Archers thread #172: Come on, Clive! Spill the beans and put us all out of our misery. 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 Clive sounds deeply misunderstood, 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.)

Fete over, cricket season over - can the Flower and Produce show be far behind? I don't think I've heard a mention of it this year. Have I not been paying attention?

In any real village, preparations for the Christmas show would already be under way, but not in Ambridge, of course. I am probably in a minority of one in regretting this.

With any luck, though, by Christmas this incredibly protracted tale of Alice, George and the crash will be behind us at last. Do we think Clive's really gone? I don't believe it. We won't be rid of him that easily. Will he go to the police himself? Will he attempt to blackmail his family or extort money from the Aldridges in return for information that would secure Alice's acquittal? Do we care? I find I don't really, unfortunately. I did enjoy hearing Clive for those few brief exchanges but I've had enough now. Unrelieved nastiness is not really what I want from TA.

Over to you!

No retainer. Paid per episode. (Or so I’ve understood.) So one can understand why they take all the work they can elsewhere.

Gratuitous photo of George’s Other Mother at (I think) the Venice Film Festival recently.

I did think how come Joy's only just mentioned about the cider, but I dont think it came up in any conversation Joy has had, but I could be wrong.
Adam sounded really miserable and Ian a bit too enthusiastic, think his heading for a fall but hope the other parents are not nasty which is sometimes protrayed in films etc that mothers at the school gate are cliquey and very judgemental.

It does feel like the sw flick through the book of common stereotypes quite a lot

Ian was insufferable last night. I don’t know how Adam stands him. It must be like living with a texting Labrador - over-enthusiastic and eating all the time.

Susan still has to fill in a few gaps to piece the whole story together. I agree with the PP that it will be Emma who eventually cracks and fills S or Neil in.

Why would Joy know there had been a bottle of cider found in the car?

I thought everyone knew there was cider in the car. Or maybe it was just us.

We know because Alice knows, so therefore Chris and Susan know. Chris went to see Harry because they assumed there must have been another person there and assumed it was Harry.

There's nothing we've heard to suggest that the knowledge has gone wider.

You don't have to use asterisks, there's a facility for bolding etc right there at the bottom of the message box.

Joy and others have probably talked a lot about the crash off air- especially those directly involved in it, as Joy was. So they've probably all heard details, and if I were Joy, I'd probably be thinking about whether I was culpable through having sold the vodka (as she snd Susan talked about last night.) So she might have latched on to any mention of cider bottles.

Let us just be grateful we don't hear everything.

I never actually noticed I didn't have to do the asterisks thing!

Thank you @clockwisehoneysuckle - at long last I've learned how to strikethrough.

Even if Susan has realised that the cider bottle belongs to George, why wouldn't she assume that George had left it in Alice's car when he "checked on Alice" after the crash?

No one is disputing that George, at a minimum, was leaning into Alice's car that night. It might seem odd that he had picked it up again after presumably putting it down to go into the Am to rescue Fallon, but no-one would expect George to be thinking straight immediately after coming out of the Am.

I suppose the odd thing is that when Chris suspected Harry of having been there, based on the cider bottle, that it hadn't been established then that it was George's.

but why assume he hadn’t already checked Alice to make sure she was ok before calling 999 and then diving into the Am.

given how he ran off after the rescue - if I were Alastair I would then assume he had already seen her in the car and was checking her

Also, I don’t think it was the cider bottle that made Chris think Harry was there but more Alice being adamant she hadn’t done it so he found another answer

He didn't have their numbers. The teacher took Ian's number and sent it out to the other parents by email.

I was 28 when I had my first child, and quite obviously the oldest parent at the school gate when she started reception. She moved schools after half a term and I was bang on average at the new school (which was less than 3 miles away). There were older parents who already had older kids, but I don't think there was anyone over 40 - although obviously it's hard to tell when someone is niqabi! The demographics can change a lot in a relatively small geographic space.

I think it's more that Susan has been sensing something wrong for months, all kinds of stuff including Alice's insistence on her not guilty plea, Chris's instinct that Alice night be right, the odd vibes around Clive's visit, George's moodiness, and this has been the last detail she needed to make her question all her earlier assumptions around the Night of Bridge Terror.

At last the cider bottle assumes its rightful significance. Dramatically there really was no need for Clive to have raised his ugly head at all, except perhaps that it prompted this exchange between Susan and Joy:
'I know it seems awful to be estranged from your own brother - took me a long time to work it out, but life is much better without Clive in it.'
'Aye families are complicated sometimes.'
Followed by Joy's heartfelt - "Well it will be" - when Susan mentioned the court case was weighing heavily on Alice.

It must be difficult when you live in a small, close-knit community and have to give evidence in a trial. Harrison mentioned that they'd been instructed not to speak to Alice. How does everyone else who will be called as a witness cope? I assume they're told they must not discuss it with anyone else who is also a witness. Can they talk about it with other family and friends? Maybe that's why we're hearing from Susan, Neil, Emma, Will et al - people who were not directly involved on the night.

Clive was an unnecessary drama

still a chance for George to get to the police first if Susan shares her suspicions and he realises the game is almost up

but I’m guessing with these sw they will ramp it up for maximum drama🙄

So far Clive seems a pointless waste of airtime, but there must be something else planned for him, or surely the Beeb wouldn't have bothered with all the silly faux mysterious nonsense of not putting him on the cast list.

Apologies for quoting myself - possibly even more heinous than quoting the OP - but forgot to add that I felt that the unseen and unvoiced Rochelle loomed large in this exchange.

Maybe Rochelle is Secretly Connected to Clives ex Sharon or something

I agree. I thought Joy was going to say something about her.

I didn't think Joy was going to say anything, but I agree that Rochelle's shadow was looming in the conversation about estranged and complicated families, and that you can only understand them from the inside.

Edited to make it clear that I was talking about Rochelle, not some other 'her'.

I have never known a teacher to do that kind of admin on behalf of parents in all the years my children were at Primary school. A teacher taking and distributing a parent’s phone number via e-mail wouldn’t have been permitted at their school but perhaps that was specific to that school. They were very wary of falling foul of data protection laws.

At both my kids schools they did a list of kids with parents name, address, phone number and asked permission to share with the class. Most people were fine with it but a few had their addresses knocked off. Then some keeno set up a WhatsApp group. I never had problems with either of my kids WhatsApp groups tbh and they were quite handy. No one was ott with it though