Aldridges Assemble! Await the return of the prodigal daughter to Ambridge with the rest of The Archers audience

[PseudoBadger]

I can't resist alliteration

I wonder if Rob's cooking the books.

There not their!
All I heard was Brian saying but the system logs everything. What did C say before that?

performance indicators all look good but the business doesn't seem sustainable in the long term.
I take that to mean that profit is leaking out somewhere.

Leaking out into a blocked culvert.

Leaking out into a culvert blocker

I liked that Adam was showing some loyalty to Ian tonight (and about bloody time too).
I wonder if Charlie's investigations will go the same way as his search for the culvert blocker? I'm still raging that that fizzled out and he didn't just call Steffan himself.

Anyone else getting the feeling that Ian is going to notice something between Charlie and Adam when they all go to Edgebaston? Of course typically Adam is now feeling particularly uxorious towards Ian for maximum dramatic effect when everything blows up.

My feeling is that Ian is already suspicious, and he's going to Edgbaston to keep an eye on them. A few months ago he was lamenting the 'closeness' of Adam and Charlie.

I od hope Charlie's investigations are on going and he'll blast Knob out of the water in time.

Didn't Ian voice his suspicions ages ago, and Adam told him nothing was going on?

Yes Ian had a little chat with Helen who told him he had nothing to worry about even though she'd witnessed the NYE snog.

Can anyone explain the crossword clue involving a little Spaniel (?) and the answer is portico that Jim was discussing with Kenton earlier in the week?

I didn't catch that clue but one in the times quick cryptic recently was something like 'protester married ambridge resident'.

(7 letters)

I'm not very good at cryptic crosswords. The best I can do is half-understand it when working back from the answer.
arf @ little Spaniel - it was a little Spaniard.

Little Spaniard (spanish diminutive ends in an 'o') holds right (oh hang on, it's gone wrong port = left doesn't it?) note (not a clue) in porch.
Answer = portico.

I'll let someone else play with Erroll's clue.

marcher?

Well done *enochroot! I'm rubbish at cryptics.

So am I! I wouldn't have got the spaniard one in a million years.

Could Rob be accepting inflated invoices from suppliers in return for back-handers? That's the only way I can think of for Barrow's profitability to be affected if the right amount of milk is being produced.

But surely if Barrow wasn't showing the profit it should, management would have been down like a ton of bricks? Not just Charlie being a bit concerned?

I think it must be pretty subtle embezzlement, Bertrand. Perhaps the sort only detected by an already suspicious Charlie.

If he had chosen the Channel Islands for a holiday destination it would be even more intriguing but I don't think the Isle of Wight specialises in off-shore bank accounts!

Am I still allowed on this thread given that I have just searched to see if there's an Amex podcast for R and H's holiday?!

Well done enoch - though that was easier than the spaniard one. I think the correct logic for that is 'poco' is little in spanish; the 'holds' denotes that other elements of the clue go into this, which are simply 'r' for right (port is indeed left so that couldn't be right) and then the 'note' is 'ti' (from do, re, me, fa so, la, ti...) so it's po-r-ti-co.

I can only assume Rob is skimming profits from somewhere- wasn't Helen lamenting her lack of money a short while ago? At the Christmas fayre? No mention of it since.

Or maybe he has had to pay off an elaborate cheating of the DNA test to make it look like it wasn't his baby!

Maybe it's simply that Rob isn't that great at his job, spends too long having lunch. Maybe tries to hide it by a bit of rounding up of 'good' figures and rounding down of 'bad' ones ... do that for a while and things won't add up.

Rob is a manager but there will have been a finance person - big organisations like this will have reporting lines and management accountants putting everything together so it shouldn't be too hard for Charlie to find someone to help him

But if all the production figures are correct but it's not adding up as turnover or profit then it could simply be skimming cash off- or am I being too simplistic here? Maybe a Stefan payoff

...or maybe he's just crap at his job.

I'd go for both but he has been in the job too long for it to have gone unnoticed so it must be new

Toby is such a tit