🍾 Archers thread 123: Goodbye & good riddance to 2020 – to Philip too? The Archers is 70 on New Year’s Day – celebrate or vent about it 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 wish we heard more from Shula, 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.)

So! 2021 beckons. Big anniversary next Friday, 1.1.21 (and to mark that we have episodes Tuesday-Friday next week). What would we like to see happen? I may be in a minority of one, but I'd like a nice gentle character-driven episode. I don't think we'll get that, but I really, really hope they don't kill someone else off, just for the headlines.

[Title edited by MNHQ at OP'S request]

Sorry, ambiguity. My previous post should have had "The playground refurbishment wasn't until December 2019" not "December that year".

I salute Asking's excellent note-taking/recall.

Interestingly (and I don't recognise the names of any of us on there), I see there is another thread trending about au pairs expected to work all hours in exchange for minimal pay and accommodation, likening it to modern slavery:
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/4127368-To-remind-you-that-you-cannot-use-your-au-pair-for-childcare-all-day-every-day?pg=2

I suppose this has potential to be a real problem in lockdown.

It deserves wider publicity.

And that Martyn Gibson, though a known and unpleasant bully, is able to bully [Justin] is ridiculous.
It would have made more sense if Martyn had rung him up in a panic and Justin had pretended to do an honourable resignation but was actually managing to swiftly distance himself from the situation and leave Martyn holding the baby.

It would have made more sense if Martyn had rung him up in a panic and Justin had pretended to do an honourable resignation but was actually managing to swiftly distance himself from the situation and leave Martyn holding the baby.

I agree - its incoherant - but perhaps Martyn has commissioned Moss himself on a few occasions and is trying to blame Justin

That he is now reduced to managing a pig-farm and overseeing a rewilding project is absurd

Yes, it doesn’t work at all. It would be much better if he was swanning around playing the country gent in brand new tweed and talking to his gamekeeper about pheasants and stags. But I suppose he doesn’t have enough land for that.

Pig farming is too unglamorous for him and talking about it with the dreadful Hannah (thank God we haven’t had to cope with her during lockdown) is not how anyone who has made a pile in the City would want to spend their semi-retirement. May be the ex-wife Miranda cleared him out and he doesn’t actually have much money any more?

I'm sure I recollect some Swiss chalet focused conversation when Justin and Miranda were divorcing. Presumably she got it, which is why he's pottering around Ambridge being humiliated by a squirt?

I wish he'd go away and potter in Perth, where we know he kept the property when the divorce happened.

Can anybody remember what Charlie Thomas was sent off to Scotland to manage for Justin? Was it deer or salmon?

There never was a replacement for Charlie, was there? Rob simply focussed on the mega-dairy whereas Charlie was definitely overseeing multiple projects/investments.

I agree that it is very odd that septanarian(?) Justin should be so "hands on" with the piggery. Perhaps the SW will remember how stupid this is an introduce a business manager for Kirsty to fall in love with. We could certainly do with some new characters.

Thank you @AskingQuestionsAllTheTime

I thought Phillip’s sneery attitude to History was at the root of Jim’s distaste.

@Madcats I think he was sent off to manage a salmon farm (although really it was because the SWs had got themselves into a dead end with him snogging Adam and presumably didn’t want AdamnIan to break up because then they couldn’t have done the ridiculous surrogate storyline)

a business manager for Kirsty to fall in love with

Kirsty will surely have forsworn men for all eternity.

Kirsty will end up running the rewilding project.

Hopefully after Pip has fallen down a culvert hiding from Rex.

Rex will run a herd of wild boar on the rewilded land.

Madcats
Can anybody remember what Charlie Thomas was sent off to Scotland to manage for Justin? Was it deer or salmon?

According to what Charlie told Adam on 4th December 2015, it was "an estate just over 1800 hectares, mostly arable crops, plus a beef suckler herd supplying a premium beef scheme; also developing a fish-farming operation" and interesting because he "hadn't been involved with aquaculture before". His role was to be estate manager.

A friend of a friend of a friend does work at mates' rates. Cash in hand, I think.
Should HMRC be made aware of it?

Tonight’s episode was dull dull dull - fine to skip from a plot point of view. Unless you are a fan of the Snells, of course, in which case you would have found the dialogue - and dangling carrot of another Snell project - both riveting and tantalising at the same time...

I can’t imagine anyone has missed hearing Alan’s voice! This show really is a series of highs and lows.

I liked it! Really enjoying the current atmosphere; too often (particularly with Brookfield) all the separate houses seem isolated in their own concerns, whereas right now everyone's realising how interconnected they are, for good or ill.

Anyway, one way or another Clarrie will be going to (real or virtual) Paris sometime this year! Presumably Emma and Lynda's ideas for MIL and village wide jollification will coalesce?

