Archers thread #154: Cider with Fat Rosie, Meadow Rise to Candleford or The Darling Horrobins of September? Get your rural saga fix – 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 be euphoric about getting a job in an abattoir, 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 https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/radio_addicts/4888492-the-archers-spoilers-thread-8-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.)

Thanks for the thread title suggestions. @HumanWetWipe came up with Cider with Fat Rosie and @BeardieWeirdie thought up Meadow Rise to Candleford. I wish I could have put in the Line of Duty mashups from the end of the last thread. Another time.

Heading for a ferry shortly, so nothing more from me for now. Over to you!

Haha my neighbour popped round when I was halfway through writing that post and have cross-posted with lots of you. Yes, Jazzer should have at least asked Jim.

All this talk of piano players - how long has Jim been learning from Kiki?

@faffadoodledo , I remember that too.

@TherapistInATabard , I don't think that Jim and Hannah would be that good a match either.

I confess to having downloaded LRTC, just cause I thought it sounded quite interesting, but I'm finding the constant 'product placement' a bit agonising too. It just seems so shoehorned! Speaking of organ scholars, has Ambridge ever had a choral society, other than the rival Christmas choirs a year or two ago? Those really annoyed me, because the results sounded nothing like small town choral groups normally do!

@Fink
I come from Sarf London, but moved to the NE for University, and stayed. The village I referred to is in the NE. There were toddler groups, table top sales, dog shows, leek shows, allotment open days, little craft fairs, there were amateur drama groups doing annual pantomimes in the next slightly bigger village.

People already knew each other as they'd been to school together. But I found a welcome. It's where I had my DC, and raised them I had a lovely next-door neighbour, who became a friend and was a god-send. Especially as the DC's GPs lived 250-300 miles away from us, so couldn't help with child care etc.

If I hadn't moved, there would have been lots of the things I listed available where I come from, in Sarf London, organised by local people for local people. But perhaps not as many.

@Alwaysdieting A single riding lesson doesn't cost much, especially if it's to celebrate a 60th birthday!

I have decided to allow the SWs dramatic licence in the depicition of the riding lesson. Because a) despite the riding stables having featured since the year dot, it was only about the 2nd riding lesson I've ever heard portrayed on TA, and b) it managed to get over the joy that riding a horse can give. And what a joy it can be! (nearest I can find to an emoticon for Joy)

I have never heard of shared readings actually happening in real life. But lo and behold one of my favourite poets, Liz berry was sharing a regular one that happens in a library - weekly it seems! I love this idea!

@SequentialAnalyst I am a riding instructor. Any decent riding school would use a balance strap attached to the saddle or a neck strap for a beginner to hold onto. We wouldn't encourage a beginner rider to hold on the horses mane.
That lesson was awful.

@Bigbadmama see my post yesterday at 20.05. I agree with you!

For decades, I have hoped that the riding school would feature in a similar way to the farms and other businesses. Shula was good enough to have an evaluation by a famous female RL showjumper, IIRC, though obviously it was foregone conclusion that she wasn't quite good enough Things have improved a little over the years, and there's been a lot more riding. But this has been coupled with ignorant technical mistakes, such as when Rob did whatever he did at the hunt - grabbed Shula's reins or something (see Archers thread passim.) You'd think one of the SWs might have a horsey friend, or even a riding instructor friend whose brains they could pick, or research the subject some other way...

I am 5 years younger than Lilian. I can't tell you how jealous I was of Lilian when I heard her on the radio getting Pensioner as a ?Christmas? present, when she was about 14. IIRC there was some soapy rubbish of would-she/wouldn't-she get her heart's desire - plus ca change

Any info on this, @AskingQuestionsAllTheTime ?

It's not as if nothing ever happens at a riding school.
The one I went to lost one of its horses in a thunderstorm, struck dead by a stroke of lightning in its home field

SequentialAnalyst
Any info on this, @AskingQuestionsAllTheTime ?

Only that Lilian was given a pony by Peggy and Jack in 1961. Details escape me now.

