Archers thread #170: The scriptwriters have cast a Paul on proceedings! 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 like to hear more of Drunk Alistair, 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/radioaddicts/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/radioaddicts/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 @OverArmour for the title. I was tempted to try some sort of complex riff on chocolate names, given @PedantScorner's lightbulb moment - Paul's sister is Cara Mack! - and all the nonsense in last night's episode about coffee creams, but I couldn't be bothered, beyond thinking we must all be Cadbury's Fruit and Nutcases for listening at the moment. Let's hope the SWs take a walk along Quality Street or we'll have to put a Bounty on their heads!

And over to you ...

I usually have Radio 4 on all day in the kitchen and I have developed the ability to tune it out completely if I am not interested in what is on, although I must be listening with some part of my brain as I will tune in momentarily if something interesting is said unexpectedly.

My children don't have this ability to tune in and out and complain bitterly when they visit about some mindless rubbish they think I am listening to, although I am not even aware the radio is on until they mention it. (I do understand how irritating this must be for them but, as I always point out, I am a brilliant parent in all other respects and definitely less irritating than their in-laws.)

@JanetheObscure , shows are usually scripted. Whether or not they were 50 years ago is a different matter.

@Godesstobe , I can zone out too, although if something is too annoying, I'll switch it off.

Are you sure about those claims?

They're brambles where I come from.

Yes we did this too in the 1960s. My brother and I used to travel like this from London to Cornwall if our grandparents were with us. We loved it because we could lie down and sleep if we wanted to.

Did parents genuinely worry less then?

When I was about 8 my best friend and I used to take a picnic and spend the day entirely alone on a river bank at least a quarter of an hour away from home. To get there we used to go down a footpath where there was often a man exposing himself who we referred to as Dirty Dan. All the local children knew about him but I guess none of us ever mentioned him to adults. I look back now and wonder what on earth my mother was thinking when she packed us off in the morning with our egg sandwiches and apple.

Absolutely sure 😃

We had seatbelts in the back of the car. I have no recollection of using them, but I remember asking if we could put them on but my DM said no.

I remember things like 2 children in the passenger seat, and several children in the back seat including one on the parcel shelf.

That wasn't my parents' car. There must have been about 7 or 8 little children in the car. We thought it was brilliant.

I realised that we all listen differently when people got very invested in the exact details of the crash - whereabouts of the cars and their exact positions on the Bridge of Doom, and so on. I was completely unbothered by all of that. But I do have a very clear idea of what all the characters look like and I have to avoid pictures of the actors as they usually don't match my mental pictures at all and my brain starts to feel a bit wobbly with the shock.

For me (from the SE) it is always bramble jelly but always blackberry jam. I wonder why there is that distinction?

Obviously we would not be talking about this or seat belts or "weeds" if TA had a worthwhile episode more than once every few weeks.

Same here @Godesstobe . Both posts.

Well, you won’t. They flower on second year wood and you’re cutting them all off

So I have now been told. If I wanted to lose the use of the steps down into the garden, and the mulberry tree, but gain a few blackberries as a return, I could leave the brambles to flourish unchecked. But on the whole I think I shan't.

Definitely keep the mulberry!

Briars are wild roses. Maybe US doesn’t have wild roses, or maybe they do and brambles are rare so briar patch is the more likely patchy of thorny stuff. But in England, the big patches are brambles, briars tend to be bushes, so it had to be changed

Thanks, that makes sense.

I remember my mum using the word briars, and we did have wild roses in the hedges around us, so I am probably mixing them up. It's funny, when I think of my parents, it seems to be my mother who used more local or old-fashioned words, and yet they grew up within a few miles of each other.

Did parents genuinely worry less then? They had different things to worry about. Polio was still around in the 50s, there were no jabs for “childhood diseases” - you expected all your children to go through measles, mumps and chickenpox and probably whooping cough too. You can only worry about so many things.

it seems harder to bring up children now. How do you cope with long car journeys with children in car seats? How would I ever have had a decent sleep if I hadn’t been able to swaddle DS1 in a shawl and lay him on his side, or drop DS2 in on his front with his knees drawn up to his chest?

I remember primary age me rockpooling alone, with a warning from my mother to keep from the sea edge in case the rescue helicopter that patrolled at low tide “gets the wrong idea. DH from about 12 was allowed to take his dinghy out into the estuary alone, so long as he didn’t go out of view of the shore.

You can sometimes do two things with one batch of fruit, for example cook up the flesh of quince (Portuguese marmelo) with sugar and as little water as possible to make marmelada (membrillo), then take the skins and cores, boil them into oblivion, strain, add sugar, and boil to setting point for quince jelly.

Why does nobody in The Archers ever seem to go blackberrying? (Don't tell me it's because they don't know what to call the wretched things!) They make jam for the Flower and Produce, but it is otherwise unmentioned for the whole of the rest of the year.

MereDintofPandiculation
"Did parents genuinely worry less then?" They had different things to worry about. Polio was still around in the 50s, there were no jabs for “childhood diseases” - you expected all your children to go through measles, mumps and chickenpox and probably whooping cough too.

And measles was a killer. Still is in children too young to have been vaccinated, or children whose parents have bought into the alarmist wollop promulgated by that charlatan Andrew Wakefield and his followers, and not had them vaccinated.

I was vaccinated within an inch of my life in the late 50s/early 60s. Typhoid, cholera, smallpox ... you name it, we were jabbed against it, repeatedly! Back in those days you had a cardboard vaccination card with many pages and at some point in the 70s I took it along to the BA vaccination centre when I was going on holiday somewhere where one of the hepatitises flourished. The doc, in his 60s, laughed out loud and said "Let me guess: army brat, Singapore?" He added that there was really no point in vaccinating me against hepatitis as I must have guts of steel, but the more the merrier, eh? And with that he stabbed me in the bum.

<on edit> - I had measles and younger sis and I both had chicken pox, but apart from that we escaped the rest.

Both delicious.

When DC1 was born, my mother had a whole list of things she thought I should worry about, which apparently were standard things to worry about in her day.

One of them was the risk of a finger or toe getting caught in clothing, having the circulation cut off and having to be amputated. I'm guessing that might have actually happened when most clothes were hand-knits?

Another worry was that DC1 was the perfect weight for his height. She claimed babies need to be a bit overweight so that they have "something to fall back on" if they become ill. She kept asking what the health visitor recommended to "fatten up" DC.

Another was the risk of "fibrous" foods - banana fell into the category of "too fibrous" prior to the third birthday, as did most root vegetables.

I had measles, chicken pox, mumps, in that order during infant / junior school, late 60s / early 70s. Scarlet fever as a baby. Escaped anything worse.

(And as an adult, malaria - thankfully in a country where they were accustomed to dealing with it, rather than at home where I’d probably have made the Nine O’ Clock News. Only writing that reminds me it used to be at 9pm - had forgotten.)

... the thread’s only two weeks old, what a talkative lot we are.

Indeed.

Obviously we would not be talking about this or seat belts or "weeds" if TA had a worthwhile episode more than once every few weeks.

Amen to that! Perhaps we could mention The Archers a few times in the remaining 151 posts of the thread?

😄 well, I’m guessing they will build up to some sort of climax on Friday night …. So we can expect a fairly slow week with little teasers about George and what happened at the police station, interspersed with lots of rubbish about the fête, Chuntering On and Justin’s dodgy understanding of employment law.

I’m not sure which is worse, Lynda and Joy or Denise and Alasdair. it’s a close-run competition.

Well, George is coming round to The Stables 'later in the week' to shoot some video, so that will be interesting.