Ambridge

Our internet connexion here seems to improve over time, though not without the occasional step backward. Now I'm able to listen live to the BBC, (and I must get speakers today...). That's great, but when the connexion was slow, and listen live sounded like a dalek in a metal tank underwater, I got into BBC podcasts. It took some patience, a half hour programme could take 90 minutes to download, so one had to plan ahead. But once downloaded, I could sync it to my phone, put in the head phones, light up the pipe and look out onto the North African night, watching for the Scops Owl, and listen to Front Row, or Start The Week, or... The Archers.

I've been listening to The Archers (which has got a comprehensive website, btw,) since I got my first radio at eleven years old, (my parents aren't Radio 4 people). Since then, I've listened to it on and off. Sometimes, several years will go by when I hardly here an episode, when I've been living abroad.

But now, we have the podcast, and I've gone from being a casual, recreational, take-it-or-leave-it user, to a screaming, wide eyed, mainlining junky, almost overnight... Yesterday was a staggerer, with Roy and Haley's premature baby, Abigail, arriving, and Jennifer threatening Brian with divorce: that was two Major Life Events within 13 minutes, mind.