The Archers #109: Pulp Fiction! Hammer Horror (Tracy), Carry On (Brian & Neil), Call the Midwife (Adam, Ian, Lexi) - but no political thrillers, Ambridge remains Brexit-free. Nitpick here!

[Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g]

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

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. grin

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 Bucking Frolics and LillianGish for the title ideas, which I had to edit down a bit to get under the character limit.

I wonder if Lily will have gone back to Manchester by the time we've filled this thread.

It’s always been Robert who runs the B and B.

The drug thing sounds a bit fake - or Ian runs the only drug free kitchen in the country. But how many kitchens have in-house drug dealers?

Really, Ed n Emma deserve each other; they’re both so exasperating! I wanted to shout at her when she refused to take any of Ed’s ram money ‘for herself’. What is the point of this stupid pride - surely she must realise that being responsible for the children is a cost to her?

Peggy needn't have rolled over for the Joy tactic. All she needed to do was to say it's her house, she is entitled to say who does or does not come in, and that if Kate wants to be free to leave her on her own for a shag then she needs to admit to her deceit.

It’s a shame but any Grundy storyline is thoroughly unenthralling. Musings about Lily and CMR are most welcome

I suspect we are heading for a new Grundy enterprise, hopefully a good one... Ed and Will will be set up as the new managers of Crowthers under a Justin-David-Brian ownership.

Yes, I rather hope things are heading that way. Not sure if Ed and Will could work together but it would be a way out for Will. What an odd storyline. He would benefit from some sort of psychiatric/psychological support and instead of working on that the family's decided to get him sacked and turfed out of his tied cottage. Riiiight ....

Whoever arranged for Joy to oversee Peggy was most irresponsible. If Peggy needs a carer, she's vulnerable, and to install someone, even for one night, about whom you know nothing is just not on.

Another clumsy attempt by the SW at "humour". Is it that they're no good at subtle adult humour, or do they have such contempt for their listeners that they think we can cope only with slapstick?

If the worry is giving Will access to the means of harming himself, would working in a slaughterhouse really be a sensible alternative to gamekeeping?

But ... Neither Ed nor Will has ever shown any interest in abbatoir-ing. Will’s obsessed with his birds and Ed likes tramping the land in the guise of a dispossessed squire. Would they do it?

Only ... If it happened they’d have two presumably decent-ish salaries between them, and perhaps the Grundys en masse could afford to rent Grange Farm for the rest of their lives. (Could they raise a deposit to buy it if Will sold No 1 The Green?) I’m beginning to wonder if the ever-mobile date of their moving out is about more than simply having Joe die there. Maybe he could die knowing there’ll be Grundys at Grange Farm in perpetuity?

(Though I was forgetting the turkeys! So they do all have experience.)

I suspect we are heading for a new Grundy enterprise, hopefully a good one... Ed and Will will be set up as the new managers of Crowthers under a Justin-David-Brian ownership. It is beginning to look that way - though surely you need more than a hygiene certificate you can acquire on the internet to run an abattoir??? To say nothing of Quater’s observations about Will and Ed themselves. Maybe to SWs are planning for a no deal Brexit where all those pesky EU regulations are removed (before all the lambs to the slaughter are themselves removed because it will no longer be worth anyone’s while breeding them). The abattoir (barely mentioned before the last couple of weeks) must have been incorporated into the storyline for some reason - I can see the nuts and bolts again so I’m not really enjoying it.
Re Joy not being a suitable carer - isn’t the point more that Peggy doesn’t actually need a carer. It is Kate who needs somewhere to live. The Carry On homage seems to have morphed into something more akin to Sex and the City with Kate recounting her antics to her granny instead of her girlfriends.

I did quite like Kate's post coital (which autocorrect wants to make into "coo talk", funnily enough) high and subsequent kitchen teenage strop. Her self awareness is minus zero.

Re Joy not being a suitable carer - isn’t the point more that Peggy doesn’t actually need a carer. It is Kate who needs somewhere to live. Of course. But if the pretext of the story is that Jakob think she needs a carer, then choosing a random who happens to be on of your patient's owners is inappropriate.

I’m sorry, have just listened to the last 2 episodes and I thought the Peggy/Kate game playing was really funny. I loved Peggy making Kate squirm and have to explain that she needed a shag, when it was patently obvious Peggy knew exactly what she was talking about. Yes, sending Joy round was a bit OTT but I still thought it was funny, particularly Peggy’s state of exhaustion the next morning.
Kate’s “Have fun!” to Emma was suitably monstrous and her exchange with Peggy about swanning off abroad was good too. Though I do wonder how exactly Jakob can just go off for a month- not vis a vis Kate, but won’t that leave Alastair in the lurch and prob unable to cover a lot of Jakob’s specialist equine work? (and I also though Jakob’s parents were in the U.K.).

I did enjoy Peggy saying she'd take her hearing aids out.

I agree about Jakob disappearing for a month, it does seem too long for the business. Maybe they'll send someone to cover for him?

I just assumed he meant family like grandparents, cousins etc.

I wish someone would tell him the truth about Kate though.

Where has MeanEd's money gone? We know they both furiously worked to save for the deposit and sold Peppa Pig for £5k, so assuming they were putting a 20% deposit on Beechwood with an affordable house at say £150k (we were never told how much the house was) then they should have £30kish in the bank (unless they were using help to buy then it would be a bit less). They never exchanged on Beechwood so wouldn't have had to pay the deposit money over so must still have it. Why then is Ed selling his ram at the bottom of the market?

That said, I've never bought a new build so I'm not totally sure how it works

I thought it was interesting that Ed was giving Emma money for George. Isn’t that Will’s responsibility?

I imagine at least some of the money saved will be paying off Emma’s credit card bills for the ottoman and other stuff, I also rather enjoyed Peggy’s offer to take her hearing aids out and it was good to hear Lily again after a long silence. But would you resign a permanent job for a fixed term 1 year contract (Hugh)?

Kate's being suitably awful again happysigh

I thought it was interesting that Ed was giving Emma money for George. Isn’t that Will’s responsibility?

I think the writers have forgotten who George's father is.

They were given a mortgage with a 5% deposit, according to Lowfield.

22nd January 2019
"Emma is woken at 5.30 by a restless Ed. He got up to check on the Texels, then started to worry about money, so has lain awake doing his sums. Emma tells him not to worry; they have four jobs between them, her parents will help and they have a 5% deposit. Ed is not entirely cheered by this information; he would like a bigger deposit and a smaller mortgage."

Unless that deposit was all going to be paid by Neil they must have it now: they had got it ready to pay when Ed had his crisis of conscience about having lost his job.

I have never understood how Meaned were ever as poor as they claimed to be. They both worked so hard and didn't pay full rent. I know more recently they have lived on a pittance and saved the maximum possible, but I feel like they've always worked really hard and always been quite vocal about being broke.

Im aware that in-work poverty

Sorry posted too soon. (Toddler just landed on me clutching half a poster he brought down.)

I know in work poverty is a massive issue but I don't think that is what this is.

Bloody Pip talking to Adam like she's the first woman on earth to have ever had a baby.

Adam sounded more tired than ever tonight, will he just fall asleep mid sentence when the baby is born?