Archers thread #113: Who’ll find some Magic Time this Christmas in Ambridge? Share the glad tidings (and bad writing) in The Archers! Election-free zone so far ...

[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 Hannah to stay around, 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 @SurpriseSparDay for the title. I haven't heard 12/12 yet so must catch up now, seeking relief from the outside world.

Realistically she wouldn’t stay in Ambridge - the entirely unconvincing rewilding project is a torturous way of trying to find her something to do and so it staggers on in its uncompelling way.
But it could have been good. If it had grown slowly from Feeb's own Green convictions - like Pat'n'Tone before her or, even, Kate - to make a successful meta-farm then that would have been plausible SL.
The idea that it only started because of a badly-constituted 'trust' and was then taken up by an imbecilic* Oxford PPE graduate really grates.

Is 'imbecilic' allowed. Am I on the naughty step again?

Who is Meriel?

Meriel is Kenton's daughter. He was married to her mother and she lived in NZ

But it could have been good. If it had grown slowly from Feeb's own Green convictions - like Pat'n'Tone before her or, even, Kate - to make a successful meta-farm then that would have been plausible SL. This is an excellent point - but Phoebe has never displayed any green convictions before now, she was always more Roy (or even Hailey) than Kate. She's never had anything to do with the farm apart from a bit of strawberry picking. It would be more convincing if she had studied something even vaguely green at university - PPE came out of nowhere. As a pp pointed out, Phoebe even had to be told to read a paper before her interview.

Talking of kenton I quite enjoyed his dressing down from Jolene the other day. You never do anything properly.
I think his uselessness isn't pointed out often enough.

To be fair, nobody in Kenton's own family has much time for him. They're fond of him, but they all regard him as a flake, and with good reason. He gets irritated by that, understandably, as he has some good points, but he's not good at accepting his limitations.

Which succesful/rich men have made it on their own, though?

Brookfield:
David no doubt earned his right to keep the farm but inherited it from Phil. Josh is making his own money.

Neil and Susan have built things up as a couple through hard work. Chris is doing fine with his business.

Philip presumably built up his business tough hard work.

Home Farm:
Brian - inherited money to buy the farm.
Adam worked his way up. Ian appears to have built up his career under his own steam. Ruarie will inherit without the farm work.

Nigel - inherited LL, as Freddie will in due course. It would have been sold long ago without Elizabeth.

Bridge Farm:
Tony and Pat I believe built Bridge Farm up by themselves but eventually got something from Peggy. Tom had lots of help from various family 'Angels'. Jonny is working for his future.

As far as I know the only thing that Tony has ever got from Peggy has been the five thousand pounds she gave him when she gave the same sum to each of Lilian and Jennifer, with instructions that he was not to spend it on anyone but himself -- so nothing for the farm. That was when he bought the MG.

Other than that, Peggy's three children were recently reinstated in her will after having been removed from it for a while when she decided to leave all her money to Tom and her house to Helen. It is now to be split three ways between her children, if anything is left after she has given half a million quid to this "charitable trust" that is like no charity, or trust, anyone can point to.

Adam did not work his way up to anything: his mother bullied and blackmailed his step-father to force Brian to give Adam a third of Home Farm, to recompense her for his mistress having given birth to Ruairi. And frankly, if he had not been forced to employ Adam or lose Jennifer, I don't suppose Brian would have put up with Adam's incapacities, sulks, tantrums and generally dire behaviour for more than a probationary period of six months.

I cannot really believe that Lower Koxley Hall would have been sold but for Elizabeth, not when it comes with the ownership of four farms too!

"Koxley" is a typo... (grin)

Lower Loxley was in a dreadful state when Nigel took over, and they had huge inheritance tax issues. They may have had occasional tours, like something from the 1920s, but nothing more commercial, and I'm pretty sure it needed repairs.
It was Nigel and Elizabeth who turned it round, pushing Julia to agree (and the trustees). They worked very hard, and were very entrepreneurial, at least "back in the day".

Bridge Farm again has been totally Pat and Tony's hard work. Daring to become Organic before it was fashionable, and struggle through the years when they weren't quite organic so couldn't get the premium. (It is ridiculous that they allowed Beechwood to be built on one of the first fields they improved so much.) They then risked the huge mortgage to buy the farm, and have gradually paid it off. Unlike Tom who has chopped and changed his ideas all over the place - and still has pigs having lost Jazzer - who is doing all the work?

I sent an email to my accountant in the middle of last year with some figures in it. Unfortunately it got overlooked in a change of staff, so I was asked to resubmit it last month by his accountancy assistant.

We then spoke on the phone about it. I thought we had finished, but then she asked "About this trust?" Trust??, what trust??, thought I.

The last paragraph of my original email was "Re Peggy Wooley's Trust. Does it make any difference if it's a charitable trust?" My accountant would have known what I meant, as I had attempted to pick his brains on behalf of this thread.

