Beverley

The Archers
1

Please sod off back to the Costa del Prole soonest, taking your faux concern with you.

Over.

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2

Seconded. She was syrupy and 'orrible, and sounded utterly insincere to my ears. If her real concern is for the Poor Little Mite, why the hell doesn’t she offer some practical help or even any suggestions?

But then I never ‘got’ the woman the first time we heard her, shortly after Nic’s death, when she sounded as though she couldn’t care less about it. Nilsson’s ‘Without You’ was playing in the background (Keri episode, obviously) and she never wavered - a song like that can still have me in tears so much later. Huh! ‘I care about you, Will’, ‘I care about the kids’, ‘My daughter? Who?’.

Oops! You’ll gather it touches a nerve. Still, if you can suggest a suitable fate for her, Gus, I might find that therapeutic!

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3

Falling pissed off a hotel balcony in some concrete resort?
My other thought might be construed as tactless.

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4

Good, but only if it is a very very high balcony (so she has a long time to think on the way down) and she lands on something sharp and pointy.

ps Never worry about being tactless with me.

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5

She fair grated on me too: ‘Sorry, Will love, Mia says you’re dead to her and if I hear the PoorLittleMite is unhappy, I’ll get the social on to you. But don’t forget I care about you.’

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6

Worse than that, the oozy witch made cheese sandwiches for “dinner”, dammit.

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7

That was plain weird. Like Clarrie saying ‘passed’. Surely no one calls sandwiches ‘dinner’ even if they would call having your main meal at midday ‘dinner’.

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8

We have barely heard her or heard of Bev since last March, when she stayed overnight with Will and talked with Clarrie about arranging Nic’s funeral.

Her only reported action since then seems to have been telling Will a couple of months later that Andrew was planning to go to a solicitor to find out about his rights as a father to take Jake and Mia away.

Sure she cares about Will! In a pig’s eye.

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9

Now there’s an episode where I wouldn’t mind them bringing back the AmEx “interior monologue”

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10

It has only just occurred to me what a strange phrase that is. Mites are certainly little and I don’t imagine they’re often either rich or lucky, but who the hell feels sorry for the nasty little things?

Sorry, a bit off the subject there.

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11

And why not?

Personally I feel it is an admirable description of Mia, though as yet I have nothing in particular against the silent Poppy.

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12

Isn’t it just conveying - with redundancy - the idea of a very small thing?

Wayhey! Poppy is the Widower’s Mite, innit?

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13

Ouch!

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14

…I agree (…having “passed” sounds more like something to do with flatulence) (…at least to these old ears), so when anyone says “they died”, I remind them that one doesn’t just die, but one “ups and dies” (…which (IMNSHO) sounds more positive and with intent of purpose!) (…just sayin’)

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15

Brilliant. She will always be the Widower’s Mite to me now, even when she’s the size of Clarrie. (ie XXL)

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16

Agreed. See also ‘late’ (for what?), ‘gone’ (where?) and ‘lost’ (satnav not working?). It’s dead ffs.

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17

“Passed” always makes me think of “Pippa Passes”, which in the context of death would be absurd.

Passed wind, passed an exam, passed another car – all these are fine, but if it is to mean died it needs a qualifier: passed over, short for passed over to the other side, or passed on, short for passed on to a better place.

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18

Bare “passed” seems to have come in in the USA some time in the 1990s.

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19

Although a change to the spelling would fix it. “He’s past” is fairly unambiguous, I think.

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20

When I lived in Greece a friend’s husband had a heart attack and a few days later I went with her to the hospital to see him in his usual place in the ICU and his bed was empty! Alarmed, we caught sight of his doctor, who spoke excellent English, and asked where he was and the doctor replied, ‘He is gone’. Turned out he was doing so well he had been moved to a regular ward. But my friend’s heart must have skipped a few beats.

At the time, we were both thinking that ‘gone’ meant ‘gone to meet his maker’ especially as the doc said ‘is gone’. ‘Has gone’ sounds more active.

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