Discuss The Archers #107: Beware of the Dragon! Peggy's in her den awaiting bids - who gets the hoard and who gets flamed?

[Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g]

Thank you, @PseudoBadger, for kicking off this long, long series of Archers threads and @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 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!

For newer listeners, lurkers or those who just have no idea what we're talking about, DadDadDad has created this useful thread: www.mumsnet.com/Talk/radio_addicts/3557323-For-Archers-fans-a-guide-to-acronyms-on-the-long-running-discussion-threads-and-any-other-meta-thread-questions-you-may-have BOOP point for him! (See thread for explanation.)

Thanks to @MrsGrindah for inspiration for the title of this thread. I was hoping to find a way to combine it with @C8H10N4O2's inspired suggestion of '"The Assumption of the Ambridge Angel' and @chemenger's comment 'I hope she gets kicked in the head by a horse and wakes up an atheist', but it all got a bit too lengthy.

Odds on Joe shuffling off this mortal coil before this thread ends? We've been marking/anticipating his passing for a while now.

Aw shucks you guys i got my first boop 😊

That is literally the only positive impact this entire garbage fire of a storyline has had on my life to date

Not listened to tonights but oh my days if they do a loan sharks SL i am taking to the streets like it’s paris 1968

WHY WHY WHY WHY WHY whenever anything bad is going down do the protagonists just continue to keep it secret (everyone else colludes in this with the help of the ambridge missing the blindingly obvious/personality transplant fairies) and make poorer and poorer decisions instead of taking the radical step of TALKING ABOUT IT TO SOMEONE SENSIBLE ffs? At his point it doesn’t even add to the drama or build tension because it’s an utterly predictable foregone conclusion!

And this whole mess still has the chemicals in the barn/joe grundy’s inevitable demise hanging over it like the other show waiting to drop

I actually can’t take it. It’s making me miss bollocks like the jennifer’s kitchen refit/missing bunting/kenton inexplicably becomes an internet troll/stupid kate something something goat yoga/anything remotely involving pip storylines, i am amazed.

I actually can’t take it. It’s making me miss bollocks like the jennifer’s kitchen refit No, no, no! Nothing could be as bad as Jennifer's kitchen refit.

At least the current storyline has some decent acting.

I’ve not listened for a week
I think I’m glad

It does! I stopped listening during the kitchen saga. There’s only so many times you can cope with listening to someone go “i’ll make myself a sandwich then’ in a huffy voice

Agree about the good acting, but also about the need, form my point of view, for some light relief. Lynda's dunking should provide that, though it doesn't amount to an SL.

In a mire of abject misery it was fun to hear Emma say what we are all feeling, the awfulness of watching them try in vain is actually too much.

Not fully up to date with the thread but it occurred to me earlier, if Lillian was brought in somehow to help the best thing she could do is persuade Justin to delay the sale but keep the house for them until their situation gets better. I feel so sorry for Emma and the more vile and greedy and irrational she becomes the more I pity her. She's having a total breakdown. The worse they behave the less will be done to redeem the situation. I know it's been said before the Emma actress is devastatingly believable BOOP!

Between Emma and Jim I'm nearly done with Archers. This is not what I listen for. They've broken an unwritten contract somewhere. Maybe I'll give EastEnders another go, it can hardly be more desperate or woeful than this.

Did anyone else listen to tonight's episode on podcast? I've just listened and it was like it was on fast forward. Took way less than the 12 minutes it's said it would be.

Not the worst way to listen to this current, miserable storyline. 😂

Emma said they complete on Friday, and move next week.

Yes, they're completing tomorrow, not exchanging contracts. That's why Justin couldn't budge on the date.

Is there any reason why they couldn't mutually agree to vary the terms of the contract to provide for a different completion date?

Maybe I'll give EastEnders another go,

Is SOC still there?

@MorticiaAddamsIsMyStyleGuru

If you're listening to the podcast on an iPod, there's a setting to listen at normal speed or to speed it up to 1.5x, 2x, 4x etc. IPhone possibly has the same but I don't have an iPhone so I don't know. It's easy to hit it by mistake. I did it once and I thought all my podcasts were broken for a day or so until I found the toggle to reset it. Maybe have a look at that.

Last night Emmur definitely said that she was EXCHANGING this Friday.

Who is doing the legal stuff for them? I don't remember ever being quizzed about my mortgage on the eve of exchange; the solicitor would have contacted the mortgage co and asked for ££ deposit already. They have the £5k from the ram that the mortgage company wouldn't have taken into account. I know they SHOULD inform the mortgage co...

