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.)

How much biggerwecould be???

Yes, but I am prepared to give Natasha a chance if she takes Tom away. And she did imply Bridge Farm wasn't big enough for her ambition. Or I inferred it. It may be wishful thinking on my part.

Brian should have kept the paint-splashed jacket on, it might have got him a bit of sympathy and knocked £10K off the fine.

Remind me, what was her last financial venture and why isn't she still doing it?

it was the fruit juice empire, wasn't it? I imagine she's such a financial whizkid that she now has it ticking along nicely without needing much input from her, thus leaving her free to get into the online veg box business.

Only just catching up after a busy day but yes, Fink, I meant the verbal childcare arrangements were doomed to fail for Pip and Toby , not for people more generally. I'm sure they work just fine for thousands of others!

I don't suppose anyone has given any thought as to possible immigration problems a heavily pregnant, unmarried, unskilled Bulgarian woman might face getting into the UK after 29th March?

It has been mentioned here once or twice.

it was the fruit juice empire

I thought that was current. She was in cosmetics before that, and have Pat unsolicited advice on her eyes.

gave, not have

Back from holidays and just about caught up after an omnibus binge, though not heard tonight’s yet.

I didn’t think Lexi was “just doing it for the money”. I can’t see her coming back in pregnant would be a particular problem, she could come in on a normal tourist visa if necessary, whatever happens with Brexit, I don’t imagine shutting out tourists is going to be an outcome. It’s not like babies born here are automatically entitled to stay. And since she intends to go back to Bulgaria she would presumably have a return ticket.

I think there is the potential to hear different sides of the surrogacy debate, although I’m not sure which character would be likely to voice concerns about “renting wombs” - Emma seemed to be focused on the personal difficulty or otherwise of giving up a baby. I’d also like to hear some more from Lexi about her thought process - it’s pretty insulting to describe her as a “migrant chicken plucker” as though she is incapable of making her own mind up. It’s not like it’s a golden ticket for her, she has been successfully supported her family anyway. By the way, she won’t be plucking them, they have machines for that. There’s a description of the process and its challenges here: www.poultryworld.net/Broilers/Processing/2011/4/Scalding-and-plucking-for-optimum-carcass-quality-and-yield-WP008731W/

I had more time for Emma after she got herself the job in the chicken factory. She could have done that years ago and earned more than scraping about for bits of cleaning work. I still find her massively chippy though.

I missed the discussion about Tim’s intentions. I was also filled with a sense of foreboding, but, re-listening to it as I tried to work out which episodes I’d caught before I went away, it sounded less sinister and like Ed might have found a mentor of sorts. He could do with dropping the hard-done-by attitude too, he and Emma are as bad as each other.

Apparently I’m trying to thwart the stats by putting everything in one post.

I am also STTC at DDD’s revelation that he misses episodes and doesn’t bother to catch up. Where’s your infestment?

🐀🦗

witch - If we use your first illustration I'm leaving!

I don't think Ed can stop feeling hard done by. All the Grundy men (though Will less so, as he had a fairy godmother to rescue him) are suffering a form of PTSD over their ignominious loss of Grange Farm. It's a gaping wound in the psyche of Joe, Ed and Eddie. (And actually, unless I missed it, their response to returning has never beeen quite adequately explored by the SWs.) Clarrie, to my mind, escaped the worst of it because she's not a Grundy. It was a kind of epic, South-American magic -realist blood-shame. Only without the magic.

So poor, lovely Ed approaches every challenge from the point of view of someone who is already a loser, likely to be bested in any battle. That attitude was all over his fractious relationship with his brother and the beginning of his relationship with Emma.

I guess Emma's wound (aside from her Ma's class resentment) is George's paternity - evidence of her own devastating inability to bend the world to her - I guess 'will' is the wrong word - but that.

I don't often praise the editor/SWs - but bringing those two damaged individuals together was a work of genius.

(I hear the faint scratching of beetles ...)

And I'm wrong - the magic was in their being offered a way back into the village and away from Meadow Rise.

I don’t imagine shutting out tourists is going to be an outcome. It’s not like babies born here are automatically entitled to stay

Tourists don't usually pop over to give birth.

Not sure that asking a dyslexic to sort out the veg box orders on his own was necessarily a brilliant idea.

quarter
I'm humbled before the greatness of your post. You've expanded my conception of EdnEm.

