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.

I feel for Emma. She's made some poor choices but she works incredibly hard (tea shop/upcycling/chicken factory/cleaning) and isn't above getting her hands dirty. She does her share around the house and negotiates some very difficult family dynamics. She's lived in a caravan, with her parents and with her in-laws for years. She is 35 and more than ready to be living in her own place.

I'd like to see her doing something with her brain - lets hear more about her being a parish councillor.

A reluctant BOOP point for the scriptwriters sustaining the feuding brothers storyline over almost two decades. Emma was only 19 when she fell pregnant with George, and barely 20 when she went ahead with her wedding to Will, despite suspecting that she was pregnant with Ed's child.

I can remember the debacle over the DNA test, and Emma's disappointment when it turned out that George's father was Will, not Ed.

What I can't remember is why she went ahead with the wedding? Why did Ed think that it was ok to sleep with his brother's fiance? Why did Will want to get married relatively young? He proposed on Emma's 19th birthday, so he would have been 20, and then they married when he was 21 and Emma just turned 20.

It's all round bad timing for Ed. His FIL has, only a few days ago, sold off his pig business which could have been a nice little earner, what with Tom's contract and all that. I know pigs aren't Ed's thing, but any port in a storm ...
Actually, what's happening to Neil's windfall? Susan could insist that it goes towards the mortgage. I bet that she, more than ever, is pleased that she married Mr Dull-but-Dependable.

Emma got some compensation from the Criminal Injuries Compensation Board after she was hurt when Ed crashed Will's car, which he had taken without Will's consent, with Em in it. Her legs were hurt, but I assume she made a full recovery as nobody ever refers to this now.

Anyway, she decided to splurge the lot on having a big wedding and an expensive honeymoon in Mexico. I think that was one reason for pressing on with the wedding pretty soon after the engagement. Then she had the ONS with Ed after her hen do. By the wedding day she knew she was pregnant. There was that tense scene when she wouldn't go into the church and Will had to come out and talk to her in the graveyard to see what the problem was. She told him she was pregnant but not that there was some question whose baby it was. That was unforgivable but understandable, I suppose.

Oliver saw which way the land lay and sent Ed off to Hungary for a bit. Didn't he return with an American girlfriend, Beth?

Neil isn't dull! Let's not forget what seems to happen when Susan makes chilli.

He did! And was Emma’s nose put out of joint ...

The dinner party / Sunday lunch (?) to which Will and Emma invited Ed and Beth (if that was her name) stands out in my memory as epically excruciating - it was possibly less exciting at the time.

(On a current Chalet School thread we’re fascinated by the innumerable episodes of ‘special milk’ being administered, often by matrons to women who are a bit upset but mostly by young male doctors to errant schoolgirls ...)

I think EdnEmmur are doing the right thing going ahead with the move (if Ed doesn't screw that up too). They've done the hard part which is make the case for them to a secure one of the affordables against tough competition and raise the deposit. They'd still have to find the rent if they were living anywhere else and I bet the mortgage is comparable to or even less than rent with more security.

Emmur is right, say nothing and stick it out, they might be living on bread and jam for a couple of months but losing everything they have worked for would be worse.

In terms of a job for Ed, doesn't his FIL run a massive pig farm? Surely there'd be something to tide him over and Adam will soften and give him a reference in a couple of months as that is unlikely to affect Home Farm

I’m worried about the chemicals in the barn.

I think Emma's right, too. Surely Neil and Susan could sub them enough to cover the shortfall for 2 months, and by then Ed would have something else.

Emma might be right to try to push ahead with the move, but she's dead wrong trying to conceal the change in circumstances from the mortgage company. We don't need Mystic Bore to see that that's going to come back to bite her.

I can understand her frustration & anger, but she was also annoying me last night with her 'No one is going to take this away from me.' Not only for the obvious hubris which is bound to go wrong, but mainly because she's excluded Ed from it; it's 'No one's going to take this from me' not 'us'.

When Emma was married to Will, they lived in the tied house which they named Casa Nueva. Since leaving Will she's lived with her parents, in a caravan, in Rickyard, and with the Grundies. Has she ever had housing as good as Casa Nueva since the marriage ended?

Also, is Will's present house still the same house as Casa Nueva, but renamed?

Greenwood Cottage. (BBC link.) It was re-named when he and Nic married I think.

I doubt that Casa Nueva could compare to the Grange Farm house - expensively re-furbished after the flood by Oliver and Caroline. (Tbh some people might say Emma’s domestic situation has been more than she could ever have dreamed of - and perhaps wonder why she and Ed haven’t shown more interest in making the Grange Farm tenancy a more permanent thing.)

Emma's humiliation and desperation was brilliantly portrayed by the actress (whose name escapes me).

Emerald O'Hanrahan. Yes, she's great.

Oh poor Emma.

Why couldn’t Jim have been kinder?

I thought he was pretty restrained in the circumstances. Nobody's ever dashed up and asked me to lend them several thousand pounds immediately but I'd have reacted pretty much as he did, I think.

And why is Neil going to the bank?

Why does Emma need a lump sum by Friday- am I missing something?

If a very distressed person you knew quite well asked you for a loan, wouldn’t you at least ask why?

I don't think that Jim was unkind. I wouldn't be too impressed to have an acquaintance turn up and ask me to lend him or her thousands.

But Ed did try to tell Emma about Tim and she batted it aside because she was so fixated on the house. I admit though I don’t like her so she can’t win in my eyes!

Neil and Susan own their house outright, have no major expenses and both work, with Neil taking home a considerable salary - £30-40k? Surely he has money in the bank to loan her a couple of months' pay to cover Ed?

Just listened...why on earth would Emma ask Jim? I mean I know she’s desperate but why Jim in particular?

I don't think Jim was unkind at all, and it was for Emma to say why she wanted the money, not for him to have to ask. Also the function of Emma's desperate begging is to show just how far she's willing to go to keep the house, e.g. asking a person (Jim) with whom she has no connection of friendship, her dad ( OK), and Kirsty, being willing to have her cheat HMRC on her behalf

As for Jazzer.....beyond ridiculous, unless the whole Jim/Jazzer/Alistair SL is, as I've argued before, an object lesson in how not to behave towards the who've disclosed to you. What's he's done isn't wrong in law but it's entirely high-handed in terms of the SL.