Thread 98 - Discuss The Archers here! If you don’t give a ha’porthfor Pip come and add your two penn’orth - we do enjoy a bit of change counting (especially if it’s in old money)

[Bittermints]

Many thanks to @LilianGish for the title (again - she has real gift for this!). Further thanks due to @PseudoBadger for kicking off this long, long series of Archers threads and to @DadDadDad for being our resident statistician and keeping the ball rolling when Pseudo stepped back a bit.

All views on The Archers welcome here! New blood welcomed. We don't all agree on all points and most of us are posting tongue in cheek a lot of the time, so don't worry about revealing that you'd like to be Susan's best friend or other odd unusual views.

Spoilers: not on this thread, please. We don't wait for the omnibus to discuss the weeknight episodes, but we do try our best to avoid cross-contamination from www.mumsnet.com/Talk/radio_addicts/3439443-keep-it-to-yourself-the-archers-spoilers-thread-4, where spoilers are positively welcomed!

(Change counting references arose specifically out of a nostalgic discussion on the previous thread, if anyone is intrigued.)

Thanks for that, Saturday. Are you a lawyer? (you sound like you're familiar with court procedure).

Here's my transcript of what JD said: the '...' are there because it seems there's a pause in the sound where I would have expected JD to be saying 'or'.

"For clarity, the criminal charge Brian must answer is 'causing and / or knowingly permitting pollution to a watercourse ... groundwater under environmental protection regulations'"

Can his defence be that he had no way of knowing that it would get into the groundwater?

Fascinating stuff indeed. But what is still grating with me is the awful Alice - had to walk a short distance in the rain and was so rude with her "Mum! Towel!" demand like a teenager.

Searching online, I suspect the SWs have paraphrased existing legal texts, as I can't match the exact phrase.

But what is still grating with me is the awful Alice - had to walk a short distance in the rain and was so rude with her "Mum! Towel!" demand like a teenager.

Yes hence my TASWAMA comment upthread - I hate they way they have given Alice a personality transplant. She used to be a bright, hard working friendly girl who was thoughtful about those around her.

The current Alice is unrecognisable.

I am really struggling to follow both Home Farm and Bridge Farm logic at the moment. HF and Spiritual Home / Kate disappearance doesn’t stack up, Brian pleading not guilty is nonsense.

Bridge Farm don’t seem to have any partnership structure so Natasha suddenly has a seat at the table. Nor do they have a business plan. Lets expand into an education centre and run cheese making classes. Oh no there was no demand for that, Let’s have some dairy cows and some trees and get rid of the beef cows. No, we’ll get the dairy cows, keep the beef cows and expand massively into online veg-and-everything-else-boxes from the current process of Pat going round in the van to drop off seasonal veg boxes.

And also didn’t Shula want to get rid of boring Al so she could go and travel the world and be all adventurous-like. She’s done some karate and now a bit of life painting. In Ambridge. Why doesn’t anything progress anywhere?!

Searching online, I suspect the SWs have paraphrased existing legal texts, as I can't match the exact phrase.

I can’t either. And the offence must have been an offence at the time Brian allowed the waste to be buried which was years ago. It presumably predates all the current EU regulations.

I may have watched too many court room dramas but does the charge not have to refer to a specific law - eg contrary to section 5 b of the environmental protection law of 19**?

You are right Merde, Alice was on team Brian, at least until perjury was mentioned anyway.

I too hate the way Alice is portrayed. The way she demanded a towel from Jenny was so unnecessarily rude.

I think Shula's failure to do anything is great and I don't hold my breath for her life drawing classes. Alistair is doing amazingly. She did him a great disservice in the way she ended their marriage. I'm still annoyed that she was so put out that she was so put out that he wouldn't ditch his business at an important time to go travelling with her on a midlife crisis whim and the dumps him over a curry not being exciting enough. It irks me that if Alistair had agreed to go on holiday he'd probably still be married, yet we can see it's not him that lacks the ability to do new things.

None of this would annoy me half as much as it does if it wasn't for the fact that she's supposed to be a Christian, but I've never felt she really respected her marriage vows with all her crushes and no attempt to save their marriage at all.

DDD - so glad you were amused by my cow-tow. I must confess it was only when I came to spell it properly that I realised its potential - I'm surprised it hasn't come up before. Happy I was able to milk the situation for your amoosement. I dairy say you'll be able to add a few more yourself

Why doesn’t anything progress anywhere?!

Peter (who I don't remember) progressed to an intendant job in Germany.

Sophie (admittedly an outsider) progressed out of her engagement to David and into a hotshot design career in London.

