Archers thread #166: Choppy waters in Ambridge! Look out for the red flags and 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 to be married to Harrison, 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.)

Another thread started in great haste, mid-packing! Over to you.

I've been away/ill/not listening and am now on an epic catch up skipping through the boring bits. I've also missed the discussion around Harrison and fallon but I'm finding it utterly horrible. For some reason Harrison is really triggering me. I'm trying to feel sorry for him but I can't.

Now this is weird: my Ocado delivery came a couple of hours ago and, for the first time ever, two of the items I had paid for were missing when I unpacked - two pieces of dry aged rump steak. I have reported it and assume I will get a refund. Art (or at least TA) imitating life or what?

I have been trying to work out how this might have happened. The most obvious answer is that the delivery driver fancied a bit of steak tonight and arranged for my steak to 'accidentally' fall out of my order and into his own bag. I hope not as he seemed like a nice man. But I am worried he - like Jason - will get the blame even if it was nothing to do with him.

The robots ate them, @Godesstobe …

Don’t use ocado anymore but when I did I used to often have an extra item that had either been put in my bags incorrectly or had fallen in(2 grim bottles of aloe Vera juice once). Driver said as I had taken them in he wasn’t allowed to take them back.

also stuff missing but was easy enough to claim back - just really annoying.

so beryl at number 38 is having rump steak for tea

Just had to look up aloe Vera juice 😐

It isn’t nice. And it is extremely expensive.

we tried one bottle and gave the other to the school bottle tombola

I am feeling hard done by now. I have used Ocado for years and have never had any extra items delivered. I am always lovely to the delivery drivers too.
During the first pandemic lockdown (when Ocado was still working with Waitrose) I was struggling to find any supermarket to deliver to my elderly mother on the other side of the country as they weren't accepting any new customers. I mentioned this to my Ocado driver and he said airily, "Oh just put in an Ocado order for your mother's address and they will assume it's your second home." By the end of the lockdown I had acquired 3 more second homes as my mother's friends asked me to do the same for them. As this was never queried I assumed it was normal for Ocado customers.

It’s all very well getting free stuff when it’s good but it was invariably either gross or something we just wouldn’t eat.

Ocado was on my boycott list so I don’t use them anymore!

why were you boycotting Ocado?

I did the exact same for my mother during Covid. I had a delivery a week with Ocado so I sent one to her and then one to me the next week.

Boycotted due to the guy who started it being a knob and there was something with advertising

Years ago I got two random steaks in my Ocado delivery. Not much good to a pair of vegetarians! I gave them away. I do sometimes get Star Reviewer vouchers.

I think the guy who started Ocado was a contemporary of George Osborne at school.

20+ years with Ocado here. We have occasionally had extra things, but not for ages now. Very occasionally things are missing. On one notable occasion the driver told me very apologetically that he had left his van unlocked while he made the delivery before ours and someone helped themselves to a fair amount of stuff before he got back. About half our delivery had gone. Bit irritating, but it's very easy to claim a refund.

I think of code switching as changing a style of language or vocabulary in different settings rather than completely disguising a regional accent. My colleague’s behaviour baffles me because a)I think the Scottish accent is lovely so no idea why he adopts a completely different one at work and b) we work in the Tech industry with people from almost every corner of the globe. There are dozens of different accents in the office so it’s not as if he would stand out.

I think of code switching as changing a style of language or vocabulary in different settings rather than completely disguising a regional accent.

But code switching also includes changing languages in multilingual environments, e.g. English in the office, German at home, so it definitely includes changing regional accents - and related to that is dialect levelling.

I work in tech - I did modify my accent, because if I went full Dorset, my Czech and German colleagues struggled (Dutch less so.) I once had an American translate between me and a Hong Konger (to be fair, it was about 3am UK time on a call-out - even i wasn't sure what I was saying.) If I used dialect words, even my English colleagues would be lost.

As a child I spoke standard English at home but Norfolk, sometimes quite broad Norfolk, with the nanny and friends on the street. Having moved to Ireland with my Irish parents in my early teens my accent has gradually become less English (what my poor father referred to slightly despairingly as 'Home Counties') and now, after 75% of my life has been spent in Ireland I think I sound fairly neutral, though many Irish people (and a Romanian woman on the checkout in Lidl) still hear it as English, whereas English people hear me as Irish.

I often wonder if I went back to Norwich would the Norfolk speech re-emerge?

My sister and I were army brats with a South Walean dad and a North Notts mother, both of whom had been away for so long that they spoke bog-standard neutral English. But when we went to Wales or the ma's family, they reverted. Sis and I simply adopted whatever accent was dominant at school (because it's safer) but spoke something like non-posh RP at home and when we left home and lived in London. Sis then married a Kiwi and moved to NZ, where she very soon passed for a local, though if I speak to her on the phone she reverts within about 2 minutes.

STRANGLES!!!

Watch out, Bartleby!

Lowfield, Wednesday 25th June, 2014
Alistair has discovered a case of Strangles in a horse that arrived only a few days ago - so he must have brought the infection in. Shula does not relish telling the owner - one of her more difficult clients. (The horse's name was Catesby.)

As far as I remember no precautions whatever were taken, no other horse caught the disease, and it was never mentioned again except by Jill the following month as having given Shula something other than Dan to worry about.

Yep, seems likely. Though the vaccination record wouldn't have contained any information about Strangles, either, so Alice shouldn't get blamed. Although his passport should technically be at the yard, I assume it's in his owner's glove box, as seems to happen to most horse passports...but yet another incident of Lilian sounding like a complete novice, just so Jakob could do his explainy bit. That could have been written more convincingly.

Oh my god the topical inserts are so clunky

so what’s wrong with cinnamon?

Cross post! Thanks!

So, farewell then
Champion, the Unloved Pony.
You died of strangles,
And Martha had to pretend to care.
Spoiler: she didn't.

I have one son who speaks RP and one Yorkshire.

And two friends with identical accents - one is Yorkshire, moved to Birmingham, the other is Birmingham, moved to Yorkshire.