Archers thread #174: God it's lame! But it still limps on. Discuss The Archers here.

[Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g]

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

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Thanks to @Bruisername for the title inspiration. She said God it's lame and that seemed to strike a chord with many, for some reason.

I am terrified of wasps and live in fear of encountering a hornet, so that was a tricky episode. I hope that's the last we're going to hear of them, except for confirmation that they've been nuked. [shudder]

So what do we reckon - custodial or suspended sentence for George? Will Clarrie return from Great Yarmouth or will she realise that actually life as a carer for her (presumably disabled) sister is easier than the endless and thankless drudgery at Grange Farm? Will any more tables collapse at the Village Hall?

Over to you!

Alice was a hot mess before she went off the rails over Harry, and everyone is conveniently forgetting that she did one rehab and was acting as though she had been instantly cured and anyone who didn't believe it was being Very Nasty To Poor Alice.

So all the stuff in her and Fallon's statements are complete and utter bollocks, frankly.

As a result of those statements i don't know what i think about a lot of what has gone down. Will echo the sentiments that i want Fallon to lose the Charging Station bid and her job and move far away from Ambridge and my ears.

It may also be one of the lowest category prisons and therefore not necessarily as grim as we might imagine.

George is in a YO wing and given the solicitor's comments it will probably be wherever there is a space. But it's common (I'm given to understand) to go in a B Category and then a C and possibly eventually a D/Open Prison if you prove you can be trusted.

But there's no getting away from it, a C Cat is still a pretty grim and bleak place. Ronnie Barker in Porridge it ain't.

I was quite interested to read, I think it was that the person voicing Tracy used to voice Alice.

I think it was Kate, not Alice. She did have a Kate-ish type voice when I heard her this morning.

It was Kate.

Like George, Freddie could be a bit of an arse pre prison albeit in a different way. He was deeply traumatised inside.

Freddie was a particular target because of the way he spoke. He also blamed himself, when to protect himself, he avoided another inmate, after they had initially been drawn together because they were both subjected to bullying / physical abuse and both just trying to keep out of the way. The other inmate had become a particular focus of the bullies and later attempted suicide.

Some in the village were very off with Elizabeth (and she had not even been covering up for him nor anyone else being falsely blamed). She suffered clinical depression trying to cope with everything as a single mother. She nearly lost the business when they took her alcohol licence away and Freddie could not bear the guilt of her visits so rejected them. Only his sister kept it all together.

Freddie was not even allowed to return home when released, but seemed to have used his time to reflect and became a generally all round thoughtful, responsible person. He however suffered a lot of prejudice, it was eventually the kindness of Tracy, that got him a job washing up at Oliver’s gaff. Ian was also very off with him, even though Freddie was a really hard worker

Far from fitting others up. he even took the blame at work when after release he was caught as he was going to flush Johnnies secret hair loss drugs (he had taken them off Johnny because he thought he was taking steroids and wanted to protect his friend from drugs). In order to protect his friend he loyally would not fully explain to Lynda, except to deny he was pushing drugs, and put up with everyone thinking he was pushing drugs again when gossip spread. I think eventually Johnny cleared it up with Lynda, then of course Freddie became the hero when he dragged Lynda out of the fire.

Hopefully George will not be so much of a target as Freddie, unlike others I consider him to be fairly street wise, but possibly less strength of character than Freddie? George is certainly not above protecting himself whilst deliberately blaming others. Let’s hope he can avoid the worst of prison, not become one of the bullies there himself (as I am sure others have also done in order to protect themselves). Hopefully he can then also come out in several months as a much more responsible character. However the scriptwriters love drama as decency and kindness has limited listener engagement.

Thanks @Fink and @CaptainMyCaptain

TheUsualChaos
I think we used to hear from Freddie while he was in YOI or have I imagined that?

Freddie was sentenced to twelve months in a YOI and served six, from 28th September, 2018, until 29th March, 2019.

I think you may be remembering a large number of times on which he was said to have said this or that.

He actually spoke on air on 2nd October and 10th October, 2018, and then not again until 29th March, but he was frequently said to have telephoned or been telephoned, or been visited, and the content of the call or visit was relayed by Johnny or Shula or whoever it was; after Elizabeth went and saw him once and made him feel a great deal worse with her attempt to make him hope for a reduction in his sentence, he refused to see or speak to her again, and Lily was nasty to him about that so he cut her off as well. (I think it was along the lines "you can't help, so don't hinder", from his point of view.)

I don’t think anyone is forgetting where Alice was in her alcoholism or the circumstances and state in which George found her. None of that is denied in either statement and was clear to the court.

The issue was the compounding spiralling effects and mental torture of being set up for something she did not do, and the treatment she got from others because of that. As already carefully explained, that was the clearly scripted specific reason she gave Martha up. Also the absolute scripted turn round, described by Chris as being like the old Alice after she decided to plead not guilty because despite George’s horrible actions deliberately dragging her into the drivers seat to let her take the blame for him, she began to trust her gut that despite the evidence she had not done it.

Both impact statements were both honest and accurate. I would be interested if you could quote the parts that were not, let alone them both being utter bollocks.

Or just more prejudiced victim blaming?

