Archers thread #161: Kenton seems to be getting better, but the storylines aren’t. Discuss The Archers here.

[Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g]

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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 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.)

Well, here we are. I was strongly tempted to go for the dog's dinner, dog/human bullies etc suggestions for the title, but Mere asked if we could not have anything graphic in the thread title, so I've held back. In a couple of weeks when this thead is nearing its end the attack may all be a distant memory, anyway.

Goodness knows what's in store for us now. Kenton seems likely to have PTSD, not surprisingly. Surely we must soon find out why HARRY talks so. Unconvincingly. Alice! Hello. CHRIS. CHRIS. etc, and also whether he is (as many of us suspect) addicted to opiates and/or up to no good. Too much to hope why nobody in Ambridge horsey circles had ever heard of him until recent weeks.

Over to you!

Not silversmithing, more moulding, by Terry Pratchett
https://noirandchocolate.tumblr.com/post/635247930791559168/michael-ayrton-wrote-a-book-called-the-maze-maker

You’re with @TottersBlanklyIntoBimboCore then, are you?

No, nowhere that upbeat! This was on the fourth floor of a sweat-shop full of rodents, quite close to Hatton Garden really if you squinted a little... Fourth floors were cheap to rent in those parts, or at least they used to be. (And hauling the stump of a large tree up there for raising the silver in hollows carved into it had happened before my time, thank goodness; there was of course no lift...)

If you want a daft smithing story, I can offer the time my Master told me to go over to the suppliers (on the far side of the Euston Road) and fetch a package for him. I did as I was told and brought it back by tube, only discovering afterwards that it was a well-wrapped jar of concentrated nitric acid which I had no business taking on public transport at all.... I was young and foolish in those days.

That is pretty cool though!

I enjoyed an uneventful Sunday in Ambridge. Saying again that Fallon and Harrison are being well drawn as a couple at the moment.

I used to go by the silver building a lot in Chancery lane, it used to have a big silver galleon in the window that I fell in love with. Must have been worth a mint. Yep it looks like Fallon might have a baby accident. Whoops. Harrison will be in a lot of trouble because Alice will tell Harry it was him that had told her. Then she will say sorry to Harrison saying it just slipped out. Then get on with her selfish life while Harrisons police job will be finished.
Hope they move the Jolene story along bit fed up with her jumping at any noise. Me 'arty's.

Shiver me timbers

I wonder if some of us passed each other in the street without knowing it, decades ago! I worked in a building that doesn't exist any more on New Fetter Lane in the mid to late 1980s. We used to drink after work in The Printer's Devil on Fetter Lane, opposite the old Mirror Group HQ. Sometimes we heard Robert Maxwell's helicopter landing on the roof. If I fancied getting out of the office at lunchtime, I might have walked up to Hatton Garden. Other days I went over to Lincoln's Inn Fields. Occasionally went with colleagues for lunch or leaving dos to a wine bar on Chancery Lane whose name I forget.

Hope they move the Jolene story along bit fed up with her jumping at any noise - I think that episode was what counts as moving the story along, ensuring Jolene will be too embarrassed to call Harrison next time she hears/sees something odd going on. The Fallon and Harrison love in is also clearly prefacing something - it's the second such scene (in terms of declarations of love) we've had in the last couple of weeks and also the second reminder of their child-free agreement. Not entirely sure what's going happen, but when it does I think we'll all let out a collective "Ah - so that's what that was all about!"

Harry is going to drunkenly run Harrison over and kill him and Fallon is going to regret not having his child

the emphasis on their child free agreement worries me a little and I hope we don’t end up with another unplanned pregnancy

And to add to that, Alice feels really guilty for bringing Harry into their lives and starts drinking again

It’s true the last person to die well before their time in Ambridge was female, and a mother, so perhaps it ought to be a youngish male partner this time. But that’s not the way the dialogue is going - it’s all about how much Harrison adores Fallon, and how he accepts and wants a life with her, without children. Surely those words must come back to bite, in a soap? (How fondly I recall the original Poldark in the 70s, when they put the baby into his arms - and his face when they told him the awful news … If I’m mis-remembering, I don’t want to know!)

(I seem to recall the entire village proclaiming abject love for Nigel in the days leading up to his tumble.)

El Vinos for the wine bar? I once fell down the stairs to the loo there after too much sherry 😂

I thought them going back to bed was supposed to indicate a) the plus sides of their child free life (as they said) and b) their closeness as a couple. I.e. they might not have tonnes in common but they make each other laugh and they still fancy the pants off each other. Sexual chemistry is the basis of their relationship and that clearly works for them for now.

Hmm … @WitcheryDivine, I’d say a married couple being close isn’t a plot point; a married couple who avowedly don’t want children specifically scripted as having sex - is.

@AskingQuestionsAllTheTime … That would be me done with the Tube for all time, if only it weren’t such an excellent place for outfit observation!

Not El Vino's, no. Never brave enough to venture in there! Also put off by their antediluvian stance (at the time) not to allow women to order drinks. Allowed in as guests of male customers only, IIRC.

Not in my day @Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g. Hence my being able to fall down the steps having bought and consumed too much grog 😆

Could it have been Daly's @Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g ? just on the corner opposite the church with shrapnel scars..

Dalys! Now there’s a blast from the past!

No idea about wine bars (too posh for the likes of me); there was a lovely pub just south of Old Street which had good beer and did an all-you-can-eat lunch (effectively that was what it was: they just filled your plate until it didn't quite overflow) for four bob, so that was where we had lunch collectively, as a workshop, if we were going out together. I was once there in the evening, at about seven, and it was as dead as a doornail instead of completely rammed and had one old bloke behind the bar instead of about six young ones, which felt very strange indeed

Can confirm that women very much allowed to order at el Vino these days 😜there’s the bar downstairs on Chancery Lane (perhaps it has a Spanish sounding name) which is a good one for after work drinks.

No, the place I'm thinking of was definitely on the west side of Chancery Lane, southern end, not far from what was then the Public Record Office and is now the library of King's College London. I suspect it's either been demolished or is long gone. You could get salad and quiche there, classic 80s wine bar offering!

I won't be best pleased if either Fallon or Harrison is killed off, especially if it involves an unplanned pregnancy.

Wouldn’t worry too much, @Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g - I was right about Chelsea and the rave but failed on the outcome. And woefully wrong about Jolene being a bigamist - though that would have been way more entertaining. So Fallon and Harrison may both survive!

Breaking news:

https://www.radiotimes.com/tv/soaps/the-archers-recasts-robert-snell-newsupdate/

Ohhh it won’t be the same but I’m glad they’re not widowing Lynda