Archers thread #167: Welcome to Ambridge, the world capital of loose ends! Discuss The Archers here.

[Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g]

Thank you, @PseudoBadger, for kicking off this long, long series of Archers threads.

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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 - BOOP point for him! (See thread for explanation.)

Over to you!

Was that Shula?

I understood that she had it in order to look up a takeaway menu, in his presence - it's obviously something they do quite routinely and there is no issue around boundaries and privacy.

I can't remember but I think it was like @Bruisername said.

Yes. I have no problems with divorce but I do have problems with breaking vows. The hypocrisy of doing that to Alistair while swanning off doing her pseudo-vicaring stuff.

And around keeping off cops' communication devices. I don’t think it would be his work phone.

Yes it’s a bit odd and shows she’s a hypocrite really. Do as I say not as I do type I suppose

I had to do Hardy's poetry for A level. I made the mistake of reading it the book through at one go and ended up incredibly depressed.

Harrison really pushed and pushed at Fallon to say that it wasn’t totally certain she’d have continued with the pregnancy. She was trying to get him to see sense - snap out of it really. He was very overwrought!

Before we got married (CofE wedding)we had to go for a few chats with the vicar to make sure we were compatible or whatever. One topic which was definitely brought up was children and I’m pretty sure that in her spiel at the wedding there was a bit about effectively going forth and multiplying/starting a family.

They didn't have a church wedding, though, did they? Harrison only got christened a couple of years ago.

Were Harrison and Fallon married in church? I know lots of people enjoy the performance, regardless of whether or not they have religious beliefs. But if (like Jazzer & Tracy) they went for a registry office job, Harrison can take droning comfort in the "fact" that it wasn't a proper marriage and God won't smite him if he gets divorced.

<on edit> cross-posting there! I'd forgotten the christening.

I didn’t have a church wedding - I told DH it would be meaningless to me if we did and ultimately I see marriage as a legal contract. Very romantic!!

my parents did and that partly informed my mums full turn from believing tbh!

I had to do Hardy's poetry for A level. I made the mistake of reading it the book through at one go and ended up incredibly depressed.

I had FFTMC for GCSE. I was at school in Dorchester so we'd already done The Mayor of Casterbridge, because Hardy is compulsory there (I guess Yorkshire schoolchildren get a similar diet of the Brontes.) Tess is the most annoying- Angel Clare! And Jude "because we are too menny" is the most depressing. But I don't mind his poetry and can do a fine rendition of The Ruined Maid.

I think we should be grateful that there wasn't s 19th Century author of Borsetshire. Imagine Lynda on on it...

I think Harrison just could not compute abortion, he would see it as murdering his own developing baby. (quite a rabbit hole if you ponder it to the Nth degree.) So in fairness the - getting used to - he asked it more as a question of Fallon, that to him had no other option, not sure if that makes it any better …

H. If it had survived. We’d have got on with it all, wouldn’t we?
We’d have had to make the best of it wouldn’t we?
And you would have got used to the idea wouldn’t you?
What else could we have done?

and so it went on …..

F. I’m sorry but I don’t know where you got that idea from who said I’d have even kept it

H. What what do you mean
F. You know what I mean

H. You’d have had an abortion
F. Well I don’t know

H. You’d have terminated our baby
F. I don’t want children Harrison

H. But that’s err oh (gasping)
F. I’m sorry but you wanted us to be honest didn’t you
H. More gasping - that’s so
F. I’m sorry
H. (Very distressed) I don’t know what to do
F. Please Harrison
H. Oh no I don’t think I can take this, I’m sorry, I’m sorry
F. Harrison
H. No I’m sorry (leaves)
F (in tears) I don’t think I can either

Then start of next episode both all sweetness and light. Shame it was not addressed then. I get the idea Fallon thought if she is just patient with Harrison he will get over it and back to normal.

she obviously raises the issue of potentially not keeping the baby, but still says she doesn’t know when Harrison asks flat out about her having an abortion. But the fact she just stresses she doesn’t want children pretty much gives him his answer.

