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 pretty clear that someone with a gun can do much more harm in a short space of time than someone with a knife.

is up and running again after their server difficulties

Oh thanks for that - I had figured it was off line indefinitely and was wondering if the archive was still complete and needing new hosting.
Its many moons since I saw the owner posting anywhere but I do remember Tim's original summaries being moved there.

Of course I'm now wondering which umrat you might have been

Thanks birds The angst all the time is getting to me. Why do the producers think we want it?

When William’s shotgun license comes up for renewal his character referees will have to confirm to the police that they have no doubts that he is a stable and controlled person. Who are his referees? Brian? I have done this a couple of times and have been very careful to be truthful in my interviews. Eddie will have a crisis of conscience, I would think, if he allows someone to vouch for William.

I am an old gimmer but the Grasshopper reference means nothing to me.

Fellow umrat here

I'm quite interested in the Will's gun licence story. MH risk assessments are a part of my job but I've never had to look at a situation like Will's. (And I know nothing of gun laws)

Google informs me that

• Will has no obligation to inform the police of his MH difficulty at present
• he would (legally) have to declare it when filling the forms for his licence renewal
• licence renewals are 5-yearly, so no idea how long it will be before this comes up
• his GP has an obligation to inform the police if they feel he is a risk
• a history of MH difficulties is not necessarily a bar to gun ownership. The level of difficulty where it seems to start to be a concern would be if Will had been sectioned, i.e. previously judged to be a risk to himself or others, and mild to moderate depression would almost certainly not fit the criteria.

We've heard Will speak with some passion about how important gamekeeping is to him - it's his identity as well as income/home/security/social standing/provision for Poppy. Unemployment is a massive, massive risk factor for suicide anyway - for Will to lose not just his job but his career would be psychologically catastrophic for him. Overall I think he's probably at less risk in his job than out of it.

Will's current risk factors:

• still grieving Nic
• some social isolation
• dad trying to make him unemployed and homeless
• access to effective means
• 1 known episode of intent
• early role model was Greg
• probably minimising to GP

Protective factors:

• Poppy
• meaningful employment
• secure home (well, it was)
• strong intention of returning to work
• lots of hope of getting better
• has accessed support in form of GP, it's really not unusual for people to take a while to open up
• family support (I do like how this is both a blessing and a curse for Will. Taking a moment to imagine all the Grundies attending family therapy...)
• not completely deaf to all other people - he had that conversation with Elizabeth about therapy

It’s from the 1970’s Kung Fu, silverypussycat the Grasshopper is a reference to a character dispensing wisdom.

Grasshopper (or rather Glasshopper, as it was pronounced!) is from the TV series King Fu, which starred David Carradine, as Grasshopper. His mentor called him that. The basic premise was that he went wandering America, and ended up righting wrongs with his mastery of Kung Fu.

Ha, cross posted with Hero!

Motoko I had to google it! I misremembered it as Keith Carradine! 🙂

Oh, I didn't realise there were any Umrats here. For some reason, I thought MN and Umra were mutually exclusive, with me being the exception. Doh!

Tonnerre
It's pretty clear that someone with a gun can do much more harm in a short space of time than someone with a knife.

If they are an American with easy access to military-grade anti-personnel weapons (yer AK47, say), or a large number of ready-loaded guns, sure.

A double-barrelled shotgun has two shots in it before you have to reload it, and Will has just the one shotgun. This is not the stuff of mass shootings.

More harm can be done (and has been done, in this country) with a large knife in the hands of someone wielding it against a lot of people.

For some reason, I thought MN and Umra were mutually exclusive, with me being the exception.

Nobody expects...the Umrat Inquisition!

Its many moons since I saw the owner posting anywhere

Bob and Peet, who founded Peet's Mustardland, are both dead.

Umrat?

Oh... Is that related to the Worat, as in "I fear the worat"?

umra.fandom.com/wiki/Umra_Wiki This should tell you more than you ever needed to know about Umrats, AskingQuestionsAllTheTime.

Ah, I am not only an old gimmer, but an old old gimmer.

Asking - William as a Gamekeeper has access to a number of guns - the guns for the shoot. Actually I am surprised if he only has one shot gun (although that is all that has been mentioned) as most gamekeepers I know have a few.
And although a lot of damage has been caused by individuals with blades, similarly a group of school students in the Netherlands overpowered one with their school bags.
Part of the reason we don't have much gun crime in this country is not just the difficulty of getting guns but also the fact that we have quite strict controls on who can have access to them at all. And when those controls are weakened or bent a bit then tragedies occur for example

We also don't know exactly what is wrong with William - we are assuming "depression" but it could be more serious mental health issues. And he is not getting proper help because he is not being honest with the health care professionals.

We have never heard William doing anything about guns for the shoot at all, and I assume he would have to clean them, at least, if he was responsible for them. Brian and Matt have always been using their own guns when we have heard of them being at the shoot, and I think Justin has as well. (Actually I don't think the editorial team has given as much as a second's thought to this point.)

What Will probably has is a shotgun certificate rather than a firearms certificate; there is a slightly lower bar for getting one of those one referee instead of two, for instance and if all he has is a shotgun there wouldn't really be any need for him to have a firearms certificate.

Is he really to be deemed a danger to the public? To himself, possibly, but I'd say that the answer has to be no; even when Ed went for him, he didn't shoot or try to shoot Ed. If he had, we'd know about it and so would Ed have done, at that range.

Eddie seems not to be in the least worried that Will might use his gun on someone else; his fear is quite clearly that Will might kill himself with it.

In a sense it's not Wills depression that's the issue it's the fact that he tried to kill someone with a gun. That minor detail. If attempting to murder someone with a gun is not good reason to remove someone's gun licence I am not sure what is.

Sorry cross post asking, I thought Will aimed the gun at Ed? I may have misheard in the chaos.

Eddie seems not to be in the least worried that Will might use his gun on someone else; his fear is quite clearly that Will might kill himself with it.
Eddie might not - but Emma quite obviously was worried he might use the gun on someone else (especially Poppy until she knew she wasn't at the cottage).

Do we know what happened about Bev and Poppy? So far as I remember, Bev just said she was taking Poppy for a few days. You'd think she'd be wondering why Will hasn't come round demanding her return. I suppose we're meant to assume someone has come up with some sort of excuse to ask her to keep Poppy, but usually that would at least have been mentioned in passing.

Bob and Peet, who founded Peet's Mustardland, are both dead.

I was thinking Chris Harrison who owned the summaries site and Tim who started them off. Both former Umrats (as per Bird's linky). There was an overlap between UMRA and Mustardland for a while but I wasn't on the latter.

Nice parallel between Eddie and Will's parenting. Will tried to keep Poppy off school to keep her safe whilst Eddie is trying to keep Will off work to keep him safe.