💥 Archers thread #117: Welcome to the only C19-free area in the world! Discuss The Archers 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 think Phoebe is a genius, 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/3853783--The-Archers-spoilers-thread-5-Cant-wait-for-7-02pm-Join-us-here, 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.)

I put the BOOM! emoticon in the title as I thought it could transition into a vague likeness of a virus if we're still going by early May, when we expect some wild contortions from the production team to get Ambridge back in synch with the rest of the world. I think I would have preferred them to ignore it altogether but I suppose they couldn't.

I reckon Gavin will try to warn off Roy and will give the game away in doing so.

Yes, I agree with ADarkandStormyKnight.

Seeing as re-wiliding won't make money for ages, why don't they have their meetings using Zoom?

How thoroughly and irredeemably unpleasant Gavin is, calling Blake "loser". Agree that the Roy encounter will be the catalyst for the unhorsing of Phillip and Gavin.

And Kirsty's further unhappiness.

First handwashing on TA in this ep. Or was it to get her out of the room so he could talk about her, rather in the manage of the Coronation Street children who wrier always being sent off-set. :o

Manner, not manage.

The offices thing is so ridiculous. All businesses are trying to downsize their office space/expenses through working from home and hot-desking. Rewilding Ambridge could absolutely be done remotely, and where the hell do they think they’re going to find a load of other eco start-ups wanting office space? Utter bellendery. God knows why I listen.

I reckon Gavin will try to warn off Roy and will give the game away in doing so.

Good plot, ADarkandStormyKnight. Maybe Phoebe will be present and see something. I wonder if there is a connection between the Justin and the offices plot and the Justin and Berrow Farm one. Alternatively, I am reading too much into things! Safe night everyone.

That's weird

Three of Weevils deleted post from yesterday has been reinstated.

What gives?

I was just thinking the same re the office space - the idea that they might tempt people who are currently home working at the very moment everyone has started working from home 😂 I couldn’t work out whether Gav was building the road with one or more of his other slave labourers when he ran into Ed fixing the fence. Roy learned nothing and cares even less after his encounter with Blake - I agree that Gavin is about to change all that.

I agree with ADarkAndStormy re Gavin arousing Roy's suspicions.

Re the office space. They will tell Justin OK if eco businesses. He will agree, then 2 months after they can't find any he will say oh well we'll just have to fill them with normal businesses and he'll have got his way.

Surely Ed&Emma will get back together eventually. Please?

I’d like to see Ed and Em get back together, but Ed is right to recognise he can’t give Em what she wants. They are never going to live in the house in Beechwood and he’s never going to build her the house of her dreams the way Neil did for Susan. In another age they would have qualified for a council house on The Green - not anymore and their situation will forever serve to highlight the complete iniquity of William being left a house in a will made before Ed was born.

Three of Weevils deleted post from yesterday has been reinstated....What gives?

Are you sure it's a reinstatement of the original and not a hugely cut down post? Comments on the original suggested it was a much longer post slagging off a great number of characters.

TofW's post is the original, as always a valuable contribution. Presumably you don't get deleted for personal attacks on people MN thinks are fictional.

Yes, it's the complete original.

Every delightful word has been faithfully restored to us.

Every delightful word has been faithfully restored to us

Yes. Aren't you lucky?

Hands up anyone who finds the outcome for the Snell woman remotely realistic (it's clear some find it welcome; no accounting for tastes).
And hands up also anyone who found the LL licensing nonsense even slightly credible. Hol
es in the plot you could drive a coach and four through.

Nice - although surprising - to hear the numskull Ed having a bit of sense last night, one of the few times in his life. Remember, Ed, having 'you' couldn't be expected to make the miserable shrew you married happy: she said so, in as many words. Her turn to suffer. Good-oh.

their situation will forever serve to highlight the complete iniquity of William being left a house in a will made before Ed was born.

Oh, I never understood why only Willyum (Clarriespeak) inherited the house. Thanks LilianGish.

I would love to see Ed n Emma get back together but perhaps Ed is right. I do have a soft spot for Emma. She really works hard. The point made by LilianGish that Emma is probably going to be worse off than Susan (unless something very dramatic happens) goes against the very 20th century expectations that each generation will be better off than its predecessor. What makes it harder for Emma is that she knows that no matter how hard she works, her life won’t really change. Mind you, she could have cut Ed some slack last night over his work for Tim. She really encouraged him to see it as something that was slightly dodgy but essentially harmless.

