Covid is still a mere rumour in Ambridge, which is starting to resemble a religious cult so deeply sequestered from the rest of the country that government regulations have no chance of penetrating therein.
Tracy Horrobin, instead of conducting flirty personal phone calls while staffing Grey Gables’ reception, really ought to be furloughed for the duration.. “Deep pan or stuffed crust?” inquired Jazzer McCreary, leeringly, of their sex-night pizza order. Alas the Sloppy Giuseppe congealed, like his love, on the kitchen counter after Tracy stood him up. Meanwhile, Freddie Pargetter turned down Steph Casey’s offer of a threesome with her fiance, Liam. A mistake, surely: Liam, whose six-pack and double-D pecks Freddie has strongly admired, ought to provide the young squire’s path to a joyous sexual awakening.
Peggy, the Archers’ matriarch, disgraced herself by sending her son, Tony, an ill-considered 70th birthday message, recalling what a horrible time she had when this “aimless” baby was born. As an amateur psychologist, I am qualified to tell you she’s actually anxious about Alice, her pregnant granddaughter, whose alcoholism has triggered memories about Tony’s father, Jack, a chaotic drunk until he incredibly conveniently died while in a nursing home in Scotland in 1972. Keeping up? Luckily, Lilian rose up from the deep like Erda in Das Rheingold to explain this Ambridge lore to those who’ve only been listening for a couple of decades.
Trainee vicar St Shula, after last month’s prison-visit to the slaver/builder Philip Moss, has been having Doubts about her calling; these have involved her requiring people to tell her how marvellous she is. Freddie: “Of all the good people in Ambridge, you’re the goodest.” Neil Carter: “Shula, you’ve always been a special person.” Kirsty Moss: “You have this extra trustworthy sympathetic air.”
The love-in with Kirsty didn’t last long, since Shula’s highly polished morals have prevented her from using her God-adjacent position to wheedle info out of Philip on the whereabouts of “the lads”, aka the slaves Kenzie, Blake and Jordan, to whom Kirsty, in a fervour of guilt, is determined to make amends.
Lynda Snell’s answer to the village’s slavery problem is a “communal purging”. This has a touch of Gilead to it, albeit with a Borsetshire twist. It is only a matter of time before Ambridge, clearly in the throes of secession from the UK, transforms itself into a revolutionary matriarchate. Natasha, Kirsty and Mia “smash the patriarchy” Grundy will engage in a brutal “salvaging” ceremony to punish evil Philip, egged on by Aunt Lynda wielding a cattle prod.
