I’m desperate to get back to banal life in Ambridge

Is anyone else pining for Ambridge? Not the edited, hatch-matchdispatch highlights being drip-fed to us, but the real stuff? Susan’s banal inquisitions at the village shop, Hilda Ogden the cat taking vindictive swipes at Kate, Adam grumbling about his late nights in the lambing shed?

The thing about everyday tales of farming folk is that their beauty, their enduring appeal, dwells in their sheer everyday-ness. I realise that floods, fires, stabbings and early onset hairloss are cracking storylines, but they are for incomers and tourists. If you don’t appreciate Helen in the dairy, you have no right to tune into Helen in the dock.

Those who witness my fury if they so much as enter the room at 7pm, will know how much I love everything about The Archers. At one time, I rather fancied my chances with Brian Aldridge, but that was long ago.

As with real life, it’s the little absences that add up. Nobody is missing weddings; we are all missing chit-chats, gossip, coffee with in-laws, and a convivial pint down the pub.

For lots of people, The Archers is vicarious living; the grazing Montbéliards and regal alpacas, the country highways grown over with frothy cow parsley, the rewilded byways, the excitement of spotting a wood warbler in the village bird hide.

I understand a series of monologues is in the pipeline, and I look forward to hearing them; Tracy Horrobin’s Guide to The Archers in February was a little gem (as is she) and well worth a listen.

But I am desperate to get word of what’s been happening in Ambridge. I dread to think what modern slave master Philip has been up to, but at least it’s a break from explaining he doesn’t actually own horses, and if he did, yes, he would put them out to grass instead of keeping them locked up between shifts on his building site.

Poor Linda, too. Will we ever stop referring to her as Poor Linda? How are a reunited Emma and Ed getting on? Life in my house won’t be back to normal until the accordions of Ambridge play once more.