Archers thread #186: Eavesdropping on a home for the terminally confused. 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 swipe right on Dane, the new Grey Gables manager, 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 @WitcheryDivine for the title inspiration. Over to you!

They killed the blameless Nic off in a public service storyline about sepsis.

If Martha doesn't have FASD it can only be because the superior Archer genes, even when diluted with Aldridge, Carter and Horrobin genes and massive quantities of alcohol, will still triumph.

I'm less worried about Martha - I feel it's unlikely the SWs will give her long-term health problems - and more worried Alice will start drinking again (which is what I think Fallon's comment about everyone getting drunk was hinting at). Worries about Martha are a way of getting everyone looking in the wrong direction and forgetting what caused the problem in the first place. Is Alice going to hit the bottle just as George is released from prison?

My browsing round a rather good bookshop was once disturbed by having my bum groped, several times, by an evil creepy pervert who managed to vanish each time before I had time to turn round and confront him.

Until I looked down and saw a black labrador.

I have some sympathy for Alice, one of mine was born with a serious global developmental delay and although I followed the prevailing medical advice on pregnancy to the letter I tortured myself for years that it happened because of something I’d done.

After about 16 years I said to dh that not a day had gone by when I didn’t wonder whether it was something I’d done which caused our son’s issues and he looked at me completely astonished and said “really? I just assumed it was the genes from my side of the family”. Which did make me laugh!

And yes I know Nic ran over the odious Matt Crawford but that was a public service act.

My DS is colour deficient and I still feel terrible guilt he got the dodgy gene through me

add on the adhd and the impact it’s had on the kids schooling and I have many sleepless nights tying myself in knots over what I could have done differently

so I do get the guilt but feel a pp is right that this is about her alcoholism being all consuming to her. Also shouldn’t forget Martha had a really unsettling time when Alice started drinking again last year so her behaviour could not be fasd

😂

I remember being shocked on visiting Cornwall a few years ago that dogs were allowed in all sorts of shops. I never liked taking my spaniel in as I always afraid he’d disgrace us in some way.

No, Alice goes for that trembly voice that says"Be sorry for meeeee". It's pretty annoying, but I think it's good acting given that she is inherently spoilt. And I agree she is going to get to a paediatrician really quickly courtesy of Bank of Brine.

Ah, an anti-Ouida in the matter of realism: the dome of St Paul's may be as real as the gasworks in the East End, but it is so much less likely to explode in an interesting way!

LillianGish
Worries about Martha are a way of getting everyone looking in the wrong direction and forgetting what caused the problem in the first place.

Alice however will go on looking in the right place in the wrong way, and not actually mentioning Martha all that much in her haste to say that everything is all her fault. Even if she nor anyone else has any idea what everything may actually be.

It's sort of the backwards of Helen blaming herself for this or that and people immediately leaping to tell her that "it's not your fault" even when it absolutely is.

If Alice relapses again then I can see how her family would just wonder how they can ever get out of the doom loop.

I agree but at least that would be realistic. I’d prefer that to the extreme jollyness that Kentons invented a delicious mocktail for her etc. that we heard the other night.

I don't like Alice AT ALL - she's even more self-obsessed and boring than Adam - and wish her a happy plunge off Beachy Head.

That’s a terrible thing to say.

😂😂😂#teambeachyhead

And that is a po-faced thing to say.

Could we make it Flamborough Head? The birdwatching is better. Or Gurnard's Head which has a good pub?

Well, Beachy Head is more convenient for me, but I see the pub at Gurnard's Head actually serves gurnard and as I've only ever eaten the New Zealand variety I'm up for that.

Oh a day out!

so a celebratory lunch after we’ve seen Alice on her way

although you’ve made me think of the Only Fools and Horses bus driver now

I could really do without any kind of suicide storyline, that really would have me switching off.

I think the Martha thing will be inconclusive but every time anything goes wrong for her or if she isn’t very good at school etc Alice will be racked by it.

I’ve got a friend who works at Gurnard’s Head pub - I’m sure he’d be pleased to see us all 😂

I like Alice for the same reason I like Emma - we've known her since she was a child. Her alcoholism can be traced in a direct line from her grandfather, through the pub which has always been in the family one way or another through her father who is always pouring a drink of some sort, through her boozy Aunty Lillian. And stop for a moment and think what it must actually be like to be Alice - right in the middle of the most complicated family, a brother and sister who share the same mother, but not the same father, the baby of the family until Ruari came along like a proper cuckoo in the nest, with Kate as a sister who defied and rebelled against every convention and then effectively fled. I know she's a spoiled princess who wanted for nothing - houses, ponies, a university education, none of which someone like Emma had, but at least Emma came from a tight family unit and I think Alice wanted some of that when she married Chris. And that is what I love her for most - for uniting the Carters and the Aldridges and inspiring the best line ever: "Oh Brian, I'm related to a Horrobin!"

d that is what I love her for most - for uniting the Carters and the Aldridges and inspiring the best line ever: "Oh Brian, I'm related to a Horrobin!"
that was the best episode in the entire history of Archers. I could listen to it again and again 😂

That was a good way of integrating Jill while recognising Paddy Greene's voice problem. And David did read it well.

I do hope Harrison's absence is going to be permanent.