Aside from Tim, Will and Adam who actually knows what Ed has in his barn? Wouldn't/Shouldn't they be advising Ed to shift all trace of it as a matter of urgency?

Tracey H seems to be the only character making any sense at the moment!

Madame Butterface The reason for all the secrecy is because now TA is called a DRAMA so we have to listen to all the bullshit SECRETS, because the producers etc. etc. think we all have to have DRAMATIC TENSION . which we effing don't. Well I don't anyway!

Delurking because this story is driving me nuts!

Why the heck hasn't Emma marched Ed to the chicken factory for a job yet? It is an utterly obvious solution, it will pay better than part time assistant receptionist and Ed is far more likely to get the job.

Also why hasn't she actually sat down and had a proper discussion with Neil? Formulated a plan, she seems to have gone from they need a bit more cash to they need to be able to buy the house without a mortgage which is bonkers!

She has two regular paying jobs the mortgage company will lend based on her salary, even if it is less than they would have lent them based upon joint salaries. In fact given how recent Ed's job with Adam is was it even a major factor in the mortgage offer?

So frustrating!

Yes, they're completing tomorrow, not exchanging contracts. That's why Justin couldn't budge on the date

Is there any reason why they couldn't mutually agree to vary the terms of the contract to provide for a different completion date?

There is no reason why the date could not be changed by mutual agreement. It's not as if the seller needs the money to complete their own purchase.

It's also of course unlikely that Justin is even involved in the routine minutiae of completion of sale dates.

Who is doing the legal stuff for them? I don't remember ever being quizzed about my mortgage on the eve of exchange;

It's just nonsense. They have help set up which allow the monthly payments to be made for anything up to 3 years.

There are more holes in this SL than in my local high street.

Susan hasn't got a whiff of things being amiss? No way is that possible as the whole village would be talking about Emma.

Ed just leaving the stuff in the barn? No way. He'd be shifting it.

Tim has vanished. No way, now he knows Will knows.

Mind you I did enjoy Neil going all "stern-father" - what's that saying about being savages by a sheep?!

I'm not sure I can listen tonight. Emma will probably spontaneously combust. She's being brilliantly acted tho.

Oh Quater Don't. I hate all the telly soaps TA is the only one I listen to, because it wasn't ALL misery. Now I'm not so sure.

And the tragic thing is that they could have got the same drama without this nonsense. What they seem to be utterly unaware of is that we care about Emma/or can't stand her, but whichever side we are on we have feelings about her. Therefore scenes showing her anger/shame at Ed losing his job, her concern that they wouldn't be able to pay bills etc, her worry that he would go to jail, even concen that they would be the talk of the village. This would have been drama enough. The invented drama about deadlines and mortgages is distracting from the actual sl which is how we as listeners care about Emma and Ed. It's infuriating.

“ Why? Why do you listen to this mum? “ says DS age 16.
“ Erm, I’m addicted?”
“ Terrible role model.”

Yes exactly birds . The drama would have been better because it would be believable, not somehow gratuitous.

Mabel

I think it is brilliantly acted. For the first time ever I cried at TA. It was the line Emm said about she couldn't bear waiting for them to fail.

I've been in a similar situation with DH suddenly losing a job and then a second one in short succession (he wasn't doing anything illegal though it was just the recession) we'd just crawled out of the hole the first redundancy put us in then got pushed back into it by the second. We went through the whole trauma of job hunting and the way the SW have that is bang on, we went through so many "oh sorry, I've just taken on someone else, of you'd rung two days ago" or waiting weeks for interviews and decisions only to be let down, or the classic "you interviewed really well....but".

I got to the point where I started to lose it over money, I wasn't going round the place asking acquaintances to pay my mortgage but I lost it one night going through the house in a frenzy finding things to sell because we had a (not even very big) bill coming out of the bank in 2 days and no money. The consequences of not paying it wouldn't have been that bad if it had just been paid late but the pressure had built in my mind so much I lost all perspective and sold some things I really regret selling now just to pay a stupid bill.

I remember standing in the kitchen one day as DH had just missed out on yet another job he was hopeful of after waiting two weeks for interview and a week to hear and saying in tears " the rejection I can take, it's the hope I can't stand"

Last night's episode brought all that back

P.s. we are mostly ok now but it doesn't half hammer home to you how thin the line is between comfortable and just surviving