This show really is a series of highs and lows

That's the beauty of it. The ordinary, everyday stuff is a nice counterbalance when events hot up elsewhere. Or even when they don't. We're in it for the long haul, a bit like life.

We're in it for the long haul, a bit like life
But there is nothing like Ambridge for making one appreciative of the merits of the Black Death, now is there?

Lynda's illogical and smug more-or-less monologue (her fool of a husband snortled and gurgled but didn't really stop her flow) makes me wish that Philip be acquitted on a tecnicaity and that Kirsty gets sent down for a good long stretch. Either that or someone punches Lynda very hard in the throat. Both would be lovely but I' not an optimist.

Nor am I a fan of Clarrie, but for goodness sake, community action. The poor cow has had two honeymoons with Eddoi. It is up to right-thinking persons to preserve her from a third. At her age. Poor soul.

And someone really needs to have a word with her about chocolate-wrangling. Dearie me.

Why doesn’t Ambridge have a postman?

I was just pondering that Moss is the only builder, Harrison is the only policeman and Usha is the only solicitor. The village is big enough to support a pub, a country house hotel and whatever Lower Loxley but it doesn't have a postman or a butcher or a baker. Does it have a post office?

It doesn't have any residents who are teachers either (apart from the disgraced and defrocked CMR)

The village is big enough to support a pub, a country house hotel and whatever Lower Loxley but it doesn't have a postman or a butcher or a baker. Does it have a post office?

Country house hotels are not normally supported by custom from their immediate hinterland. They utilise those serfs that scrub up not too badly as chamber-people and in the case of superior specimens, waitpersons. To serve the Quality from the Towns.

Lower Loxley Hall, the clue being in the name, is not actually in Ambridge at all. Widderbeth emigrated.

Leaving aside the question of bakers (thus putting both Emmur's and Fallon's snouts out of joint, I hope), does the village have a post office? Of course it bluddy does. Miss B, you have not been paying attention. The PO is currently housed, or holed up, in the 'community run' village shop under the aegis of that same Susan Carter whose brother robbed the place in '93 and who has herself done time for harbouring (and also being a Horrobin in an area of otherwise acceptable natural beauty).

As to teachers, apart from noting with delight as per your recent bulleting that Mr Jones and Ms Pargetter are indulging in gender-fluid role- and cos-play, surely you cannot be forgetting Kathy. The DomSci maven who fed her son pretty much exclusively on pizza and pasta? And wasn't JennyDahling supposedly a teacher at some point, between catching husbands and firing out infants? And Hayley. Who rose through sheer pedagogic ability to the dizzy heights of Head of Colouring-In at Lower Loxley (before her boss required her husband to schtupp her in the interests of research...)

PS: apologies, MissBarbary, both for typos and for my inability to cast any light at all on the postman question. He probably rings... bells, though. Intermittently, w. Neil and Shula. Silently, insofar as that is possible. Some peals are more muffled than others.
AQATT will know, probably.

Enjoying the discussion on the last few episodes. It's true that Justin appeared to be mega wealthy when he moved to Ambridge. However, I do remember that he told Lilian than most of his money was actually Miranda's and she got most of the assets when they divorced. I think Miranda competed in equestrian sports.

I doubt Lilian is as wealthy as Miranda. I think Matt cleared out Lilian (although didn't she get some back)? Lilian has the rental income from the Amside properties but I don't think The Bull was doing that well, even before lockdown. They have a high maintenance lifestyle, with the two thoroughbred horses - I've forgotten their names - and buying everything from Underwoods.

I've just had a thought. Perhaps Justin's wheeler dealer finance persona is a bit of a fake. He bought the old slaughterhouse to turn into luxury rental offices. That was not the best timed move. The whole bypass business vanished in a puff of smoke. He is just a posh Eddie Grundy.

Justin's property empire, and global gloss, have been a victim of 97 editors in rapid succession.

MissBarbary I'll now spend the day trying to remember the last time the postman's fulfilment of his obligation was audibly significant to anyone in Ambridge. "Has the post come?" seems unremarkably commonplace (in my head, at least) but as to individual events ... Ruairi and his birthday?

Oh, the unsatisfactory thing last night was the producers / SWs trying to fool us into thinking that in all these years Emma had never heard anything about her MIL's predilection for France, or the reason for it.

Tonight’s episode was dull dull dull - last night’s episode reminded me why it’s sometimes better to listen to the film. In the film that would have been a lovely interlude of cosy village life making me long to live in Ambridge, walk up Lakey Hill and even tune in to Alan’s on-Line service (I wonder if Clarrie wants to do a house swap for her third honeymoon?) Instead I’m tuning in nightly desperate for an update on the slavery plot forgetting that if it was all slavery plot then it wouldn’t be TA.

The thoroughbreds are Amir and Aziz.