Archers thread #162: ‘This is like talking to Lassie’ – how right you are, Fallon! 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 think cowhide-covered walls are a great idea for a cafe with vegan and vegetarian customers, 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.)

Title comes from one of the better scripted conversations of recent weeks, when Fallon said ”Harrison, this is like talking to Lassie! Just TELL ME”. So true of so many conversations on TA where you just want to shake them and yell 'Just TELL US, and quickly, so you don't get interrupted before you can say the important bit', but of course they rarely do and days pass before the conversation resumes. @TheBell suggested putting it in the title, so thanks for that.

@OverArmour had a great if more obscure idea, paying tribute to a Peter Greenaway film: The Policeman, The Drunk, The Vet and his Lover. That will do very well as a starting point for the new thread. Will Alistair leave? Will Denise tell John she's leaving him? Will Paul learn to be less noisy? Do any of us care?

I do care a little about Harrison and Fallon. I want Harrison to get a grip and realise he needs a paying job more than the captaincy of the cricket team. I don't care at all about Harry but I think he's been brought in purely as a plot device so with any luck we can all forget about him very soon.

Over to you!

Try. DS1 seems to be unaware of the future tense, it's only a matter of time before he loses the past too.

I hate it when people turn up unannounced, and have on occasion refused to let them in - one was a sort of friend asking if they could stay the night instead of forking out for a hotel, another two were on the way somewhere and wanted to use my bathroom.
AIBU? No of course not, that's how it's supposed to work.

With the amount of rain we've had down in the west-country this year, I imagine that the hitherto un-navigable Am burst its banks 5 months ago and Rex is either off the coast of Ireland or heading towards Bishops Rock lighthouse!

Given how much time he used to spend looking after Rosie it seems odd that he doesn't even get a mention.

Me too. My very lovely friend has had to stop seeing one of her grown up sons because he's an alcoholic. I've know her 20 years so I was there the many times he trashed her house, stole from her and assaulted her. More recent friends say what Alice said though 'I could never do that to my child' which is just laughable. They've never been treated like that by their child across the course of a decade of trying to help them.

My friend knows she will get a call one day to say he's drank himself to death. I agree the timeline is all off with the enthusiastic lunch and the seemingly recent eventing career but I was still moved.

Aside from that I thought it was convincing how Harry put the moves on Alice and I think we will see her relapse. Jim's words in the shop about what a wonderful job she is doing were too specific for it not to be about to implode.

Another site several of us here posted on (deliberately not naming it), which was also used by at least one senior TA writer, had two members (maybe others) with alcoholic family members who died after years of discussion about that could be done to help them (at first) and later to help their extended families (as the reality of how hopeless it was became apparent).

Sad, and heartbreaking, but I'll be glad if they have a more realistic story than some of the ones in recent decades. Has anyone died from alcohol in TA since Jack Archer?

Did he suffer a fatal fall in the nursing home / rehab place he’d been sent to? (I may be mis-remembering a paragraph from my vast library on Ambridge …)

I can't remember the details (it was in the first few weeks of my TA listening) but it was clearly understood as being something that was going to happen eventually because of the drink, and also a massive relief. I was barely a teenager then, and I'm still listening! Go figure.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thearchers/entries/694219a1-c0d5-3873-a42f-228ea72f4ab7

Great post @LillianGish - I feel as if they think Alice has got off a bit lightly so they’ll write a really gruesome alcoholism story for ‘balance’.

Alice is an idiot if she does anything other than point Harry in the direction of AA (other organisations are available) and wash her hands of him.

Mind you, I think Alice is an idiot, so …

I like Alice and I think she got let off lightly because she needs to be the sensible Aldridge matriarch now we no longer have the wonderful JennyDarling.
Debbie is unlikely to come back and Kate is too 'Kate'.

I hope that Brine and Kate will talk some sense into Alice regarding Harry, or that Chris will.

It’s not that I don’t think it’s believable, more that I just don’t fancy listening to it. It’s a traumatic storyline that I don’t feel any affinity to, if that makes sense. And the repetitive elements irritate me.

I agree.

It’s a SL where I hope he dies pretty quickly to be short of him. Don’t really want a big fallout between Alice and Chris either.

did Alice drunkenly make a pass at Harrison once?

LikeTalkingToLassie
Are the cowskins still in Te Rum?