What happened at the hunt in January, 2016, was that Shula had gone off to it on a horse with a broken bridle and didn't notice this until she was at the meet and the horse started playing up. (The woman was never fit to run a riding stable if she could manage to miss something that basic.) So Rob insisted on leading the animal home for her as though she were not capable of leading a horse for herself. (Again, I thought she was supposed to run a riding stable.)

But wasn't there something about them calling the bridle by the wrong name or something? I'm sure it was discussed on this thread...

Don't blame Shula! She's an expert rider! At the time, she ran a successful riding school! She rode to hounds! She wouldn't tack up wrong, any more than @Bigbadmama would!

blame the SWs

The writer appeared to be a bit confused about the bridle. He called it the harness, for a start, rather than tack... That was something I didn't think Shula would have done, but I wouldn't like to be certain about Paul Brodrick, who wrote that episode.

just cross posted because was editing

Paul Brodrick could have asked someone, looked in a dictionary, or maybe done a simple Google search. There was no excuse for getting it wrong in this day and age.

Trouble is, that sort of thing is like getting wrong the stuff that the archivist used to catch before broadcast: you only look it up if you know that you need to look it up. If you think you know it, then you won't bother. The archivist would catch Phil tucking into Stilton, because she would know that he couldn't abide blue cheese; anyone else could theoretically have a look in the digitised archive and discover that, but wouldn't necessarily realise that they needed to. (Unknown unknowns!)

If you think harness is always what a horse wears, you won't check.

Then you have no business writing about tack.
It's called doing research. It's what professional writers do, I thought?

And to assume you know better than fictional Shula about horses is sheer arrogance on the part of the SWs. After all it was SWs who wrote her in the first place.

PS Agree with you 100% about the archivist .
Novelists make notes about their characters while they are writing their novels. Then sub-editors scrutinise the manuscript for bloopers.
What is a script editor for, if not to scrutinise and harmonise scripts from different SWs?
There is some slack cut - dramatic licence. After all, in works of art it is true that there are no co-incidences. But sometimes the pattern is more obvious. And a certain number of co-incidences are allowable in fiction, but not too many.

Sorry #Fink. why do you keep saying sarf London. I come from South London and I find the way you put it a but jarring.Not everyone in South London talks like a cockney.

Anyone who thinks a terrified 60 year old on a horse for the first time should break into a canter needs their head examining. Like saying to a novice hill walker we'll tackle Everest next week 🙄.

…And then to compound it by not having Susan break her scrawny, gossiping neck. We wiz robbed.

when I was small I went to the stables with my horsey friend ti try riding. She went first and the horse bent to eat something (maybe) and she fell off the front onto her head. She was fine but it terrified me and I have never been on a horse!

on village life, my mum grew up in a village (abroad admittedly) and the stories there were quite fantastical at times. But there are always long running ‘stories’ - the functioning alcoholic, the non- functioning alcoholic, the long running affair that everyone knows about but they don’t talk about, the murky business dealings, etc etc. On top of that the village events, the crumbling church, the houses being bought as second homes, the airbnbs.

There are so many ‘real’ stories that can be told that are interesting and not ridiculous. And they have done some of those so well - but it is all undone by the unnecessary dramatic and a pip pregnancy would fall into that bucket.

That lesson was a terrible embarrassment but so often TA gets terminology etc completely wrong with anything equine.

Novelists make notes about their characters while they are writing their novels. Then sub-editors scrutinise the manuscript for bloopers.

The poor continuity between writers each week always makes me think of that old game Consequences when you used to sit in a circle and write the line to a story, fold it over and then pass it on to the next person - resulting in hilarious consequences when the final story was finally revealed!

Just listening to the bits of the film that I missed last week. The ghastly Pip's repeated line about 'this is all quite new' really doesn’t sit well with 'hey, let’s tell Rosie about us!'

I know we've been through this but it’s still bugging me. What on earth is wrong with Stella just being around and spending time with them? Why does a 5 year-old have to be 'told' the exact status of their (highly unconvincing) relationship? <stomps off muttering>