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 don’t think Jim should have lent her the money. But.. oh I don’t know- I suppose it’s because i’m old. I think I would have listened and tried to help her rather than shutting her down. If it was one of my dd’s friends....

(You meant Fallon rather than Kirsty, echt.)

Emma’s desperation was super-hyper-real. Definite BOOP. Deserves all the prizes.

As to why she asked Jim ... I guess they have to make the best use of the actors being used for a particular batch of recordings. It brought out the streak of vainglory in Emma - thinking Jim was now ‘on her level’ (crude term) because of the Parish Council connection. And of course, in normal circs Jim would still have refused but he might have taken some interest in the cause of her distress. But his abnormal state made him so much harsher with her.

Absolutely masterly use of Fallon and her husband. Another BOOP for that.

I feel they just used Jim because he was already in today's episode. It was more about showing Emma's character, as she went from determined (asking her Dad to pull out all stops) to desperate (begging a loan from someone she happens to bump into because she knows them and thinks they might be a soft touch) to downright breakdown (asking a policeman's wife to assist fraud and deceive HMRC).

I agree with Bore about how well the actress portrayed it.

Cross-post with Quater - and yes, thinking about it, the interleaving of Jazzer speaking to Harrison and Emma to Fallon was quite deftly done.

Just listened - Emmur sounds positively unhinged tonight.

Wouldn’t anyone be mad with panic in that situation Cat?

It’s so horrible. At the moment it doesn’t look as if they’ll be moving. But even if they do somehow bring that off - I don’t see how Ed and Emma can recover as a couple. The start of their “inourownhome” life has been completely ruined.

And poor George and Keira will see that something is up.

Can someone explain to me why they need lots of money by Friday? It’s a long time since I did this sort of thing- but surely all they need to do is keep up the payments?

Yes, I wondered about that. Just having some money is not going to make failing to mention that Ed is now unemployed any less like fraud, is it?

Actually as horrific as it all is at the moment, I think Emma on her own, away from Ed would be interesting. Bit callous I know but I like Emma, and I think being away from the grundies might save her.

Delurking after years (!) of reading to say that Emma mentioned borrowing less being a good incentive for the bank not to pull out of the mortgage entirely based on their losing Ed's salary. So with a lump sum she could put down more as a deposit, and have a smaller mortgage for the rest, thus making the loss of income less of an issue. It's not entirely unreasonable in principle (and is much more sensible than the fraud plan she tried with Fallon), except that I'd be surprised if she could adjust the terms like that at this late stage!

I wonder if it is more that Emma is thinking they need some cashflow to manage the first few mortgage repayments, because I agree, they must already have the deposit they'd agreed with lender or they wouldn't have been proceeding with sale. But if Ed has a job then surely repayments are something they can manage, and if he doesn't then the lender might withdraw anyway.

Maybe it's just Emma not thinking straight.

I think Emma is clutching at several straws simultaneously. She bumped into Jim and halfway through their conversation she thought he might be another straw to clutch at. So she clutched.

How will Susan react when Emma becomes the talk of Ambridge? With Emma acting so oddly, for how long will the weedkiller remain secret?

Can someone explain to me why they need lots of money by Friday?
Dunno. It's exchange on Friday with completion the following Friday.
Perhaps Friday is the due date for payment for all the furnishings she's been buying.

At least she can get a full refund on the coffee table, since it was bought from Fallon and not a retailer with a strict time-limited reruns window. Unless Fallon is so pissed off with her suggestion today that she refuses to refund?

Can someone explain to me why they need lots of money by Friday? It’s a long time since I did this sort of thing- but surely all they need to do is keep up the payments?

The English house buying system looks very odd from a Scottish perspective, but no I don't understand this either.

The mortgage has been agreed on their current circumstances. I assume that they already have whatever equity they are putting in. Ed is right that losing his job at this stage before the mortgage is taken up should be disclosed. There is little point at this stage in going back to the lenders and saying they don't need so much as the lenders will ask why and would have to re-calculate the terms. As part of that recalculation they can't lie about the change. Perhaps Emma is thinking that once they have taken the loan they will immediately make capital repayments to reduce what they are paying.

Once the loan is taken up, losing your job doesn't breach the mortgage offer. As long as they can still pay it's not an issue.

With Emma acting so oddly, for how long will the weedkiller remain secret?

Well quite. Fallon is going to tell Harrison that Emma was asking Fallon to commit fraud.

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?

I think Neil's salary was £50, so yes, with no mortgage they should be able to help in the short term.

Surely Neil and Susan must have a mortgage, albeit not a very big one? They built that house themselves and sold their old house, No.1 The Green (now owned by Will, rented to Tom et al, future residence of Eddie and Clarrie). Ambridge View is a larger and much better appointed house than the old one and they had no other capital, as far as I can recall. The Horrobins have had no money for Susan to inherit and Neil appears to have no family at all, so no inheritance for him either, except that when he was quite young he was left the land he uses for the pigs by his business partner, farmer Bill Insley (eight acres and a barn, according to my Archers books). I think they built Ambridge View on a corner of that land, which used to be the land for Willow Farm. So no land to purchase, but lots of materials and some tradesmen's time tp pay.

I found yesterday's episode to listen to than Friday's. The sheer desperation in Emma's voice. I agree that in normal circumstances Jim surely would have asked Emma to explain why she needed several thousands of pounds at such short notice.

I think Neil would have offered money straightaway rather than making a bank appointment (wasn't really clear what the appointment was for - a loan?) if he had the means to help.

I don't think Fallon will say anything to Harrison about Emma. She's probably worked out that Ed has been involved in some kind of criminal activity.

This is Ambridge, so normal financial conditions may not apply. But also, it's quite a few years since they built the house. I thought the children were fairly small, and if Emma is now 35, they could have paid it off.

My recording of last night's ep cut off just as Jazzer was telling Harrison the name of the abuser.

What happened next? Did Harrison realise Jazzer was talking about Jim?

It wouldn't be too difficult to work it out - even for Harrison!

Harrison hasn't had a name of any victim - he assured Jazzer it would be investigated as far as possible. But as you say, even Harrison must realise the number of people Jazzer knows - and knows well enough to know personal history of, of something which may have happened 7 decades ago, even in a village of nonagenarians, it's a pretty limited field.

So he'll be asking Jill some searching questions, then...

Also, Jazzer said that it wasn't around the local area, so that discounts most of the Archer clan.

I thought Harrison was disproportionately hopeful and reassuring. How far does he seriously think they could take an investigation with no victims giving evidence or even named?

And, surely, if Harrison stayed at Jim's party, and witnessed the jolly sing-song around the keyboard, Harold's name must have rung a bell.

It is a bit worrying that the identity of the victim will be entirely apparent to Harrison. After all, how many friends does Jazzer have who might have suffered abuse over 70 years ago? And about whom he cares so much he would actually seek police advice on their behalf.

Was hard to tell whether Harrison was being generically ‘serious’ or whether he doubted in this specific case that any prosecution would be successful. I guess the likelihood is that Harold will die before things go much further.

I don't understand how any investigation can proceed if the statement the police receive is from a friend of the victim rather than the victim himself.