I think Kristy’s reaction in the last episode when she found out that the thing that made the whole of Fallons birthday awwful, the thing she could not forgive Harrison for was …

F. “He said some prayers with Alan”
K. (Incredulously) “SOME … PRAYERS”?

Made her realise how this thing has blown totally out of proportion all round and they need to address it and move forward one way or another, in the best interests of them both. Let’s hope they do

I […] can do a fine rendition of The Ruined Maid.

So can I , but opportunities to do so are a bit thin on the ground, these days. Perhaps we should brush up on Snoop Dogg as well.

Sometimes, you have to make the opportunity.

I was very proud of the day where I managed to get my colleagues talking about the 6 points of the people's charter... I do not think they appreciated my educational value enough.

Reminds me of Woodrow Wilson’s 14 points (they were quite idealistic really). But I only remember them because of a rag parade float that had a bloke on a chair surround by glasses of beer with a big sign Woodrow Wilson’s 14 pints.

Amazing what sticks in your mind

I've read Tess (or seen the film) at various times in my life from 17 to mid 60s and felt differently about it each time. I think, in a way, Angel Clare was the worse villain than Alec because he was such a spoilt baby and hypocrite. I'm not sure whether the thing with Alec was seduction or rape because she believed he loved her and would elevate her family to their rightful position. I change my mind on each reading but the last film I saw definitely portrayed it as rape. He didn't know she was pregnant but when he found out (too late) tried to make some recompense. It was a cruel time for women.

We did FFTMC for O level, when the film with Julie Christie came out, which was wonderful (In my humble opinion the only Bathsheba). I've read all of Hardy, but Jude was too much. I get so cross with his heroes and heroines, they seem to unreasonably dim at times!
do love his poetry though. And the ruined maid is brilliant, though I have to do a cockney accent! His poem about the aged thrush brings me to tears.
wonder what Lynda would make of a production of The Mayor of Casterbridge, LOl

That was my set book too. I cannot remember one thing about it now.

I remember thinking both love interests were horrid and felt sorry she had to put up with them at all. But also thought it was the equivalent of today’s chick lit (don’t like the term but not sure what else to call it) and I’ve never enjoyed that either. I much prefer 20th century literature though so gcses were a struggle

the poem about the aged thrush is my favourite

Snap though the names Bathsheba Everdene and Gabriel Oak linger (such great names) but little about them.

Also Milton’s Paradise Lost and Thom Gunn and Ted Hughes poems, the only one I recall was a motorcyclist vision of his death. I can clearly see me sat at the desk scribbling against the texts all the hidden meanings we were told, and thinking they are probably making all this up and not what the author was thinking at all.

Bit like decoding the Archers now.

Yes! DD came home the other day complaining about that - why are they spending half an hour deciding why the author chose blue for the dress when he’d probably just seen someone walk past wearing blue

Very true @VoxPop and I am so pleased not to have to try and write about interpreting The Archers. Most of the time I have no idea what the writers intended or if they think they have succeeded!

VoxPop
I can clearly see me sat at the desk scribbling against the texts all the hidden meanings we were told, and thinking they are probably making all this up and not what the author was thinking at all.

When I was seventeen a "creative writing" teacher once used one of my poems (without saying it was mine) to see what the class could get out of it. I was deeply impressed by how erudite and knowledgable and so on I must be, to have written something in so many layers most of which I hadn't even the faintest idea about.

Better yet was the critic in a book of essays about the work of a friend of mine, who went on at some length about how one of her books was derivative of something else – which I, having read both, knew was bollocks anyway: there were no particular similarities between the two texts. The capper for me was when my friend told the writer that she had not in fact read the work she was being accused of plagiarising, and was told that she must have forgotten doing so.

My ds used to be a big reader but he’s very slow. By the time he did his gcses he had stopped reading for pleasure and saw it as a chore as he had to spend all his time reading the set texts and being told what he should be getting out of it.