BBC Radio 4’s long running soap opera “The Archers” is 60 years old this week.
As I anticipated the bumper edition of the show, already hyped to “shake Ambridge (the mythical location of the drama) to the core” I had time to reflect on my own highs and lows during a decade shorter relationship with the Archers and the rest of the good people of Ambridge.
A child of the 60’s, my kids delight when I tell stories of a time before Television, huddling round the radio, (“wireless”as my Mum still calls it), to listen to music and stories.
There is an immediacy with radio, a one to one relationship. When Petula Clarke sang about the lights being bright “downtown”, I knew she was singing to me, I had been downtown on the bus with my mum, we saw the Christmas lights and Petula was on the money.
Listen with Mother, was listened to with Mother and we would all listen while Marjory Antrobus and Walter Gabriel spoke in tones and language rarely heard in the streets of Liverpool . The omnibus edition on Sunday, a compilation of the prior week’s episodes was a focal point of the week in our house.
In my own, 7 year old world, my bed time at 7:30 was heralded by the Archers theme, a bouncy number called “Barwick green” to which at the tender age of seven I had already added lyrics:
Donkey, Donkey, Donkey Donk.
Donkey Donkey Donkey,
Donkey Donkey Donkey, Donk.
Donkey Diddley Donk…..
Hence, once the last syllables of the night’s cliffhanger had been uttered and the closing bars begun, it was “Donkey Donk” and time for bed. “The Vet says it might be Foot and Mouth”…….. Donkey, Donkey, Donkey Donk, and off to bed I trudge.
Many years later, my wife and I are awaiting the arrival of child number 1, while we renovate our house from student hovel to family home, we renew an old acquaintance with Ambridge and quickly become part of a new village with new characters, an Indian lawyer who becomes the target of hate crime, the bumbling but congenial Food-stuff salesman Neil, Newly-weds David and Ruth, the motorcycling Northern accented vicar.
Ruth gave birth to Daughter Pip, shortly before my Wife Jackie brought son Jack into the world. I have to say Jack’s arrival was significantly less dramatic, I don’t recall Jackie saying: ”Look Jeff, It’s a beebie”. Meanwhile, chinless wonder Nigel Pargiter bagged off with recently dumped Elizabeth Archer while looking for a leaking pipe.
As more kids arrived and career took flight we moved to Canada and thence to California. Here, The Archers took on a surreal importance as a link, not to the UK but the idea of the UK, a fantasy land, every bit as false as our neighbor Disneyland but equally enthralling, a place in your imagination, fed by rich characters and gripping stories.
I came to know my way around the Bull, I used to laugh at Sid Perks prices, “Pint of Shires and a packet of crisps, That’ll be five pound eighty five, cheers”, I could smell Eddie Grundy, a mixture of rotten fruit, creosote and cow shit. I knew the snide grin on Brian’s lip and the sham smile from Matt, I think I may have tried out for the panto one year for a speaking part only to be pipped at the post by Titcombe.
In recent years I have despaired of Will and Edward, grew to admire Joleen and still imagine Jazzer to look like an older brother of Gregory from Gregory’s girl. Ruth grinds on my nervous system as she has always done and Tony simply irritates. I am deeply enamored of Lillian, easily my favorite character and the person I would most like to share a bottle of Gordon’s.
Many years later and many miles away, I still listen and stay in touch with an imaginary family in an imaginary place that for me will forever be England.
