The Archers #93: The Flower and Produce show - who's going to get their just desserts. Freddie? Ellis? Russ? Pass judgement here.

[DadDadDad]

No, that's not a jokey exaggeration, this is really the 93rd thread in a series started by PseudoBadger five years ago! In fact, post number 90,000 in the "official" count will be made on this thread.

Lovers of The Archers welcome (along with the rest of us who have a more complicated relationship with the "TA" ).

One rule we try to stick to: No mentioning of future episode plotlines published in the Radio Times etc. However, once an episode has aired, say what you like!

What is going to happen to Freddie? And are we ever going to hear from Lily again?
I also am wondering what it will take for Kenton to apologise to Fallon...

It took me a while to find the poem, so the thread's moved on since, but I love this on the subject of pockets in women's clothes. It's by Sharon Owens:

DANGEROUS COATS
Someone clever once said
Women were not allowed pockets
In case they carried leaflets
To spread sedition
Which means unrest
To you & me
A grandiose word
For commonsense
Fairness
Kindness
Equality
So ladies, start sewing
Dangerous coats
Made of pockets & sedition

Fink that's brilliant! Is it true - that the omission of pockets was politically motivated?

Caffeine my understanding is she's just another farmer who's done stuff with Nuffield - possibly she also had a scholarship - and that several of them formed a kind of study group to swap ideas and challenge each other. I took it that part of the point of the Nuffield thing was to put farmers in touch with one another. I don't think she works for or is advising under the auspices of Nuffield.

On pockets: I reckon if you sewed up* all the pockets on men's clothes, you would incapacitate us so badly, women could take over at a stroke.
*because obviously all you ladies know how to sew.

she's just another farmer who's done stuff with Nuffield

I don't think that she is a farmer, her background is marketing. She just happens to have chosen a farming-related thing to sell. I think I recall that she comes from a farming family but she is hands-off and focuses instead on things like production and promotion.
All her advice is standard management-speak and not slanted towards farming matters.

On conferences: Lillian - I think you're conflating a couple of things.

A few years ago, Adam and Brian attended the "Cereals" event, and I was literally listening to that episode as I drove past the field in Cambridgeshire where it was happening. Very exciting!

Then another time, when I was at an actuarial conference, I was live-posting in my coffee break on these threads. (Presumably, the conversation with other actuaries had dried up; I can't imagine how that happened... ).

I reckon if you sewed up ll the pockets on men's clothes, you would incapacitate us so badly, women could take over at a stroke.

I can sew, but it would be quicker just to cut them off.

Fink that's brilliant! Is it true - that the omission of pockets was politically motivated?

Call it poetic licence. I think the omission of pockets is more strictly a 'but women are so dainty, their clothes must be light and pretty, not weighed down with bulky pockets and their contents' type thing. Along those lines, at school we were forbidden from carrying handkerchiefs in our pockets (when we had pockets) on the grounds that they would distort the shape of the clothes. But certainly there's an idea that political involvement, sedition, moves for change etc. are unladylike, and be-pocketed clothes are unladylike - I wouldn't want to make a formal causal link between the two without proof, but as a poem and an idea it's fun.

Is that Russ in the Radio 4 adaptation of Henry James‘ What Maisie Knew?

At my fairly posh grammar school, if we were caught walking home with our hands in our pockets we had to have them sewn up.

wurzel - how could I have not spotted that! I heard that and was racking my brains wondering why the father sounded familiar - sort of like Anthony Head, but not him. Yes, I think it was Russ, manipulating a few women by the sound of it.

Fair enough, another food producer. (She’s not just reselling, they talked about the size of the orchard). But I think she’s another Nuffield Scholar. In fact, looking at their website, I don’t think Nuffield do anything apart for the scholarship programme and the related conferences and study groups: www.nuffieldscholar.org/scholarship-journey/

I’d always assumed it was becasue they would distort the shape and what would women need with practical items anyway etc etc but the poem works either way, it’s the same sentiment!

On a more violent note you’ve reminded me of the Christy Moore song A Stitch in Time where the woman sews her alcoholic abusive husband into the bed and then beats him with various kitchen implements.

wurzel - just googled it: Andonis Anthony = Mr Farange in Henry James = Russ. (trying to steer this back to TA after witch's dark turn...)

Sorry

Fink Thanks for that, it's brilliant

Pockets were originally small bags held round your waist on a ribbon, rather than an integral part of a particular item of clothing. (Hence "Lucy Lockett lost her pocket.") If you're wearing layers of petticoats or even hooped skirts, they're unlikely to ruin the line of the dress so much; it's only really from the 20th century that you start getting concerns about the line of clothing, because they become much closer-fitting with far fewer under-garments. I would rather have good-sized useful pockets than a perfectly smooth pair of trousers or a dress or skirt.

We had better get a pocket reference or two in scripts a few weeks down the line.

We had better get a pocket reference or two in scripts a few weeks down the line.

You've jinxed it now. The SWs won't want us to know that they know that we know think that they read this thread. After the obvious actuaries reference, they'll probably need to play it cool for a bit.

Aah but Chanel suits have pockets in them, I don't think there's anything sexist about it! glamorous Your school sounds off the wall to me !!

Did you wipe your noses on your sleeves?

Ahem....Meanwhile on the Archers..... Will Hannah blackmail Tom, somewhere down the line? What does mystic Bore see in the sorting bowl?

Scrying..... blummin auto whatsit

did you wipe your noses on your sleeve
Haha. We'd probably get away with getting a hanky out. We weren't allowed to eat on the way home either and had to wear our hats at all times and run the gauntlet of the secondary modern boys. We couldn't wear patent leather shoes in case they reflected our knickers which had to be white and were checked by the PE teacher. It was a different world in the 60s.

I think Hannah will definitely put a spanner in the works for Tom and Natasha. I also think she'll play the same game with Jazzer.

I don't know why I didn't connect the father in What Maisie Knew to Russ, as I thought both were Greg Wise at first!