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!

Although my mother had been unreasonable and pig headed all her life which made it more difficult to tell when she started with dementia. I agree that the dementia diagnoses on MN are ridiculous though and the MIL in that thread was just rude.

Unless you live in London you have to wait for State Pension Age for free bus travel. I've had mine for two years now and use it often.

I still don’t get it. Kirsty. She must be raking in a decent amount from letting her house; why (other than for SW purposes) would she still be living with Roy - to the extent of rearranging the house for the long term? She’s surely 40-odd and still pointlessly having to wait for her landlord to be out before she can have sex. It’s plain silly and impossible to believe.

I'm over 60 myself with far too much experience of watching the older generation of friends and family make the dementia journey. The SWs did a very good job on Jack Wooley's illness, taking years over it, as is typical.

With this I found both Brian's rage at Kirsty and Roy and then his forgetting the rage, and, particularly, the way everyone was just humouring him, suggestive. But then I never understand the way the SWs deal with death and bereavement so it's probably just that.

In Scotland you get your bus pass at 60. I love mine.

I think it's realistic that there's not much public transport around Ambridge (I do think we've heard occasional mentions of a bus, though I could be wrong). I've never lived properly rurally in the UK, but even when I lived in a pit village less than 5 miles from a city there was very little; one bus that ran a few times a day, never after 5pm. Our family farm in Ireland has an infrequent bus and train service in the town 4 miles away, nothing that comes near the local village.

So maybe the joy of a freedom pass really only applies if you live somewhere you'll get use of it. I could see the Prof, the Snells & co maybe driving to a town with a train station and going on some adventures from there. But I think most of the other older residents either stay local or travel by car.

"How did you deal with bereavement?" Brian asks Will.

"Oh, I tried to shoot myself which meant that I lost my job and home I just live one day at a time."

Why on earth isn't somebody just getting the undertaker and vicar to pop round to sort out the funeral?

I find Brian's behaviour a little peculiar and out of character. In my experience, a man like Brian would conform to community/family expectations/'the done thing' (even if that means some emotional discomfort or delegating the work). He would want to be seen as 'doing the right thing' and 'providing a proper send off/celebration of life'.

I think the scriptwriters have gone too far in trying to portray 'different experiences' of grief. You can see the scriptwriting cogs turning now... 🙄

Yes, where is Alan? Isn’t this precisely what he’s for? It does seem odd to have the death of a major character and two/three weeks later still not have heard a word from their local, familiar to them and generally well liked vicar. I’m sure the SWs are always looking for new ways to tell old stories - but this decision seems perverse.

Will and Nic met on the bus.
Kirsty lodges with Roy as it makes it easier for them to have conversations. Similarly, Alistair lodges with his father.
Jakob rents his cottage from Chris who is renting his flat because of scriptwriting.

Brad went to Oxford not Reading.

Yes Totters. Surely Alan would have been round in a flash. If they couldn't coax trainee vicar, Shula, out of retirement for a quick phone call they should have at least pretended that she was consoling Brian.

I'd have expected Peggy to have had a mention or two as well. I would imagine that she would have some firm views about the funeral of her daughter.

Odd.

It does seem quite odd to me as well re the funeral arrangements or lack thereof.

Also can’t imagine Alan not popping round at least once by now.

Public transport is not something we have here (I imagine a level of rural living similar to Ambridge) so that doesn’t seem at all implausible to me.

I don't think it's implausible. My parents live on an island with a relatively good bus service, all tied to the ferry times, but it's a far cry from what I'm used to in London, or even what we had when we lived in Leeds. I have a dim memory of a campaign about buses many years ago. I assume these don't often meet with success. Not much money in rural bus services.

Does anyone happen to know if Ambridge had a railway station before Dr Beeching wielded his axe?

I do wonder what Brian thinks will happen to Jenny's body if he won't arrange a funeral. Does she just get dispatched to the cemetery or an unmarked grave with no-one being there other than whoever operates the ovens or fills in the grave? Or is he going to donate it to medical research or similar?

Didn't they have a date for a funeral?

There is/was a train station at Hollerton (Junction). I think Shula used to drop Daniel there. I am guessing that the station is outside the village, so perhaps it is just a couple of miles away?

I must admit I've been puzzling how Ruari has been getting to/from London/Birmingham/Felpersham.

Rural bus services are substantially non-existent in my neck of the woods. The sort of services that coincide with market day and school. The council has decided to stop subsidising what there were for 23/4.

Post Covid the bus cos really struggled to get drivers (who decided that working for Ocado etc was a lot less hassle and paid better). The lack of drivers meant that so many services were cancelled that even fewer people attempted to catch the bus.

They did have the church booked, but as far as I can recall we hadn't been told when the funeral would be, except something vague like 'the end of the month'.

Ambridge is not on the railway. The nearest railway stations are Hollerton Junction in one direction and Felpersham in the other. This is probably why the railway is not part of their everyday lives: they'd have to get to it first.

I don't think Blake brought Chelsea home by rail; I don't think we ever heard how he had managed it.

The most recent user of a train was Brad, leaving college in Borchester, getting on a train to Oxford, and coming home by train after his date there. I remember wondering whether he had bicycled the fourteen miles from Borchester to Hollerton Junction after college, or if he had caught the school bus, and if the latter how he had got back from Hollerton Junction to Ambridge later that evening.

Will did not try to shoot himself! If he had, he would be dead.

Emma walked into his house uninvited and found him cleaning his shotgun and then reloading it, whereupon she leaped to alarmist conclusions and called in his brother.

I don't think Ed helped much by attacking him (Emma having gratuitously told Ed that on a different occasion Will had tried to kiss her), and certainly the gun went off (harming nobody) while Ed was fighting with him, but Will at no point tried to shoot himself.

The reason he lost his job was because Eddie took away his gun and forbade him to work in any job that required him to use it.

(As Will later pointed out, that was daft because if he had intended to kill himself, he would simply have found some other way to do it.)

Didn't Shula say she was no longer aiming to be a vicar? That she's just generally doing Christian Good Works wherever her calling takes her?

I think she's got a job as a community support worker, or similar, in a CofE scheme in the North-East of England. However, I don't remember her saying she was giving up on getting ordained. I may have missed it, though. She was never great with exams. It was a great struggle for her to get through whatever exams she took when she worked for Rodway's.

New thread will be needed fairly soon, I see. Any thoughts on title? The next thread may or may not cover a funeral.

Brad went to Oxford not Reading

I stand suitably corrected.

Ruairi has a car, I think. I don't know if he had it in London.

Julianne listed the nice car he'd got as one of the things he would not be able to afford without her money. The flat, and I think his fancy clothes, also got mentioned by her. And since he has been living in London, I sort of assumed he must be using it there – which is crazy, but this is TA....

We know Ruairi has a car, because he blocked in a client at the vet's with it when he visited Ben at The Stables, and thus met Paul.

He only uses it when it suits the scriptwriter; for instance when he met Julianne in Felpersham recently I think he must have done, because no other means of transport to get there was mentioned, but he didn't have it for the way back because Alice was going to get him back home which presumably meant in her car. But it seems likely he had it with him when he packed his stuff and left to go back to London, because how else did he get away? Not a taxi, and Alice wasn't giving him a lift anywhere.

In fact in order to get to Ambridge impulsively after the row with Julianne he must have used the car, because there was no mention of Alice having fetched him from the railway station. I'm slightly surprised he didn't think better of going to Alice during the two-and-a-half hour at least drive, really; he'd have time to cool down and think a bit rather than acting entirely on impulse.