Archers thread #152: The Dog Days of Summer in Ambridge! Rabid rants, tearoom dogfight, Bully Dog George gets it all on camera. Is Lone wolf Rob waiting in the woods? 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. Most of us are posting tongue in cheek a lot of the time, so don't worry about revealing that you'd love a son like George, 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.)

Starting this new thread a bit early, as we're near the end of the last thread and I'm out all day today. As last night's episode was a banger, I thought I'd better ensure discussion can continue seamlessly!

The original idea for a dog theme for this thread came from the death of poor Weaver. RIP. The Dog Days of summer are associated with storms and the silly season, so quite appropriate for The Archers at the moment! They may technically be over now, as it's all to do with the heliacal rising of the Dog Star, Sirius (no, me neither), but apparently the Anglo-Saxons considered they lasted into September (thank you, Wikipedia), so that will do for me.

So - what next for Helen, Henry and Jack? Surely even the Bridge Farm Archers will see that she needs professional help? After her outburst the other night they might finally grasp that Henry could do with some too. All very grim.

On the lighter side (perhaps), whither Pip and Stella?

Over to you!

All those older people in Ambridge working into their 70s seems very odd to me. How old would Tiger be by now, even if he came back?

Thanks to the SWs for not making us worry about Mia getting pregnant. OTOH what about Pip? (Please no!)

Matt is 76. Bert is probably a bit older, but we don't know his date of birth, as far as I'm aware.

People vary so much in whether they want and/or need to work into their 70s. My jobshare partner retired from one job at 60, got bored, and returned to a part-time job for a further dozen years or so. Even then she was in two minds about giving up work.

I read a book “inspired” by The Archers “Ambridge at War” or some such and Bert was a naughty little lad getting up to some sort of scrape so let’s say born in 1933 making him 90 now.

I couldn’t finish the book as it had such gems as Dan and Doris Archer being invited to a dinner party at Lower Loxley by the Pargetters, and they walked across their fields to get there. You don’t hear of people walking there nowadays (how do Brad and Chelsea get there for their jobs now??)

Was it Bert Fry or Bert Horrobin, though?

Anyone remember Jethro? Was he Clarrie' father? I think we heard other Brookfield farm labourers as well, does anyone remember/know?

Walking the two miles across the fields to Lower Loxley Hall would be perfectly reasonable in war-time when petrol was rationed, even if they had a car which they probably didn't. There is a river in the way, and having to cross that by a bridge would add several hundred yards to their journey, but it is still a distance nobody would have thought twice about in the 1940s.

Why on earth the Pargetters would have been inviting a tenant farming couple to a dinner party is a different matter. Why did they?

Brad bicycles there. I expect Chelsea does too; she has a bicycle.

Clarrie was Jethro Larkin's daughter; her parents had left Ambridge for Dorset, and only came back to look after Jethro's parents when Clarrie was twelve.

Simon Cooper worked at Brookfield until 1956 when he had to retire because of back trouble and Ned Larkin took over from him. Ned retired in 1967 and Jethro got his job. And Jethro Larkin and Neil Carter were a double act for many years.

There was also Bert Fry, more recently.

I haven't seen that book. If the dinner party was during the war, that strikes me as a massive anachronism. How could you have a dinner party during rationing? However, I could well believe that the Pargetters would know the Archers and be on hobnobbing terms, to an extent. Dan was a respected tenant farmer and probably had a role in the Home Guard or some other respectable voluntary role. Doris could plausibly have been involved in some kind of voluntary war work to do with evacuees or entertaining the troops or knitting for the troops. The Pargetter elders (Nigel's grandparents?) probably also did their bit during the war. I believe one of the lasting changes from World War II was that the classes mixed a bit more than previously, and of course there was a surge in social mobility for a while (now in reverse, sadly).

It was Bert Horribin not Bert Fry

BBC Radio 4 - The Archers - Ambridge at War: the first of a trilogy of prequels to The Archers
I've seen it and decided against buying it. It was in a 4 for £1 shelf at a charity shop.
The Archers: Ambridge At War by Catherine Miller | Waterstones.

