Sack the Sock - put a sock in it or pull your socks up - frankly we're a bit sick of it. The Archers is shit, discuss it here.

[PseudoBadger]

I have it on good authority that this is the thread that people enjoy more than the programme it's about

I'm inclined to agree with you about Jess BYOS In fact I've always thought she's weird (someone who could 'put up' with Knob for so long must be a bit deranged, think of Hellinn!!).

he has delusions of grandeur thinking he is satirical and up there with hardy and shakespeare in his ability to plot

Perhaps a good nickname is Napoleon

Is it possible that a clever writer has been writing a brilliant study of an EA relationship and S O'C hasn't noticed!

I toyed with the idea that J's baby wasn't Rob's but I think she deliberately seduced him back in Feb as a very extreme form of revenge, which makes me think he does have a point when he says she's unbalanced. She always has sounded hysterical to me, though I keep thinking she's Bonnie Langford!

Nauticant Anathem is absolutely brilliant and REAMDE is a corking, not to be put down, thriller.

Toomuchtea google Adrian Beal archers podcast for an archive of old episodes,you shouldfind the legendary salmon party there if you can work out when it was (Lowfield might help with that).

I was going to recommend the Colchester Plumber ... until I realised that he is the aforementioned Adrian Beal!
I think the party was not long before Christmas 2013. Jennifer lent Jess a fish kettle for the salmon and I think that is what is referenced in the 15/12/13 omnibus.

Thanks for new thread, posting before I've read through it all.
Great title & second post.
I wonder if script writers will include the news about Dairy prices collapse today? R & D should just sell up & retire 'up North' & sod the farming.

It would be disappointing if D&R don't have a serious conversation with Pip about this. They can't possibly be ready to spend zillions upgrading their milking technology when we've heard nothing definite about a secure market for the milk.

(I'm listening to an article on this on PM right now.)

I'm about to listen again because Rob confused me yesterday. I thought he sounded properly incredulous that the baby could be his

I think he was more incredulous that he couldn't control what Jess does any more. It must be so satisfying for her.

But I do wonder what goes on with his parents. Surely if they are so keen on the baby and close to Jess she's told them what he's like? From what I recollect, the mother sounded reasonably normal the one time she turned up, and she clearly knew nothing about Helen. It's very odd that apparently she has never subsequently showed any interest in contacting Rob or meeting his fiancée, let alone trying to find out if Rob is going down the same path with Helen. I know it could be that Rob is fobbing her off, but short of going NC it's difficult to see how he could do that - and even if he did she might feel she had a duty to save further potential victims.

The reference in the blog to Jill and Piggoi also suggested that SOC doesn't really pay attention. He bracketed them together as being strong, feisty older women, and seemed totally unaware that Piggoi mostly comes over as seriously annoying and manipulative with her money, and her attitude to her son (at least until very recently) stinks.

Gosh, Tom seems to have forgotten he had Roy as best man. And Roy was clearly 'who the fuck is this guy trying to hook up with me?'

Yawn yawn farm crappy storyline. Kind of reminds me of property ladder where the person decides they want to sell at a certain price and is outraged when no one else agrees.

Sounds like teenar is dreadful. Who hires a manager and then passes all responsibility?

So the 3/8 confusion was supposed to be a trigger for them figuring out he's dyslexic.

Dairy farmerswife - are you able to explain what exactly they visited as it wasn't robotic but involved computers? Like the idea of them not following pips suggestion.

And Ruth is clearly bad with money - 'we don't need to worry about the cost' - look after the pennies!!!

Poor Roy. He may have been a cheating got but he is a loving father.

Get Tom to borchester general - he's swallowed a cliche book

I do hope that NewTom will be able to have nice bonding chat with RichJohn and will discover that the problem is not dyslexia but...

SABOTAGE!

Haven't listened yet byos , just downloading the podcast. I'll be back!

OK... The parlour they went to see was a herringbone. It is probably the most common type of parlour, and it's what you are likely to see on the news reports at the moment. There was one on BBC news at lunch time. The cows stand on each side of a central pit, so their udders face the out, at around the eye height of the operator. They are angled so that from above they look like a herringbone hence the name. David mentioned the 50 degree angle, which is relatively recent, so I'm guessing this is different to the Brookfield parlour. In fact I'm assuming everything they mentioned, they don't have at home. I'm going to have to make a few assumptions about the system they had, but the gist is as follows:

The cows wear collars or eartags which give off a signal to the equipment so the farmer doesn't have to input any numbers. The parlour then feeds the cow an allotted ration according to her yield and stage of lactaction. The farmer has sorting gates on the exit from the parlour so if he needs to segregate a cow he can put it in the computer and it will draft her out automatically, while he continues to milk the other cows. The computer system attached to the parlour also holds records about each cow, including when she calved, how much milk she is giving, when she is due to be inseminated, and what medicines she has been given.

I don't know much about the auto washing of the parlour, I assume they were talking about washing down the concrete surfaces, which is normally done with a heavy duty high pressure hose, but can be automated.

I think the major benefit of the parlour they saw today was it's speed, which is largely due to its size. The farmer mentioned milking 150 cows in one and a half hours. That's similar to us so I'd guess its a 16/32 parlour. It can milk 16 cows at a time. I have no idea how big the parlour at Brookfield is to compare.

The extras, the computer and so on, are the luxuries, and won't speed up milking. They just make the management easier.

Ruth is funny, one minute she doesn't want to spend money on slurry storage, the next money is no object for the parlour.

And Helen - the shop isn't JUST Tina's responsibility, someone has to manage Tina too! In fact I would be having a performance review if she was my employee, and she would be on seriously thin ice.

Thank you! So you still get the human touch but only need one person.

Helen hasn't seemed to have grasped the concept of 'management' and seems to have washed her hands of the shop. who did she think was keeping an eye on tina? another job she assumed her folks would do?

No, it's not that she hasn't grasped management. It's that finally she's come out of her daydream and realised she should be running things better - at the very moment when Rob has told her not to speak to Tom about anything to do with the shop. So she's torn and guilty.

(That's my unauthorised analysis anyway ...)

BOOP-Point: Roy listing the infuriating things he misses about Phoebe.

If you please, what does BOOP mean?

BOOP points: poster called Bit Out Of Practice thought we were all getting very negative so we are trying to mention the positives as well. They are BOOP points.

Today's for me were Tom and Helen wondering how they can help RichJohn.

Helen sounding genuinely happy and relaxed with her brother instead of sounding like an over- wound spring that could break at any time when she's with Rob.

If you're in the NW you can buy it at Booths

www.booths.co.uk/fairmilk/

This article from Farmers Weekly gives some idea. I'm okay except when I run out of milk on Sunday - when Morrison's is closest and open longest.

I think the baby is Rob's, but perhaps if if isn't a good storyline for it could be that he is too spooked to take the paternity test as he has doubts over whether Ethan is his (because he did sleep with Jess at the correct time), and so he begins making CM payments without taking the test. He and Helen later start trying for "their own" baby, struggling TTC and when they seek medical advice it is discovered Knob is unable to father children?

Whatever happened to Helen's friend Rowan (was Rowan the adult or child)? They used to help each other out with nursery pick ups/drop offs, would give poor lonely Henry someone to play with.