Monologue 13 October 2015
It was a week red in tooth and claw in Ambridge this week. Ferreting, lamping, dead rabbits everywhere, funeral plans….. But obviously the storyline we’re all most concnered about, and the one that’s getting harder to listen to, is Jill and her gigantic room at Lower Loxley. The scrollwork’s getting on her wick and she doesn’t like the curtains. I don’t know how she carries on, personally.
Gemma Hawkins is having a goose this year, you know. Just thought you should know. Jerome’s gone to Belgium, Roscoe Joliffe’s at the bottling plant and Roy’s following up those dentures. So that’s good.
Can we just pause for a moment. Roscoe Joliffe. Yup. Roscoe. Joliffe.
Eddie spent the week trundling round the village forcing rabbits on people in an effort to realise that rabbit is so boring it might make them want to buy geese. It’s an usual marketing strategy and it’s going as well as you’d expect, really.
You mustn’t let her end define your memories of her, said Carol to Jill. Eh? Everyone always remembered Granny Heather, said Pip piously. No-one except her daughter who managed to quite successfully forget her for months on end. The village supported Ruth through her mourning in its own inimitable style. Eddie bought her two dead rabbits, and everyone else told her they were a bit bored now and could she stop going on about it please.
Dan is a troop leader. Dib dib dib! They’re going to have a family party to celebrate it along with Jill’s 143rd birthday. So that’ll go well. They don’t learn, the Archers, do they?
The first leaf on the tree has started to go vaguely copper coloured and Linda has sprung into action about the sodding Christmas sodding Christmas show. Lynda held up all the guests…or rather Charlie Thomas anyway, who seemed to be the only person in Gay Grables apart from huge numbers of staff and the Grundy’s, looking up shows and what Flops or Baps or Buns or whatever they’re called are doing. The show, whatever it is, is going to be at Lower Loxley, fresh from its success with Cosi Fan Tutte, we’re going to have to endure Cosy Fanny Tutti Frutti with the inevitable will they won’t they Christmas show romance, unwilling actors being hauled in to play wildly unsuitable roles that they turn out to be brilliant at, Robert Snell only heard as a banging noise off stage, Neil clearing his throat in a long suffering way and Lynda getting on everyone’s wick until we’re all completely sick of Christmas by November 22nd.
Neil in his role as the village Boutros Boutros Ghali had to break the sad news to Charlie Thomas that the village has unanimously decided to reject Justin Elliott’s offer to rebuild the village hall on condition it was renamed the We Heart Justin hall. Neil told him how they were using a practically professional team to build the village hall…Fallon, Neil, Robert Snell….a woman who does up tea pots, a computer programmer and Neil. It’ll just be a massive pig arc with Cath Kidston wallpaper.
Adam had two conversations this week in which I completely drifted off. I did try, but he started on about grazing patterns and share farming and blahdeeblah and I just start hearing the music from the magic roundabout playing in my head. I just cannot concentrate on Adam, unless he’s being all intense and sexy about Charlie. So for all I know he could have suggested to Brian that they pave over the fishing lodge and put Jenny on the game.
They are renewing the kitchens and the bogs at the Bull. Possibly combining the two for efficiency reasons. A combination urinal and steamer, for instance.
Lewis suddenly popped up again at Lower Loxley, seen but not heard and Mike is apparently coming back to get a job at Berrow Farm. Which makes no sense in anyone’s universe. It’s like all the characters are in a snow globe, someone’s shaking it up, they all go sailing up in the air and wherever they land, they have to start again from there. For instance, Jennidarling and Carole Toboggan are now besty friendies, Ed and Wiwyerm are now doting brothers who went to check on the poachers together. They had lamps and lurchers, which is the name of the new gastro pub in darrington. Anyway, Ed reckons it was four blokes and two dogs in a van that was possibly yellow. Yellow? What was it, a bloody ice cream van?
But the good news is Jazzer returned! Whoopee! He is fed up with Pat’s recurring ratatouille, the after-effects of the chickpea casserole is upsetting the pigs and he’s cheesed off with living at Bridge Farm. I imagine it like the house in the League of Gentlemen. “Here is the downstairs convenience, into which we don’t pass solids.” He said Eddie was a Zen master in the art of abuse. Now I don’t know a great deal about Zen but I’m fairly sure abuse isn’t one of the arts they train.
The only people who’ve twigged that Rob is the devil incarnate is Eddie and Joe. Hurrah for the Grundies! Let’s hope Florence the ferret nips up his trouser leg and gets her razor sharp teeth round his Titchynob.
