Archers thread #201: Tempting fête in Ambridge? Free entry to 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 love to administer Bert's mucus medicine, 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/5538836-the-archers-spoilers-thread-12-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.)

There's a fair amount of stuff going on at the moment but I don't feel inspired to say anything more about any of it for now. Over to you - I hope you all have more enthusiasm than I do!

I can see where the plot is going but really, a most unlikely combination.

Harrison is too good for Lily.

I've never been more pleased to hear Lynda being so... Lynda... as I was last night 😁

Lily and Harrison, ew. Also, I spent the whole time telling myself "it's not Amber! It's Lily!" Have they always sounded the same, or have I only just noticed since they had the tea room scene together?

Don't schools teach about tides? Everyone seems to know about oxbow lakes because it's taught at the sort of age where it embeds in the brain for eternity. And that's not even particulary useful information! I'd have thought tides would rank higher in the 'people ought to know this" stakes - especially on an island.

(Bet kids learn about volcanoes, they're so exciting!)

I must have missed the lesson on oxbow lakes because I have no clue what the words mean. I’ve seen them written down once or twice - but quite honestly, if I googled it now I’d have forgotten the important bits by tomorrow. (I’ve taken plenty of exams and have letters after my name and everything … 🤷‍♀️)

Lily and Po-Leece are fire! 😄 And yes regarding the seeking of a father figure. But despite recklessly predicting a wedding I’m now inclining to Lily getting pregnant, then deciding she wants nothing more to do with Plod. He’ll mither for England, until Lily gets Elizabeth to get Kenton to pay some heavies to see him out of town. Lily will thrive as a solo parent.

They mentioned Paul! He lives!! Hallelujah!!!

I missed the reference to Paul. Probably expunged the loathesome little tick from my memory banks. Perhaps Freddie and Fallon will get together. Then they can flog a clothing range in Tesco.

@TottersBlankly But everyone knows about oxbow lakes - see this clip from QI Video | Facebook

Occasionally she gets a glimpse of how awful she is and puts on a soppy voice.

@TeenToTwenties ... I knew what an oxbow lake is and also a meander (primary school stuff), but what I learned from that QI clip was that a billabong is an oxbow lake! So thank you.

I can't get my head around two women doing the Argentine tango together in the community centre (Lily said not many men attend). There's lots of leg wrapping and lifting.

And did Lily mention Paul usually going with her? Is he back?

I don't remember being specifically taught about tides at school it was one of those things you just know . Anyone who went to the UK seaside as a child would surely have had a parent say 'The tide's out we'll have to walk out to the sea' or 'the tide's coming in we'll have to get off the beach now'. I have had conversations like that with my grandchildren. Of course, I know sone children in the deprived area where I taught never got taken to the seaside at all but those that did probably got taken to Skegness. Some explanation of why the sea was several miles away some of the time would be necessary.

I can see how it happened between L and H - she has probably always idly half-fancied him from afar. If she has his baybee though, that will be it and he will be linked to Ambridge forever which I find astonishing as in my head he has left already and now lives on Coronation St.

Agree that as well as upsetting Fallon, this romance could have been engineered to create friction between L and Freddie- which would be a pity as he has few enough allies. While she is irritating in the extreme, she is still his sister.

Ruth used a horribly syrupy voice when she was sitting on the bench with Khalil. I could see why he said can we never talk about it again. It was borderline creepy. If a man used a similar approach speaking to a 15-year-old girl, it would feel very wrong.

Agree that learning about oxbow lakes is slightly pointless but I am always pleased when I identify one IRL (doesn’t happen very often). I could probably still sketch the diagram at a push. I think I prefer glaciers…

Is an oxbow lake what happens when a bend in a river silts up and spreads out?

It’s absolutely rancid of Harrison and Lily to go out on a date (however “accidental”) within about a fortnight of him and Fallon deciding to split. I’m surprised Lily wouldn’t be more wary tbh of a man so obviously still married and living with his wife.

Also hilarious that Harrison “I want a behhhhbeee” is getting off with the woman who wants new things and to travel the world. I can’t imagine she’d be any keener to birth a Burns than Lottie was to let Chris move in.