Debbie progressed to Hollywood Hungary.

Lovely Vicar Janet progressed further in the Church's favour (carrying off Siobhan's husband, too).

Brenda (eventually) progressed out of her engagement to Tom, via dodgy Russian dealings, to a job and engagement in London.

Amy progressed into a nursing career outside Ambridge.

Kate ...

Alice - tried.

Phoebe and Lily are trying ...

Migration claims the brightest and best. (Men: Nelson, Kenton, Adam - are severely punished if they leave and return.) Guess 7.02 pm would be rather quiet if too many of them succeeded in their escape plans!

Very true re Shula! Round the world trip to Borchester ...

waves enthusiastically Hi Molecule and Paste*

I love overthinking and now I have a new device with a physical keyboard over typing too.

C8 I love your point about mainly hearing Natasha's voice through Tom. I still wonder why Tom wasn't allowed back to her place but agree the issue is with Tom having zero focus or or common sense. He's just following his willy heart. I thought Helen sounded very unimpressed but just too busy to deal with him then, and possibly didn't realise the full extent of his scheme. I dislike Helen but I hope she comes good here.

Something went very badly wrong with my last two posts. Those sentences were positively shambolic and as the bad bolding. Reading it back I feel I must be drunk but I've not had a drink since New Year. Sorry.

Aw I loved the bolding - made me feel special. Helen was never my favourite character but I listened all through TunaBakeGate and I felt such sorrow and a desire for her to escape and thrive. I've mentally given her a free pass until 2020.

Maybe you've got Auto-brewery Syndrome, Inky!

Shula just didn't want to be married anymore, she didn't love Alistair, the stuff about travel was desperate last throw of the dice. She shouldn't be made to stay in a marriage because of her religion. That would have been even worse for Alistair. I actually think she sounds happy. Trying to find her way a bit but happier.

It would appear I do

I don't begrudge anyone leaving an unhappy marriage. I just don't think she gave hers a fair chance. You can't work at it on it on your own. Okay maybe I begrudge Shula a bit, but I wouldn't IRL. Oh who am I kidding? The Archers is life.

I don’t know what a farm diary

In my father's case, they were small picket diaries, usually from one of the feed companies, and contained exciting information like "60 Acres - Maris Otter" indicating the field known as 60 Acres had been sown with Maris Otter barley that day. It contained other gems like "George the Bleeder", indicating that tuberculin testing should be happening that day, and "NFU Meeting."

Had he done anything like Brian, and I am pretty sure he wasn't that stupid, it would have probably just said something like "Whatever Bros, waste delivery, South Wood." And we would have binned any paperwork when he had a hear attack in 1992, and we took it as an excuse to tidy up the office of most stuff older than 10 years (except the diaries.)

Brian's could be more exciting, but I don't suppose he was daft enough to put in things like "tryst with Mandy Beesborough."

Oh, Lucy Perks progressed to NZ.

She did!

I think George the Bleeder will have to be added to my list of future nicknames ...

Excitement in the Mammoth household, a copy of The Herefordshire Breed Journal, has magically appeared( DH and local pub implicated).
Full of pictures of handsome cattle, with ‘condition’.
I could not find Brookfield in the herd listings though.

Do any of Alice's family notice her drinking problem?

Returning to the subject of Shula, and speaking as a horsey person, I just don't "buy" the fact that she is casting around for additional things to do (karate, life drawing, mah jong, maintaining graves etc).

If you own a livery (or riding school or both) especially a hunting yard, you are flat out all day every day. The hours are brutal. Unless you are hideously rich and can afford lots of staff to do all the work for you. But most yards I know are fighting valiantly to survive and have cut all their margins to the limit (particularly so with the price of feed just now). It just isn't credible that Shula has time on her hands.

Similarly (to a degree) with Helen and the cheese-making which is back-breaking endless work which requires you to fit your schedule around the cheese and not vice versa. I know there are three of them at it, but still, Helen never seems to be in the dairy at 3am or bound by setting times etc.

Am on catch up listening.
Tim has an air of Matt Crawford methinks.

She shouldn't be made to stay in a marriage because of her religion. But if she professes a religion which regards marriage as "for better or worse ... till death us do part", then she should make some effort to keep the marriage going. Or is religion pick'n'mix?

Are the Anguses just pets then.

Or is religion pick'n'mix?

I think Shula has often been hypocritical in this respect but that still doesn't mean she should stay in an unhappy marriage. However I think she was cruel in the way she just dropped it on him without even so much as a period of marriage counseling.

In particular as both live and work in an area surrounded by her family, many being his customers.