In another age they would have qualified for a council house on The Green - not anymore and their situation will forever serve to highlight the complete iniquity of William being left a house in a will made before Ed was born.
And let's not forget Auntie Tracy, too, who managed to get herself named as the successor on the Council tenancy. MeAnd Ed don't get the breaks. It's partly due to her Not Knowing Her Place (as Ed has reckoned) but it's also partly due to his stubborn insistence on being A Man Of The Soil. If they went off to Hollerton / Felpersham / Borchester and both got ordinary, paying-enough jobs then they might stand a chance. But that will never happen.

Has Ed ever considered getting a trade (plumber, electrician, joiner) and moving to somewhere where he could earn a living to support his family? Like other adults do.

Will was not left a house. He was left some money, with which he paid towards buying a house of his own -- at the time he was living in a cottage belonging to Brian, as part of his wages for the gamekeeping job on Home Farm's shoot. He still has a mortgage on 1, The Green, and how he is now paying it is unclear, but that was why he had tenants: to cover the mortgage.

Ed was not left money either because he had not been born when Twice-Dead Aunt Hilda made her will, or because she did not like what she had heard about him since his childhood: she may not have approved of a criminal layabout who shacked up with his brother's wife, which was Ed's position at the time. I would tend towards the latter, since she was said to have had a picture of both William and Edward by her bed.
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Freddie was arrested late on a Friday night, and Elizabeth was informed on the following Monday before midday that the LL alcohol licence had been suspended. Little details like his not actually having been shown to have dealt on the premises (he hadn't, in fact), and his not yet having been found guilty of any crime, were not relevant to the law apparently thinking it ok to make him homeless from that weekend on.

I am still slightly surprised about the Borsetshire licensing authority, which seems to meet at weekends. Maybe they just have a stack of signed licence revocations which just need a premises filled in to be ready to go.
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Apart from the job at Home Farm, Ed has only found himself a job once in his life, at the garage just outside Ambridge. He lasted two days before having to turn up on time and do as he was told for eight hours before he could go home again was too much for him to endure and he packed it in. All the other work he's ever had has been provided to him by the incredibly long-suffering Oliver, including the hunt kennels of another hunt to get him away from Emma's marriage, and the farm in Hungary ditto.
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The Horrobin house is not a Council tenancy. It is owned by a housing association, one which allows someone unqualified to fit a new bathroom over Christmas.

Hmm ...

I'm inclined to think that sensible suggestions for town-based paying occupations rather miss the point of what Grundys are. It's admittedly harder to discern now that Joe is gone (and this argument doesn't require factual detail of exactly how recently they appeared in Ambridge as broadcast ...) but the Grundy tragedy is that they are mythically, viscerally bound to the land without having a sufficiently secure stake in it.

Yes, other men in his position might re-train as electricians and move to Borchester - Ed simply can't. He would be as lost as Joe stuck in Meadow Rise.

He did make an effort with the sheep shearing. It's a trade - just not one that can sustain an Ambridge family.

Even worse for Emma is seeing her brother and sister-in-law live rent free, with Alice no doubt getting masses if help from her parents
But then Christopher does seem to have chosen a sustainable business to get into

And the husband she threw away, in fact both the husbands she threw away, also living at very little rent. And living rent-free herself, as well...

PerditaProvokesEnmity
He did make an effort with the sheep shearing. It's a trade - just not one that can sustain an Ambridge family.

That's a job for a few days a year, and he can arrange his own times -- or, as we saw, fail to arrange them if something else has turned up.

He was also sent on a course to learn how to vaccinate badgers (I think Oliver paid for it?) but only seems to have done it for about five days.

And so on. The only jobs he has ever held down for more than a week have been the dairy farm concern, given to him by Oliver (which he failed to make a go of), and the Home Farm job, given to him (though he didn't know it) by Johnny.

(and the Hunt kennels one when he was desperate to get away from Ambridge)

As usual I had half remembered AskingQuestions. I agree with the comments re Emma and Chris though both married for love - as did their parents (despite Susan’s social climbing tendencies). I think some of the best and most believable storylines come from the constant striving of certain characters in the face of what are for some insurmountable iniquities. It doesn’t need to be dramatised with unlikely events their very plight is drama enough.

Nail married because Susan was pregnant. He had been playing the field before she told him about that.