Archers thread #198: Josh sent to Patagonia, Pip stays put. Wrong way round! Discuss The Archers here.

[Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g]

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 also confide only in your budgie, 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/5457344-the-archers-spoilers-thread-11-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.)

Not feeling greatly enthused about what's going on in Ambridge at the moment, tbh. I'm annoyed at Brian's hypocrisy about Ruairi given the furore over George's attempt to frame Alice as the cause of the accident. I do hope we don't have a slow drip drip drip now as one after another the members of the Aldridge/Archer clan find out what really happened and endlessly agonise over what to do. Frankly I don't care. There! I've said it.

Pip's OK. Well, good, but what was the point of that story, I wonder?

I suspect I'm in a minority of one in rather enjoying hearing (a) from Bert Horobin and (b) about Fletcher. I surmise Bert is here to stay for a while because the BBC has (amazingly) updated his character page: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/profiles/1wQP3mKR6yr9LVs05jddxcY/bert-horrobin (prominent actor photo warning). Given how out of date a lot of the other character pages are, this seems odd, but there we are.

That's all I can be bothered to say! Over to you.

I'm assuming Tom doesn't speak Welsh though he may be learning it, you'd want to surely if your children were speaking a language you didn't understand.

Avid Archer's fan here but as an aside, I'm generally a Radio 4 and 4 Xtra listener for a lot of the day.
Today....Elections on main channel are to be expected, but I'm heartily fed up of all day David Attenborough on Xtra!

You'd pick up phrases, @ambercoast . I think you'd need to put a lot of effort to learn a language fluently as an adult.

I think you'd tend to say them as you hear them.

An example might be saying chaldi chaldi for jaldi jaldi or jenkweeay for dziękuję.

It would be quite difficult to learn Welsh (especially as an adult) unless you were in an environment where everyone around you spoke Welsh. I learned Catalan to a reasonable standard when I was in Girona. By "a reasonable standard" I mean that I could understand it and speak it - with errors - and translate academic papers into English. I never did get the hang of the subjunctive.

It would obviously have been very much harder if I hadn't been surrounded by it, or if I had been Tom.

You were probably immersed, Tom isn't.
Novochok and Sarin wouldn't learn much more than words and phrases.
They might if they wanted to and if the SW want them to.

Maybe they learn the vegetable names in the edible forest. Maybe the Te Rum could go bilingual. It could try to sell croissant (cilgant?) bresych crych a chaws, and sudd afal a sbigog Perllan Haf.

They'd probably be better of selling cheese toasties and jacket potatoes. This was expensive? | Mumsnet

I'm not fond of Gnasher but roared when she said "Stop saying waxed jacket" at Tom. He deserved to lose it for not helping out at the sale and wanting special treatment at Terum.

I had a moment of confusion when all the SUV'd-up millionaires were out buying, then the waxed jacket went.

If you're wondering what waxed jacket is in Welsh, it's Barbour.

(It's siaced gwyredig but ...)

Tom deserved it.

If you're determined, it's quite easy to find online Welsh classes online. I've been doing them for about 500 years (or do it feels at times,) and I'm now at Uwch 3 (which is meant to be be B2 heading to C1 in CEFR terms.) It is much harder to remember vocab than when I was at school, and the grammar is harder than any other language I've learnt, including a couple to AS level as an adult. I'm in England.

I'm mostly still there out of stubbornness, I think...

I suspect Tom isn't going to get much past cariad, hiraeth and nos da. He doesn't strike me as a diligent student type.

Ben is so tediously earnest.

Lighten up, young man, find a girlfriend and have some fun.

He's a know-all too.

Ben is utterly unbearable

i was shouting at the radio for the whole "waxed jacket" thing - you can get 200 quid and upwards for a good Barbour jacket.

But i was deffo on Gnasher's side with how it went down (except that she could have made 4 times what she did)

i thought Ben was exactly right, and Brian was an absolute arse. If one of my adult DCs was showing symptoms of mental health issues, i would definitely want one of their friends to warn me. Brian was typically brian at the idea of someone in his family having MH issues! (but it's ok to have an alcoholic)

also no wonder tom and gnasher are broke - how much did Lilian pay for the cappuccino? (2 of them?)

Two cappucino's £6.90.
Sound effects of Natasha's heels twice this evening, she's turning into my favourite character.

