Are there no trains? Are there no motorways? Fagash could easily pay little Mungo a visit if she was really that bothered. She isn’t. She’s just got her nose put out of joint because Lynda kept something from her that James ought to her told her about in the first place.
Have a go at your son, Lilian, you stupid woman. Busy man indeed - I very much doubt it!
You’re right, of course Janie, but if one of mine brought a grandchild into the village for a couple of days and didn’t even tell me, and others knew and didn’t see fit to mention it, I think I’d be a bit miffed.
Even if it was called Mungo !!
I would be miffed with the person who had done this: the offspring, not the person they dumped their brat on.
I think Lilian has cause to be miffed at both James and Lynda. James, primarily, because he ought, notwithstanding his status as a ‘busy man’ (cue stifled laughter) to have told his ma about the visit. But Lynda has no business telling him Lilian would most likely be too busy to see Mungo. That was spiteful and she jolly well knows it, no matter how much she is denying it to herself, to Lilian and to Robert. When challenged, she copped to having ‘happened to mention’ Lil’s supposed busyness and sounded distinctly shifty. Since then, she’s gone on about it not being her fault, but she sounds uneasy.
I can’t figure out how it is she happened to speak to James, though. Wouldn’t it have been Leonie who would have telephoned and have spoken to Robert?
Monday:
…lousy SFX, crap script, garbage characters!
Daveeed: “The barn is looking great!” (note to listeners “…doesn’t the barn look wonderful?” …oh, do look!")
…hair transplant? Why bother? …if you wait, I’m sure a character transplant is on its way to you! …patience, patience!
“…look Lynda, see, I’m going bald!”
RestOfWorld: “…oh, no he’s not! We can’t see any change!!!”
…what’s to like???
…what indeed?
…er, thas orl!
CLICK!!!
Tuedsday’s effort:
Surely (Shirley) you should send TheSossidgeBaron the following note:
“Dear Tom, We take great pleasure in ordering you NOT to come to our wedding! …and if we later find out that you have snuck in unseen we will hunt you down and kill you! You have been warned!”
Oh God! FagAsh! …that cackle! …buggeration! 
…anything significant happen after all the cackling? (…I received an ultimatum at that point and found it safest to switch over to YouTube (cat-tv))
It’s not just the cackle, Sturmers, as far as I am concerned. It’s that fake hoard whisper she uses when I imagine she is digging some poor soul in the ribs as she says something ‘jokey’. Sunny Ormonde is as full of annoying tics as Daisy Badger and Felicity Finch and that’s saying something.
As is Buffy Davis.
With the caveat that she might be fine elsedrama; I haven’t encountered her except in TA.
I saw her last night on Doc Martin (that would be an old episode for you, if you watch it, if you have a telly). She sounded just like Jolene!
She doesn’t get on my nerves the way the previous three do. Not saying that’s objective, or fair.
Scenes between J’lene and Lilian have me wanting to claw my ears out. But then so do the Lilian/Snell-beast interactions, of which there have been far too many of late.
I am neither objective nor fair, me dear ;- )
I don’t mind Lynda, but then I like Carole Boyd. Whether I like the actor or not has a great deal to do with whether I - shall we say appreciate - the character. I can’t say I’d like Lynda if she was an acquaintance of mine, but she is a terrific character. I’d say the same of Susan, so well acted and a great asset to The Archers.
Oh, and the other thing that colours my attitude a lot is when an awful character is always, always spoken well of in Ambridge. That would be the case with Pip, Ruth and Helen. Dreadful people but we’re always hearing how great they are. Helen is brave, will do anything for her boys, even after all she’s been through, deserves happiness, Pip is a wonder farmer, Ruth … well to be fair, Ambridge does not go on about Ruth’s virtues.
My view is that Martin usually stops just the right side of outright caricature whereas that is Boyd’s default mode when Snelling: she can pull back from it most effectively, as happened last (?) night, but the default has rendered the character as a whole ludicrous and unsympathetic, imo. Not that I would have much sympathy with an RL Snell. I find Susan’s portrayal much better, though I would be up for ABH on her account too in RL.
That might also be down to the writing, Lynda being more caricatured than Susan by the scripties.
Do you think so?
Wish I could call to mind the recent occasion when whatever they had Susan doing was to my mind grotesquely exaggerated. But I can’t, that’s how strong an impression it made!
And now Discourse is nagging me for replying to you too much. Good luck to it with that.
I shall take no notice of it.
One’s impressions are just impressions, not carefully noted data. As we both agree, we are not always unbiased. I like Carole Boyd, so I react favourably to Lynda, whereas Ruth, Pip and Helen can do no right, ever, No matter what they do or say I will loathe them.
AttaJanie! The right and proper approach.
Fr’instance, if anyone but Helen had uttered those words of advice to Tracy about introducing a new boyfriend to the sprogs, I’d have thought them perfectly sensible. As it was, I was thinking dark thoughts about the utter hypocrisy of her talking of reproaching herself for letting Rob into Henwee’s life when she did so in the most odious and deliberate fashion, stropping out of Bridge Farm with three days notice because she couldn’t bully Tony into liking Rob, and all that well before Rob had got into her head. And since then, what attention has she paid to her precious Henwee except to say ‘No, Henry’ or lie to him about his karate classes or stop him doing things?
Yes, to all of that. But Patikas does it so well.
I sometimes wonder if she, Louiza Patikas, is what one Mustardlander described as a one-trick pony. That patronising upward tone Helen uses when dispensing advice or telling someone something they - in her view - ought to know already. She’s apt to do the latter with her father in particular and her family in general. Is that simply the actor’s way of speaking? Because an interview with her admittedly many years ago suggested that she does not see Helen as the awful person that so many of the listeners do. She referred to Helen as ‘a trooper’. The vile way Helen behaved to Clarrie when the young Helen came back to wreak havoc at Bridge Farm was brushed of as ‘teenage run-ins’ with the staff.
This was all before Rob. But I do wonder how versatile and actor is. As Helen, she feels absolutely authentic in her loathsomeness, but is that the intended effect?
Helen was over 20 when she started throwing her weight around in the dairy, caused Colin to resign from his job and employed Tracy as a manager over Clarrie’s head…
And Helen was being played by Frances Graham at the time, so there is no particular reason for Louiza Patikas to remember it all.