The people who knew Dan and Doris Archer would have been the squirearchy in their own village, not those in a different village, though. (Doris had been the ladies' maid of Lettie Lawson-Hope, the Squire's wife, before she married Dan, so yes, that family of landed gentry did know her; Lettie left Glebe Cottage to Doris when she died.) Lower Loxley Hall is not in Ambridge!

The Pargetters at that time were indeed Nigel's grandparents, according to the blog post about that book on the BBC website. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/Cn9B0T92MTNchvzrckvdZG/ambridge-at-war-the-first-of-a-trilogy-of-prequels-to-the-archers

(I don't think Catherine Miller had read the late 1980s trilogy of prequels to The Archers by Jock Gallagher. It doesn't sound as if she had.)

One of the most senior people in my department was in his late 70s. Not that uncommon for lawyers and judges (or people previously in those professions).

Not sure I’ll be up for working contiously to that age…but I can certainly imagine doing the same as your job share partner, retiring for a while then getting bored and coming back!

(I hope you’re doing well, @Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g )

I think the difference about Ambridge and senior workers is that in RL we often know one, in TA it's the norm.

Thinking of TA past, my late husband, who was raised on TA would often intone, apropos of nothing at all: "If they be Diddakoi, Oi'll take my brush to them" but I can't remember which character said this. It was a woman I think. Also, who had owned the dog called Captain?

Captain was Jack Woolley's dog.

That sounds like Martha Woodford, who kept the village shop. Widow of Joby, I believe. She used to keep the telephone box on the green neat and tidy and put flowers in it, IIRC (not guaranteed).

Captain was Jack Woolley's dog. There was a statue to him in the gardens at Grey Gables, wasn't there?

(Thanks for asking, @AngryBirdsNoMore - we're doing not badly. Still a couple of weeks till the funeral. I will go home for a few days midweek and return next week.)

Ah so we did get a compare and contrast this week, but it turned out to be “how to do a first shag properly and respectfully” with Brad and Mia unexpectedly coming out ahead of Pip and Stella.

Oh dear, looks like Helen is starting to fall back into anorexia and over exercising again. She really seems to have no resilience at all. I feel sorry for Tony and Pat, losing John and then all the worries over the years over Helen's endless problems. I'm beginning to think that the stress and worry over her will be the death of one of her parents, probably Tony.

As much as I dislike Helen I don't agree that a relapse of anorexia signifies a lack of resilience. She will have been trying to cope with the distress and trauma using healthy coping mechanisms, and it's not a rational active choice to revert to ED behaviours. Her brain will be using it as a protective effort and right now it will feel like it's working. I'm speaking from lived experience unfortunately and this is probably not a storyline I'm going to be able listen to. I'm recovered now but well aware that I'm always susceptible to relapse in times of stress :(
Thankful for this group so I can keep up to date with what's going on without having to listen to Helen go through this.
Brad and Mia are so sweet! 😊 Yes they are showing Pip exactly how mature adults should go about it!

She really seems to have no resilience at all.

She’s alive! Dead brother, dead (separated) partner, domestic torture, giving birth while imprisoned, trial, constant threat … What proportion of people experiencing all that might have thrown up their hands and walked into the sea?

I think she’s earned her resilience badge.

(But anyway, #fiction …)

They did have dinner parties in the war. Especially if they had access to game, which was unrationed. It was harder later on, as more foods fell into the rationed category or just became scarce, onions, for instance.

Unusual to cook beef bourguignon in August/very early September. Even if it is someone’s favourite…

Helen’s ED must definitely be back. NO ONE would ever give a BB away.

Unless of course she's been taking inspo from the Erin Patterson beef-bourguignon-with-added-death-caps case.... Maybe she's trying to off the recipients 😱

Unusual to cook beef bourguignon in August/very early September. Even if it is someone’s favourite…

Why?

We've been having all the winter food this summer because it's been SO miserable!! I'd have smashed a BB down and asked for mash and dumplings alongside a week ago....

As the mother of a am daughter with an ED alarm bells would have been ringing for weeks.