Yes. The river takes a 'short cut' leaving the 'bend' as a lake. I got very excited when I saw one in the wild. Similarly, on a walking holiday in the Picos de Europa I spotted a rock formation I recognised from a Geography O Level diagram about 50 years previously.

Ah, yes. I don't think I learned about those in geography, but from a dinosaur book with diagrams about where fossils get deposited. And I think there was a unit in Grade 6 Science about rivers; I remember some sort of sand tub in which a river was created by means of a syphon so we could see how various shapes happen. We also learned about syphons in that unit, clearly.

God I remember oxbow lakes in Geography lessons. What I didn't know for ages while living in Australia is that billabongs are mostly oxbow lakes.

If Khalil was intimating that farming animals was so wrong, why was he looking forward to Chicken pasta and was the chicken halal?

It wasn’t until I was an adult that I learnt there was a lot more to geography than a) oxbow lakes b) St Lucia’s main exports c) national parks of the UK. Thanks for nothing Mr Thompson.

@WitcheryDivine - Our Mr Thompson was called Mr Exley. The entire class failed O-level Geography because he taught us about nothing but the coalfields of Yorkshire, for two years. Quite boring. Come the exam, they weren't even mentioned!

In those days the grades were 1-6 (pass) and 7-9 (fail). I got the best grade (7) on the strength of my army primary school education, which was heavy on Commonwealth countries. So I knew a little bit about the Snowy Mountains and natural gas production in Canada, but not enough for a grade 6.

I didn't like Geography much at school, but it was compulsory all the way to O level, so I was stuck with it. Fortunately History, which I loved, was also compulsory, and Scripture wasn't (as an exam subject anyway).

One of my problems with Geography as taught in the 1970s was that we were expected to draw maps from memory, which then as now is utterly beyond me. We learned the rudiments of mapreading, though, using Ordnance Survey maps, which was useful.

I seem to recall winging it a bit in the O level exam by writing about the Rhubarb Triangle which I had just heard or seen an item about on the local news.

Physical geography stuck best. I am still very pleased when I spot a corrie or a U-shaped valley formed by a glacier.

AIBU?
I (F26) am in a new relationship with the most wonderful man (M41-ish). He's perfect.
My housemates are currently away, and he is still living with his wife from whom he recently separated, so I'm thinking of asking him to stay with me.
He is a bit older than me, but the age-gap is much less than with my previous partner.

Dear LovestruckLily,
Other than him still being married, to your step-cousin, and he's desperate for a child, and your rented house belongs to your aunt who is also the step-aunt I don't see any problem at all. It's not like you have any friends to lose and he won't be on the rebound, will he, they've onlybeen separated a matter of days.
The North West of England is green and pleasant, maybe you and this wonderful paramour of yours could relocate up there indefinitely.

Elizabeth, after going out with Robin Fairbrother (he was born in 1953 and she was born in 1967. so he was fourteen years older than her) and Cameron Fraser (born in 1954, seven years older than her) married Nigel (born in 1959, so a mere eight years her senior); she clearly sees nothing against the man in a relationship being a fair bit older than the woman, and David (1959) and Ruth (1968) probably serve to reinforce her view.

Lily was just following the family trend when she went out with Russ ("old enough to be your father!" as Freddie said and she did not dispute), so her and Harrison ought to come as no surprise to anyone. Harrison's thirty-ninth birthday was on 3rd June 2024, so he is now forty-one to Lily's twenty-six; a fifteen year age-gap is par for the course in that family, really.

I have a feeling that Gerald Pargetter may have been quite a bit Julia's senior, too; he died of old age in 1988, and she lived on until 2005 (she was born in 1924, but we don't have a birth-date for him.)

I can totally believe the Lily/Harrison storyline. Lily strikes me as just the sort of madam who'd get a kick out of seducing the very recent ex of an older, cooler (more beautiful? In my mind Fallon is very fit) woman, and many men respond to a break up by immediately shagging anyone and everyone in their path. And we know that Lily likes older men too.

I don't think we covered oxbow lakes at school but we only did one year of compulsory Geography (and, separately, History) at secondary school. I knew about tides, possibly from primary school. I think it would be hard to not know about tides having grown up where I did (unlike people from Ambridge, we would venture beyond the bypass). I know roughly what oxbow lakes are. We covered glacial lakes.

Recent ex? He was dumped 4 weeks ago.