In 1665, a consignment of cloth from London brought the plague to Eyam in the Peak District. Bravely, the villagers quarantined themselves from the outside world. Over the next year, more than half of them died. I visited the village last autumn, when such exotic excursions were allowed. An odd choice for a 2020 holiday trip, but salutary.
Ambridge is Eyam in reverse. It continues to be the village that the plague forgot: the New Zealand of the Midlands. The mysterious force field that prevents all but a lucky few from arriving in, or departing from Borsetshire – I imagine entry and exit to be via a wardrobe hung with fur coats – has served it well. The borders are secured. No tragic outbreak has struck the Laurels care home. St Stephen’s has resounded to no melancholy funeral bell. The only respiratory disease doing the rounds is blue ear, something pigs get, and even that was a false alarm. There may be the occasional bark of “Mask!” from Jim Lloyd when some entitled, semi-Covid-denying capitalist like Brian Aldridge stomps into the village shop but otherwise, you’d barely know there was a pandemic on.
There’s even sex between personages from separate households, thanks to Borsetshire’s own Beatrice and Benedick, Tracy Horrobin and Jazzer McCreary, who “upgraded” their flirtation in the cricket pavilion. Meanwhile Elizabeth seems to have gone all in with “Dodgy” Vince Casey, who has shown a sudden interest in contemporary art, airily discussing Jean-Michel Basquiat with disgraced art teacher Russ. “Plenty of people,” he said, “assume you hand in your brain when you become a meat wholesaler.” I admit I’d never given the topic much thought.
But enough of these fripperies, because Ambridge has been rocked to its foundations – that is, to the foundations of the children’s playground, the Grey Gables kitchen wing, and the Brookfield barn conversion. Welsh builder Philip Moss, who gave everyone mates’ rates, has been unmasked as a modern slaver. All are duly convulsed by guilt, horror, anger and self-righteousness. David Archer has gone all BLM and threatened to topple the Brookfield barn, like that statue of Edward Colston in Bristol. Kirsty, newly married to the villainous Moss, was taken away in a black maria. Ruth Archer broke a plate.
Wearing robes of white, trainee vicar St Shula Hebden Lloyd, who has most unfairly been called “sanctimonious” by her own sister, glided forth to Philip’s place of incarceration there to minister to the miserable sinner. It didn’t go well – in fact, he called her “a bad-tempered cow”, the worst thing that anyone has ever said to another person on the Archers. It’s possible that some listeners quietly punched the air.
