take to her back then. I was interested to hear her say that she is now a teacher, or did I mishear, and she's about to start teaching? She's only just 22. Presumably it's the long summer vacation in South Africa at the moment.

OP posts:
TottersBlankly · 15/02/2023 10:25

I was always sorry that she and Freddie didn’t get to take off on their ‘not actually a gap year’ world trip. It sounded so much fun, and with decent writers could have been a really well researched portrayal of how they each engaged with the world. But no. Instead we got 97 editors and darling Freddie incarcerated.

Presumably there are no restrictions (outside the US) on Freddie leaving the country? It’s frankly amazing that Elizabeth (or should I say the SWs) hasn’t actively encouraged wide foreign travel for her wealthy and about to inherit the earth children. They’ve actually had quite a constrained and narrow experience of life so far. Unless you count prison.

iratepirate · 15/02/2023 11:36

I agree. It could be the making of Lily as well, who I’m sure would benefit from spreading her wings a little.

GoldenCupidon · 15/02/2023 13:57

If I remember rightly all the parents (and grandparents?) were very cross with each other and with Freddie about the drugs thing and him endangering (?) Nolly. Has that all melted away? I'm sure someone can recall it more clearly than me as I wasn't a constant listener at the time.

AskingQuestionsAllTheTime · 15/02/2023 13:59

BoreOfWhabylon · 14/02/2023 22:56

Well, they've probably all been Face timing and the like regularly over the years.

In which case, why shouldn't Sipho carry right on doing that even if his sister isn't with him? He doesn't have to be missing them any more than he already was (which I would rate at "not at all", since apart from Kate and possibly Jennifer they really are not part of his life at all).

TottersBlankly · 15/02/2023 14:05

He doesn't have to be missing them any more than he already was

Ha! I bet you a million pounds it was Jenny who would have kept up a weekly video call - and now, apart from giving them the news of her death, no one’s thought of keeping in touch in the regular way.

(If it’s not that, then the script was indeed nonsensical.)

AskingQuestionsAllTheTime · 15/02/2023 14:15

Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g · 15/02/2023 10:07

Nolly was in Ambridge for quite a long spell - weeks? months? - a few years ago when she and Freddie went out looking for magic mushrooms. I can't remember too much of the detail now, but I didn't take to her back then. I was interested to hear her say that she is now a teacher, or did I mishear, and she's about to start teaching? She's only just 22. Presumably it's the long summer vacation in South Africa at the moment.

Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g
Nolly was in Ambridge for quite a long spell - weeks? months? - a few years ago when she and Freddie went out looking for magic mushrooms. I can't remember too much of the detail now, but I didn't take to her back then.

Noluthando was in Ambridge from 29th September, 2017, until 25th January, 2018.

Whilst there, she encouraged Freddie to dry and sell at college the magic mushrooms he had found on the Lower Loxley estate, to make the money for a visit to her in his "gap year" before university. Then she was a bit put out that he started to deal other drugs, courtesy of Elliott, but her disapproval didn't stop her from snatching an ecstasy tab from him at her birthday party and eating all of it even though Freddie tried to stop her and also tried to tell her she ought to take half or a quarter, not the whole thing. Having got him well and truly involved with a violent drugs dealer, she went home telling him he had to stop, but not offering him any advice about how, or how he was to deal with blackmail.

Subsequently Kate, quite forgetting her own actual overdose and stomach pump experience when she played with drugs at a slightly older age, as opposed to the non-serious night Noluthando spent in hospital with nothing worse than what she would have suffered if she had drunk too much and been sick as a result, was incandescently unpleasant to Elizabeth and gloated about Freddie being sent to prison. Noluthando didn't agree to give evidence against him, which given whose idea the whole business had been was jolly decent of her... (Did anyone really think Freddie dreamed that up himself? It wouldn't have occurred to him!)

GoldenCupidon · 15/02/2023 15:35

Thanks Asking! I remember Kate being a complete knob about it.

JudgeJ · 15/02/2023 16:28

I must tell you about a very very weird experience I had yesterday. My late OH and I had a mini routine, listen the The Archers over lunch then watch Countdown, since his death in 2020 I've not watched either.
Yesterday I was meeting train and took a very old book I'd bought from a Church sale, it was one of three about the very early days, before the Radio programme, of the Archers. It finished with Jack Archer and Peggy welcoming the birth of their daugher who they called Jennifer. I then decided to see what's been happening in Ambridge on my phone, I was shocked to find out about the death of that Jennifer. Very odd indeed.

JanglyBeads · 15/02/2023 18:35

Oh thanks for that reminder re the mushrooms. So in fact Molly could be seen as responsible for Freddie ultimately ending up in prison??

JanglyBeads · 15/02/2023 19:00

*Nolly

TottersBlankly · 15/02/2023 19:19

BOOP for the long awaited conversation with Will.

But I Am Not Buying this nonsense of Justin blackmailing … Silly, soapy rubbish.

JanglyBeads · 15/02/2023 19:23

I was shocked about Justin too. If it goes on it will spell the end of his relationship with Lilian.

Gonners · 15/02/2023 19:52

Lovely low-key acting from both Brine and Wiwyum there.

AskingQuestionsAllTheTime · 15/02/2023 19:57

JanglyBeads · 15/02/2023 18:35

Oh thanks for that reminder re the mushrooms. So in fact Molly could be seen as responsible for Freddie ultimately ending up in prison??

His dealing at all was certainly her idea, not his own. Only because of it did he come to Elliott's attention and get drawn into selling other drugs for Elliott's benefit. So yes, I suppose ultimately she was responsible for his having been sent to prison.