Archers thread #169: Denise rocks the boat in more than one way! Will Chris find a message in a cider bottle? 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 have liked to have Harrison's behbe, 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/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.)

Thanks to @LikeTalkingToLassie and @BrightYellowDaffodil for title inspiration. Is this the end for Denise and John? It does seem odd to introduce John now if he's going to disappear. He has a lovely voice.

Over to you!

Me too, same pattern as hilarious.

I have a very clear memory of being asked to write an essay on the the following: "Jane Austen's later novels are marred by a sense of vicarious self-pity. Discuss." It was definitely pronounced 'vick' by my tutor. (It may be the first time I had encountered the word.)

Has your former tutor written any novels of note? @Godesstobe

If he or she had written a novel worthy even to be mentioned in the same breath as Persuasion, I'll be very impressed! My favourite Jane Austen novel, and a strong contender for my favourite novel full stop. Vicarious self-pity indeed!

Interesting: https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/vicarious-liability
seems to suggest that vickarious is UK, vykarious is US.

I am still trying to work out how it not flowing well with a hard k comes into it. Each of those (and every other I have ever heard or can find) has a hard c, as in "cat". It's hard to imagine it said with a soft c as in "cider".

The c is hard because there is nothing to soften it. It stays a 'ck' sound as it is followed by an a.

Indeed. But even then it is not a hard k, especially since there is no k in the word vicarious; and what would a soft k be like?

Or was the suggestion that it is properly pronounced vysarious? That really doesn't seem right.

Or was the suggestion that it is properly pronounced vysarious? That really doesn't seem right.
Would I do that?
Vic and Vik sound the same to me.

English pronunciation usually means that a c needs an e, i, or y after it to make it soft.
There isn't anything IMO to make vicarious into vyke-arious, but cervical is usually cerv-ike-al, not cer-vick-al.

I don't know why caecum is 'seecum', other than it just is. There are other anatomical terms that seem to be pronounced unintuitively.

I say 'vic-air-yus-ly' but the 'vyke-air-yusly' pronunciation seems more prevalent.

I fail to get worked up about it.
Necessarily seems more logical if pronounced the Scottish way, but I say 'ness-ess-errily' not ness-ess-arrily'.

'Di-sect' and 'unpresidented' make me

I opened a cookbook this morning only to find someone being described as 'not phased by'. The book is in the charity shop bag. If they can't be arsed to check the English, I am not going to trust the recipes.

Vinegar-ette can go fuck itself.

I hate that orange monster.

Part of the problem with Paul is that he’s not acted very well, to be frank.

The very first episode I remember listening to was the one when Debbie confronted Brian after having worked out Ruari was his. I lived in France at the time and R4 was the only English language station I was able to pick up.

No I was suggesting a k sound was introduced into the word, and k is a hard sound,
not flowing as softly as the only pronunciation I have ever previously used or heard

I am saying the pronunciation from all my experience is circa vi care e ous

interestingly (to me at least) certain Americanisms are more true to original English than current English, as less adulterated

What a time to start listening! Although it would have been even better to start a couple of years earlier, when the affair first got under way.

I've learnt something today. I thought it was vinegarette and have always read it as that. Turns out it's not. Thanks all.

Fallon needs to bin off the tea room because Natasha is an awful human.

I know everyone here hates Natasha but I don't mind her myself. She didn't start life with many advantages but she has made a successful business and seems to have a happy marriage and family life. Yes she is bossy and lacks self awareness but no more so than Kate or Brian, for example, but her heart is basically in the right place. And I much prefer her attitude to life to Emma's resentful whining and bitching or Fallon's spineless passivity.

I don't think setting the essay question suggested in any way that my tutor thought he could write better novels than Jane Austen. It was just a useful starting point for considering some of the very real differences between Pride and Prejudice on the one hand and Persuasion and Mansfield Park on the other. I remember it so clearly more than 50 years later because it was such an interesting essay to write and enhanced my understanding of Jane Austen's writing.
For what it's worth I love Persuasion but I have never enjoyed Mansfield Park.

And I much prefer her attitude to life to Emma's resentful whining and bitching or Fallon's spineless passivity.

A fair point, @Godesstobe. On the debit side, though, one must remember that she has admitted TomTit to the gene pool, twice over. Once the twins are eliminated - stifled in their teeny polytunnels, perhaps - I’ll reconsider her application

I've read both but barely remember Mansfield Park. Persuasion isn't a favourite as I never cared about any of the characters other than Anne and Mrs Smith, but I can appreciate it.

I like Natasha.

I didn't study English Literature beyond GCSE. I didn't enjoy it. The Shakespeare bit was good. I have no idea how teachers and a curriculum could make English Literature so unappealing. I've always loved reading.

Yes that's definitely in the minus column!

It should be a criminal offence to teach English (or Maths) badly 😁

Maths was fine, we were streamed.

English was quite poor in secondary school, but I think it depended on who taught you, and age group was probably a factor. My group had a succession of supply teachers. It was not streamed.

My chief memory of Eng Lit was at a school which shall remain nameless. Having suffered Wordsworth for O Level at my previous school, I moved exam boards only to have him re-inflicted at A Level. I was called to the Headmaster's Office about an essay I had written: it had been passed on to him by an irate (very old, male, mad) teacher. "Okay, Gonners," he said, "this is very funny and I thoroughly enjoyed it. But the examiners won't agree, so I'd strongly recommend that you avoid the Wordsworth questions in the exam." And then he gave me a copy of this sonnet, by J K Stephen:

Two voices are there: one is of the deep;
It learns the storm-cloud's thunderous melody,
Now roars, now murmurs with the changing sea,
Now bird-like pipes, now closes soft in sleep:
And one is of an old half-witted sheep
Which bleats articulate monotony,
And indicates that two and one are three,
That grass is green, lakes damp, and mountains steep:
And, Wordsworth, both are thine: at certain times
Forth from the heart of thy melodious rhymes,
The form and pressure of high thoughts will burst:
At other times--good Lord! I'd rather be
Quite unacquainted with the ABC
Than write such hopeless rubbish as thy worst.

I always liked English literature at O and A level. I still love Jane Austen, Chaucer and Shakespeare, they didn't manage to put me off.

I have never come across that poem before. It's absolutely brilliant and so true. Thank you for sharing it.

That is in a wonderful book called The Routledge Anthology of Poets on Poets: Poetic Responses to English Poetry from Chaucer to Yeats by David Hopkins, which contains more gems, like Rochester and Byron being rude in rhyme about all sorts of other rhymster people and everyone picking on the Lakeland Poets. But my copy seems to have gone walkabout drat it. I do recommend it if you like that sort of verse, though.