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.

Taswama, I was about to say yes, that would be Jaxx cafe in Borchester, which Kenton was nominally managing, but was that Emma or Fallon? Can't remember now. May have been both, at different times.

Emma definitely worked at Jaxx with Kenton. I’m not sure about Fallon. All I remember of her was the band and shifts at the Bull. She and Ed also had a brief ‚thing‘ but Ed loved Emmurr so it wasn’t a goer.

So Susan doesn’t know the whole story but goes off to the fete anyway?

She'll have Neil's guts for garters when she finds out he knew and she didn't.

MumsNet in general should be most displeased that Neil was willing to lend money to Emma and didn’t discuss it with Susan first. In this instance MN is right IMO.

I think Neil's behaviour over this has been very out of character.

Rushing off to the bank without sitting Emma and Ed down to discuss the situation properly, not talking to Susan about it and now not giving her a heads up about why exactly Emma is back with them.

Neil is usually far more level headed than this. There's a reason Helen asked him to give her character witness testimony at her trial.

I’m confused. What does Susan know? I thought she knew about Ed and Em splitting up? Does she know they’ve lost the mortgage and so the house?

It’s not clear what she knows but she obviously doesn’t know what Neil does

Thanks Gasp0de and Jazzer - yes I was thinking of Jaxx. When was that?

That didn’t make much sense! I meant I can’t believe she knows the full story. Surely she’d be devastated at the news they’d split up...not tripping off to the fete?

Can't remember but it must have been quite a while ago. Jolene and Sid went off to NZ to visit Sid's daughter Lucy, Sid died while out there, Jolene returned home and managed pub alone for a bit, but she was struggling.

Kenton and Kathy split up/had already split up. (Again, can't remember sequence of any of this.) After a bit, Jolene and Kenton paired off. Under a year from Sid's death? I remember thinking it was a bit quick. Kenton moved in and started co-managing the pub with Jolene, after a period when he was still managing Jaxx (?). The man who owned Jaxx decided to sell.

Something like that, anyway! All before the great flood, because Jolene and Kenton were on another holiday to Australia/NZ spending money they didn't have because they were expecting a mega payout from the sale of Brookfield, and when they got back David had changed his mind because of the flood, and the sale didn't happen, leading to a huge rift with Kenton that hasn't healed.

As birdsdestiny commented, Emma's mistakes regarding education were compounded by class. It's much easier to guide your child through a system you are familiar with yourself. Neil and Susan wouldn't have had the experience to be able to help Emma.

But they're neither of them stupid. It's difficult to believe that they wouldn't have been well aware that Emma could retake GCSEs; if they were in any doubt about it they could have talked to her teachers.

It's not just gsces is it though, to be brutal that won't generally get you far enough. Its a levels and university. All of that requires some level of push/ expectation from parents and also the need for the child not to be earning money. And not getting pregnant when you are young. And not marrying someone unsuitable.

There are lots of people with no GCSEs or qualifications, if you’ve got them you just assume everyone else does too. I agree that Neil would have spoken to Susan about getting a loan, she’ll be furious.

Susan HAD to go to the fete wasn't she helping to run a stall? I enjoyed Shula and Lynda's contribution,especially Lynda, with her 'forearmed'

I did think that the silverband would play anyway. It was a break from Em n Ed.

I thought that the whole thing with Susan and Chris was that she was very disappointed that he chose to leave school and pursue a trade, it took a long time for her to understand that his farrier apprenticeship was actually quite prestigious, though she came round completely when he had his ceremony in the Guildhall. So the starting point there was that Neil and Susan (or Susan at least) did want their kids to do A levels and probably University. Susan has always valued office work above manual labour. I know Chris was second but I can’t imagine she changed her outlook on life in the space of a couple of years and had different ambitions for Chris than for Emma. In fact presumably Emma dropping out of education made it even more disappointing when Chris appeared to be doing the same?

I agree, Argumentative (). I think Susan would have loved it if either or both of the children had ended up in a well-paid office job or another professional role. However, she and Neil didn't have that background themselves and Emma wasn't academically inclined. Mike and Betty were of a very similar background and income level, their children are similar ages to Ed and Emma, went to the same schools, and yet both Roy and Brenda did well at school and went on to get degrees and white collar jobs. The only difference I could put that down to if this were real life and not the SWs deciding one of the working class families could be allowed some social mobility is natural academic ability.

So the starting point there was that Neil and Susan (or Susan at least) did want their kids to do A levels and probably University.

Yes, indeed. But they weren’t in a position to lead by example or to make the academic route seem natural and inevitable. So Emma would have needed both strong personal motivation and proactive encouragement from her school to make that leap.

Chris was perhaps lucky that he fell in with a different crowd at a crucial point. Rather than hanging out with Grundys he was partying with Alice and her chums. I don’t remember the chronology of how his socialising intersected with his work life - but he definitely encountered wider horizons than his poor sister.

Isn't anyone in Ambridge wondering why it's taking so long to produce Phoebe's exam results?

Chris was perhaps lucky that he fell in with a different crowd at a crucial point. Rather than hanging out with Grundys he was partying with Alice and her chums. I don’t remember the chronology of how his socialising intersected with his work life - but he definitely encountered wider horizons than his poor sister.

Ah yes, who can forget the heee-LAIR-ious comedy of Chris’ girlfriend Nisha being invited to tea, Susan’s village-wide quest for a pearl aubergine and the revelation that she was not Nisha Patel whose Dad ran the corner shop in Waterly across but Venetia PoshGirl. (It was a little bit funny actually ).

I suppose Chris hanging out with Alice and her chums had something to do with her slumming it at the state 6th form college. Though if Chris left after GCSEs maybe they didn’t overlap.

Good point about Roy and Brenda Gasp0de.

Isn't anyone in Ambridge wondering why it's taking so long to produce Phoebe's exam results?

The results are definitely out, have been for a while. I guess people just care about their own problems and lives more than someone else's exam results. We haven't heard from Phoebe (since Rosie's pastry IIRC) or any of her close family recently, except Brian (Kate doesn't count, she's probably not even aware that Phoebe sat finals this year). I'm sure they're celebrating privately ... until a plot requires the results to be made known!

Rosie's party, obviously.

Mmm, pastry.

Rosie's party wasn't that long ago, and we heard plenty from Phoebe then.

Actually it was tamarind that Susan was scouring the county for wasn’t it?

I need to get out more....

If someone had said at the beginning of the year that by August Lily and Russ would still be going strong (I assume, we've not heard anything recently) but Emma and Ed would be on the rocks I'm not sure any of us would've believed it.

Although given the determination of the SW's to always have some Grundy misery on the boil, possibly not...

I don't want to beat my own drum, but I did mention that the S.Ws wanted to split (or nearly split up) a few marriages. 'Cos it drama innit?