I explained about The Archers to the assistant, turned out she had vaguely heard a couple of fairly recent episodes. It sounded like she might become a Proper Listener as a result of our conversation

There were no trustees when Nigel inherited as far as I know. He was not a minor at the time of his father's death, as Freddie was. And his mother had the right to live in the Hall for life but no actual control over it apart from any Nigel chose to allow her, because it was not and never had been her house. Back then she was not entitled to as much of her dead husband's estate as she would be now.

Lower Loxley Hall (not to be mistaken for the village of Lower Loxley) was falling to pieces: it had both dry rot and death-watch beetle. In 1989, well before he married Elizabeth, Nigel had already had the idea of turning his home into an "attraction" with tours of the hall and cream teas, and also having conferences there, and he employed Elizabeth as his marketing manager, mostly out of pity for her because she was being essentially unemployable and he was a friend of her family's. They didn't marry until September 1994, after the Cameron Fraser affair and Elizabeth's abortion.

I think the pigs for the sausages that Maurice makes are reared by Rex these days. Hollowtree is not organic, but Tom decided that was not important any more.

Which succesful/rich men have made it on their own, though?

Yes exactly - apart from Neil/Susan and Pat/Tony, all the men have also inherited or married assets.

Brian/Jenny and Elizabeth/Nigel could be said to have built up on those assets. I disagree that Nigel was the brains behind Lower Loxley - the whole model was Elizabeth's brains with a lot of hard work from both of them. Julia fought them at every step.

I don't agree that Helen is such a leech either. It was Helen who went off to dairy school, started the cheese and yogurt business and created the cheeses. I don't get all the Helen hate tbh, I dont find her a desperately likeable character but that is true for a lot of the characters who attract far less hate.

There are people I hate much more than Helen. Tom for one.

I like Helen (as a character) - she is realistically employed in off-shoots of the family business and her choice of men has been necessarily limited by her inability to move far from Ambridge. I can believe in her as someone who is close to her family - even if she can be incredibly infuriating - in a way that I just can't believe in Phoebe. If Phoebe had to stay in Ambridge then she should have gone to Felpersham Uni (something which would actually have been much more believable and sustainable than her getting into Oxford). Helen in believably rooted to the village in a way that Phoebe is not.

Meant to add that Phoebe going to Oxford might have worked as a plot if she had followed in the footsteps of her Aunty Brenda (or even step-mother Hailey) and been banished from Ambridge. I certainly wouldn't have missed her.

If a word he says is to be believed, Justin is a self made man, as was Matt Crawford.

Robert Snell created his own computer business, and he and Lynda are still living in the huge house he bought with money from that enterprise. It has provided them with income since his company went bust.

Jim is well-to-do by his own efforts, and Alistair, and presumably Jakob.

But none of these is an Archer, or Archer-related particularly, and without exception they are incomers.

watching mary poppins tonight. is the housekeeper 'lilian'?

Does Jim know that Jazzer went to the police about Harold Jayston? If he doesn't, I should think he's going to be rather cross about it when Jazzer tells him the police told Jazzer that Jayston is dead.

If a word he says is to be believed, Justin is a self made man, as was Matt Crawford. "Self made" means different things to different people. Trump claims to be self-made with only a "small" loan from his father (of £1m). Even when no loan or gift is made, some "self made" people seem unaware of the very real value of, for example, being able to live at home rent free, or even use a room or building of their parents to run their business from. This comment could apply to several Archers offspring.

It generally takes a (technical term coming up) a shiteload of time to actually graduate from Oxford. Esp if you want to do it with some of your chums. I'm pretty sure mine was at least a year after finals.

Whatever. She needs to get a proper job.

Roy told us some time in the autumn that he had been to Phoebe's graduation the previous weekend. I forget who he was talking to but he definitely said it.

Matt Crawford started out as an orphan adopted by a family which was not at all rich, so any money he had he must have got for himself; Justin Elliott claimed to have lost all his money in 2008-9 and had to start again, which sounds to me fairly self-made.

Trump didn't get a mere $1 million from Daddy; he got at least ten times that and probably a lot more. He has lost more money during his lifetime than he has made. After his father died and stopped bankrolling him, Trump started to borrow from banks and not pay them back, which is why no American bank will lend him a bent nickel nowadays.

Roy told us some time in the autumn that he had been to Phoebe's graduation the previous weekend. I forget who he was talking to but he definitely said it

It was a passing remark in a conversation with Lexi. It was Lexi who raised the subject.

In real life, the first (so far as we know) Ambridgian to go to to and graduate from Oxford would be a Very Big Deal. Roy and Jennifer would both have been in a tizz about the ceremony and what to wear ("a hat"? "Is it like a wedding?").

There would have been a family celebratory lunch or dinner at The Bull.

Belated happy new year all. I've been catching up and I have to say I think Elizabeth was just horrid to poor Robert. As someone who has had panic attacks and anxiety she should have been less selfish and pushy in forcing him to perform.
When Lynda stepped in, she was so vile about it, everyone was,m. There was no one else to do it so in the circumstances I think gratitude would have been more appropriate.