BrightYellowDaffodil
And as for the cheering from the gallery, how crass and lacking in any sort of grace.

There's something really nasty about rejoicing that someone has been sent to prison when that has no bearing at all on what has happened or will happen to the person they are keen to exonerate and on her not having been tried at all.

Being glad that George had been charged instead of Alice, fine. But being glad he's being sent to prison is mean-minded and unpleasant.

Alice grabbed the excuse to go off for an extended bender in London with both hands. The incident provided her with ‘ permission’ to continue with the drinking that she had begun for entirely unrelated reasons. To then VPS ‘and inevitably I would have ended up drinking myself to death and it would have been all George’s fault’ (or wtte) is stretching it a bit.

I admire your ability to protect Alice at all costs brian Voxpop

Or just more prejudiced victim blaming?

Honestly @VoxPop you're overinfested in this.

Alice is a nasty drunk and an awful mother. She'll be fine though because of her supportive family and their money. Martha might not fare so well. The consequences of having a bad mother when you are very young is difficult to overcome. And, no, I don't speak from personal experience.

Yes, you are correct but it's unlikely George will be eligible for a review of category for six months. By that point he will be approaching the point where he is eligible for release on licence.

There's no getting away with it he is going to be in for a rough ride in what sounds like a cat B prison from last night's episode.

I can’t bear to listen tonight

There aren’t really any joyful storylines these days. I don’t mean silly ‘who stole the sunflower’ shenanigans but actual storylines - new relationships or jobs etc. It’s either silly Eddie (yuck) style japes or drunkenness / divorce / disaster.

Oh god, the story about Johnny’s hair, was happy to have forgotten that ridiculousness.

The stuff from Alice about the crash making her almost lose her job, really, the near loss of her job was because she was a relapsed alcoholic.

There were no outright lies in Alice's statement, but the overall effect bore little relationship to what had been going on in her life.

Victim personal statement of Alice Carter, in part (all we heard on air)
... because in this age of social media extensive and vicious condemnation of me can still be found on line, vastly outweighing any explanations that I have now been exonerated. So I came very close to losing a job I loved, and which as a single mother provided my only source of income, and because the business was owned by relatives added even more destructive strain to my family relationships as detailed above. But perhaps the most damaged relationship has been with my daughter. Of all the people affected by this, Martha is the most vulnerable. She is only three years old. She could not understand anything that was happening. All that she knew was that her Mummy, a near-constant presence in her life up to then, became only an occasional visitor, and when I was there I was a hollow shell of my true self, struggling to act as a mother should. Martha and I can never get back those missing weeks and even now, we have still to rebuild our mother-daughter relationship. Because of Mr Grundy's grotesque actions I was forced to believe, and others believed, that I severely injured and could have killed innocent friends and neighbours. As I hope I have explained, the web of damage and unhappiness this has caused is incredibly wide-ranging, and still continuing, despite the real facts now being known. But I would like to finish by describing the effects on me. I know I am far from perfect, I have struggled with alcoholism, not always successfully, but the intense guilt and self-doubt created by Mr Grundy not only after his actions took me to the lowest point I have ever been in my life; the self hatred reached a stage where I believed I had no right to exist on this earth. I was on a course of self-destruction and had the truth not come out when it did I have no doubt that this would have continued until the inevitable end.

I would draw attention to the statement about Martha: "her Mummy, a near-constant presence in her life up to then". That misses out "except when her Mummy didn't want her for best part of a year, preferring to put herself first and not live with her child at all; and when her Mummy was preoccupied with a new squeeze; and when her Mummy was getting falling-over drunk and forgetting where she had put Little Martha down or whom she had delegated to look after the child for her; and when her Mummy was in different town where people didn't get cross with her for getting drunk", for instance. I know and accept that alcoholism is a disease rather than a choice, but it's rather low to pretend it was not happening before Nasty George nearly caused her to become suicidal, and did cause her to neglect her child. Her relapse into drunkenness was a cause, not an effect, of her decision to neck a bottle of vodka and sleep it off in a layby in a way which made it possible for George to drive her car off with her in it, and she knows that as well as we do.

Alice isn’t honest with herself.

Well, no, and I think that's worrying. It means it is easy for her to mislead herself about whether she is drinking, I feel.

Oh poor Emma 😔

Can anyone give a precis. I could let face listening

I’m so sad for Susan.

Place marking

Bruisername, Emma is too distressed to want to get up. Susan gets cross, gives her a pep talk, and gets her to get into her clothes on the basis that Keira exists too and won't be happy if she comes back from school and finds her mother still in bed.

Meanwhile Jolene and Lilian are being happy at the pub because George has been sent to prison (which makes me think less of both of them: it should be enough that Alice has been exonerated, they don't need to bay for blood) and then go on at length with Kenton about naming the kitten.

George finally gets access to the phone and rings Emma; he says he is ok and he has been fed, but things have taken longer than usual because of a lockdown, then seems a bit nervous and asks her to pass the message about him being OK on to everyone if he gets cut off, and then after some noise in the background distracting him he does get cut off.

Or you could got to https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0023nzr and click on "Show more" for the BBC synopsis.