One thing I love about TA is that, as in real life, one goes from really liking someone for ages ("go Kirsty, you fearsome woman and save Helen!" a year ago) to really finding them irritating ("go, Kirsty").

I see Natasha, true to her evilness of character, didn't obey the Top Bloke school of BBC non-advertising but instead saw Johnny's photos 'on Instagram'. Grrr. I would expect nothing less from such a harpy.

IIRC, witch, Emma was trying to fit work around young children without having to use paid childcare, hence cleaning, then adding a bit with the cafe/catering/upcycling business (which was also more fulfilling), then a third job at the chicken factory when family support meant she could leave at night. Lots of working mothers build up hours as the children grow (although I don't know many with three jobs, so hats off to Emma). I suppose though the SWs have only recently thought of the food-processing that goes alongside food production, which is the real reason Emma has only recently got the factory job!

There's an S&M in Worcester, so assume Borchester would similarly support one. I thought, despite the name, that it was Felpersham that was Worcester (what with the university, and isn't it Felpersham with the Cathedral?) and that Borchester was Evesham. Or have I got that wrong?

Lovely evening with Netflix last night - Emma, with Debbie playing Mrs Bates (and Dumbledore 2 as Mr Woodhouse).

What does Ambridge have in the way of public transport? I used to know quite well a village near Ambridge which had a Council estate tagged on to it after WWII. Beeching got rid of the railway station, so public transport consisted of a single early bus and 6.00 return bus to get people to work, and every Wednesday there was a bus which allowed people to shop in the nearest small town.

Nowadays it's got 3 buses a day, but nothing to get you home from work.

Ambridge is similar, isn't it? with village with a modern housing estate tagged on, so must have a similar need to get people to urban centres for work.

There's a school bus. Not sure if there's a regular bus. Nearest railway station is Hollerton Junction.

Re recent mention of chicken factory - true, that's not been mentioned before that I can recall, but there used to be a lot of talk of the canning factory. Usha took on a legal case representing women working there trying to get equal pay, or something of that sort. Jack Woolley had a good friend who owned the factory - Sir Something Goodman and his (presumably Spanish) wife Mercedes used to be mentioned quite a lot.

Back with a new account given the latest mumsnet security cockup.

I loved Quater's post too!

Tourists don't usually pop over to give birth. Pregnant women travel, how do you distinguish the ones who are coming to give birth? Presumably she's not going at leave it to the last minute and risk going into early labour in a county where surrogacy is illegal. At least I hope they don't take the story in that direction, it needs thoughtfulness, not drama.

Cromer that's what I meant really, it's the shift element of the chicken farm that could have made it particularly good for not paying for childcare, better than trying to take a baby to a cleaning job (which I think I vaguely remember happening?). Better paid, too, and in my experience transport is often provided in the form of private buses/minibuses.

Newcomer here!

The other day Emma was complaining to Joe about Jennifer standing in the doorway with a knife covered in blood. I seem to remember that Joe made a joke along the lines of: "I hope she isn't a husband killer like Helen".

I thought perhaps they set that whole situation up so that we could see how casually the villagers now talk about it?

Therefore Kirsty is right... Helen should be worried that Lee will soon find out from someone else if she doesn't tell him first...

Pregnant women travel, how do you distinguish the ones who are coming to give birth?

Seriously? The date of any return ticket is going to be after the expected date of birth.

Welcome, @gully24! Great first post - that thought hadn't occurred to me but you could be right. If even Joe Grundy is using it as a throwaway comment, what is Susan saying?!

I also agree with pp (and have said before) that Lee just doesn't seem compatible with Helen long term.Where's Mystic Bore when you need her? I want to know whether he will ultimately have a character makeover so that he does fit in more with Helen and they have a long and happy life together, after a shaky start when she reveals the stabbage etc. Or whether it's a bit like Romeo and Juliet, in that events will overtake them and they'll break up because of her past before they get the chance to discover that they were completely ill-suited in any case.

I’m assuming she’d have a flexible ticket, given the circumstances. And also I didn’t think she acquired any extra rights by having a baby here, so in that sense a pregnancy should be neither here nor there to immigration?

Have we heard anything about what maternity care they expect to access and what they might have to pay for?