All change in Ambridge as the slurry hits the fan
It sounded like “slurrygate” was about to about to come to an explosively messy head on The Archers (Radio 4) on Monday. An encounter in the village shop between new broom Stella, the brains behind the plan to truck liquid muck through Brookfield to Home Farm, and hectoring Ambridge resident Jim Lloyd resulted in a heated conversation that looked like it would kick up a village-wide stink. Fortunately, a second encounter, at the vet’s later in the day, enabled Alistair (Michael Lumsden) – with the help of a stray greyhound, naturally – to de-escalate the situation again, to the point where peace looked in serious danger of breaking out. But will it continue?
Elsewhere in Ambridge, the closure of Grey Gables country house hotel – and impending job losses for villagers Tracy Horrobin, Ian Craig and Roy Tucker – has been the drama’s main focus of late. It culminated late last week in a farewell party that saw the departure of elusive Archers longtermer, and Grey Gables manager, Kathy Perks (Hedli Niklaus) from the series after four decades’ service.
But it is Tracy’s (Susie Riddell, on top form) predicament that has tugged hardest on the heartstrings. Newly unemployed, unable to see a way
forward following a job-seeking humiliation at the hands of a former schoolmate, and lashing out at her cheerleader-turned-executioner former boss, Oliver, she is having a particularly rough time of it. And things went from bad to worse with further disastrous news, when her brother Gary got the offer of a job away from Ambridge, meaning the household income will soon suffer another major hit. Poor Tracy, perhaps she’d benefit from some mindfulness in her life…
Trails for The Music & Meditation Podcast (BBC Sounds and Radio 3 on Mondays) have been everywhere over the past few days, even on TV. Mental health and mindfulness can sometimes feel like the BBC’S go-to solution for all of life’s ills. But this piqued interest because so many people listen to radio late at night, to relax while drifting off, or to while away sleeplessness. Radio 3 already actively serves this audience with the likes of Sara Mohr-pietsch and Hannah Peel’s wonderfully hypnotic Night Tracks and Elizabeth Alker’s Unclassified. And it recently added the mindfully oriented Composed with Emeli Sandé to the late-night line up.
So, a podcast “combining music and meditation to help listeners deal with the stresses and strains of everyday life” doesn’t seem too radical a departure. Presented by the Grammy and Mercury Prize-nominated singer Nao – an engaging new radio voice – it also plays to Radio 3’s strengths, featuring not only a “curated classical soundtrack” but also new music from up-and-coming composers specially recorded for the podcast.
Even so, it was clearly pitched at a younger demographic than mine and a box-set of eight shows, with titles such as You Are Enough, Heal Your Heart and Body Positivity didn’t float my generational boat. Still, I plunged in, and quickly discovered that, while the “inspirational chats” that accompany each session can verge on the cringingly over-sincere at times, the combinations of breathing exercises, music and meditation sessions do the job of inducing a trance-like state of relaxation exceedingly well.
So much so, titles and themes become irrelevant. (If you find the accompanying chat distracting, each meditation is also available as a standalone 10-minute podcast.)
I tried most of them and would say headphones enhance the experience. One session, featuring an extraordinarily powerful piece of new music by the composer Lloyd Coleman, left me so blissed out I could barely pick up my pen to make notes. I just wanted it to continue, and had to go back to remind myself what the theme was. It was “Banish FOMO” (fear of missing out), and in that spirit I would encourage listeners to tune in.
Elsewhere, guaranteed spiritual uplift is also available every day this week in Good Pop Bad Pop by Jarvis Cocker, Radio 4’s Book of the Week.
As a fan of Cocker’s peerless Wireless Nights series, this inventive autobiography – conceived as a rummage through the loft-space of his life – was always going to appeal to me. But I’m still surprised by how beautifully crafted it is, so wonderfully evocative of growing up bright in a world of limited horizons and how John Peel’s Radio 1 show was a beacon of light and focus to so many budding musicians, especially in the 1970s and 1980s. A complete treat, and another thing I’d happily listen to again and again.