No; having been put up on 10th March and 12th March, they were taken down on 15th March, after Tony asked Fallon and Emma how the customers liked them and they truthfully told him the customers didn't like them at all. He was very cast down about it, but decided to put the hides on his shed floor for a bit of warmth in the winter.

She did. Harry will be in for a while as will Eve - why else bring them in - but it will be drama and not forever. The Chris and Alice will-they won't-they will rumble on. As will the Ali-stair and Denise one.

It was Lilian's first husband, Nick, who suffered the fatal fall, I think, in a Canadian hospital at the age of twenty-six: he had an ear infection, lost his balance and fell down some stairs. (When TA was no longer being broadcast to Canada they no longer needed a token Canadian in the cast so he was given the old heave ho.)

Jack Archer died in a nursing home in Scotland at forty-nine, very much as expected after his liver packed up, not needing a fall to dispose of him.

I am "enjoying" the Alice/Harry SL. I have long-term personal experience of a family member with alcoholism and I thought the scene with Harry's mother was very believable and moving. In RL Alice would almost certainly relapse now and lose access to Martha, but I think the SWs like her too much to let that happen unfortunately. (I don't like Alice myself so I'd prefer to see a bit of realism here.)

That said, I found the idea that Alice would turn up at Eve's house very unrealistic, ditto Alice attending the GP with Harry. Also much too much like the later days of Rob. And I cannot understand why Harry was compelled to say "Alice" every 5 seconds. I suspect it was designed to show how Harry was manipulating Alice by preying on her feelings but just sounded like irritatingly poor writing.

Didn't Mike Tucker have a very short-lived brush with alcoholism years ago (before he became a tree surgeon)? I remember finding it completely unbelievable -
"Mike I think you might be an alcoholic."
"Goodness, thanks for pointing that out. I think you might be right. I'll stop now and we will never mention it again."
As I say I have personal experience of this and that's not usually how it works. Harry's family's experience in much more typical imo.

I think I’m just bored with the characters that get the most focus too. And the settings. There’s rarely anything in Grey Gables or Lower Loxley. Home Farm has gone. We don’t hear from the Rewilding project.

Nothing at Brookfield, Berrow or Bridge Farm either.

Yes, I think when the storylines are weird (Jolene), repetitive (Alice), stupid (Bartleby), or just vague (tree surgery) TA can become annoying because I don’t feel invested in what’s happening. Kenton is one of my favourite characters, but the story about Mikey is so silly I find myself not really caring about Kenton’s injuries. The Brian/Miranda story is quite fun because Brian is so wonderful, and I’ll admit to being mildly invested in Harrison’s job (and I think the Fallon and Harrison actors are great together) - so I do enjoy listening - but I feel, in general, that literally anything might happen, which just isn’t how the Archers should be!

So if Harrison is going to carry on being a copper, does that mean he and Fallon aren't going to take over The Bull?

Oh I didn’t read the whole thread but did everyone else enjoy when Emma said she needed to quit her actual job at the Bull in order to concentrate on the job she doesn’t even yet have the money to train for?!

Yes, that made no sense at all given that she had made it so clear that her quitting was about George.

Am re-reading ‘Busman’s Honeymoon’ for the umpteenth time - this seemed pertinent a propos de Home Farm:

What was a gentleman for, except to take your difficulties to? Why, look at the old squire and his lady, when Kirk was a lad—everybody in and out of the big house all day with their troubles. That sort was dying out, more's the pity. Nobody could go to this new man that had the place now—for one thing, half the time he wasn't there …

Just listening to the omnibus

firstly, Harry blaming the breakdown of his relationship on increased drinking was sheer manipulation as he was getting rat arsed before the split

secondly, Alice turning up to see Eve was outrageous. Eve’s side of the conversation was moving but I’m fed up with the SL. And how patronising is Alice!!! Shows she is not as far through her recovery as she thinks she is.

Lillian and Justin arguing was dull as well. I really couldn’t care less about this stupid little love square.

Fallons delivery was really odd through that scene. Why on earth would Fallon or Harrison not say that actually he was interrupting and could this be dealt with on Monday morning. As a police officer Harrison should be used to having to be clear to people. I’m really not sure what the point of that scene was. Are they just trying to shoehorn Robert in as much as possible? Old Robert wouldn’t have been so clueless.

Alice is such an idiot - can she really not see how she’s being manipulated

have zero to say about the bartleby sl 🙄