Wealthy foreign non farmers buying UK farm land has been a thing for a while, will be interesting to see where this BL shares storyline goes.

Ben's a nice lad. He's by far the most pleasant of the three of them. Drippy but kind.
Josh is the more interesting one but not around much.

you can get 200 quid and upwards for a good Barbour jacket.
But i was deffo on Gnasher's side with how it went down (except that she could have made 4 times what she did)

You might if it was a rare one. Tom's was probably not a rare one. You can get one that hasn't been much used for about £75.

>> NOT THE ARCHERS

@EBearhug , The ones I've seen teach it colloquially - the equivalent of learning to offer someone a cup of tea in English by saying 'Wanna cuppa?', not much use if the local form is 'Fancy a brew?'.
I can't say I've looked for many but when learning a language I need to 'see' the structure ('Would you like a cup of tea?').

Hiraeth and cariad are both words with several meanings, but it's like saying the words neck or simple are something special because they have several meanings. They have several meanings because we don't have the different words for, for example, homesickness, nostalgia, longing and grief.
Phrases like 'I feel the hiraeth' seem twatty.

The grammar isn't easy and many get it wrong. Broadcasters often have poor grammar. The incorrect mutations seem ubiquitous. The wrong one changes the meaning of the sentence.

Pronunciation is difficult. So many sounds you don't get in English. In my Spanish class, the teacher, (Mr C O Jones, naturally), had us writing our names as if we were spelling them in Spanish. Many couldn't be done. Gethin was Guezin IIRC. Mine was 'Hmm, I don't think we can do that one'.

I started watching Y Gwyll (Hinterland) on the BBC iPlayer this week (it's very good) and right at the start of the first episode, about 3 minutes in, a woman character we haven't yet seen says something in Welsh offscreen and I said "Oooh! Natasha!" She has a very distinctive voice.

She does. Her husband (AKA Mr Gordon, Amber's father) is in a lot of the Welsh/English dramas.

He was very good as Joe Miller in Broadchurch.

He's good in everything I've seen him in. He was in 'Iaith ar daith' and seems a nice chap. Paul Rhys was in another one and he was lovely.

I like a lot of things about Natasha - she's a good contrast to the other characters. She gets good lines.

My friend has just been to Cardiff to see the Gwen John exhibition. She said it was excellent. She’s a long-term listener and had been wondering whether CMR now has a job at the NMC and had curated the exhibition himself. I hadn’t heard of GJ until TA brought her to my attention so I didn’t bite her hand off when she invited me to go with her. Slightly regretting it now. Anyone else been? Anyway, the exhibition is on until end-June, then I think it goes to America. Not London. Apparently the museum tearoom was a real disappointment- sliced white bread egg sandwiches and stale cake. Not like the V and A cafe at all…

Gwen John: Strange Beauties | Museum Wales

Brefugee
If one of my adult DCs was showing symptoms of mental health issues, i would definitely want one of their friends to warn me. Brian was typically brian at the idea of someone in his family having MH issues! (but it's ok to have an alcoholic)

It really wouldn't have been helpful for anyone if Brian had said to Ben, "No, as it happens you're wrong. Ruairi doesn't have mental health issues, he is suffering from guilt because he bashed George over the head with a bottle on New Year's Eve". Since Brian knows what is wrong with Ruairi, why should he have to pretend it's something else in order to pander to Ben "all I have is a hammer so every problem must be a nail" Archer's delusions of competence?

Because Ben is the Ambridge Mental Health Issues Ambassador.

I have been to the Gwen John exhibition - I knew about her before she was mentioned in TA. I had been to another GJ exhibition at Pallant House (Chichester) a couple of years ago, and I think I preferred PH, but they were both good and obviously a lot of crossover. And you only have the option of Cardiff anyway. It gives a good overview. Worth a visit.

Cardiff's cafe is indeed basic and quite limited, not at all on the same scale as the V&A. Pallant House is more like the V&A but with a more limited menu, just because it's smaller. But from the Amgueddfa, it's a short walk into the main shopping streets, with cafes aplenty.

It's hiraeth that Tom had tattooed on his arm, isn't it?

He is a walking public service announcement - they’ve actually turned him into a nurse so he can fulfill his destiny.