🎭 Archers thread 125: Ambridge Mysteries! The Case Of The Missing Pandemic. Where Is Pat? What Is Lynda Snell's Kompromat? Follow the clues and 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’d love to be in the Mysteries, 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.)

Thanks for thread title ideas to @Roysnewshirt and @Witchwife. Apologies if I’ve forgotten anyone else.

Do we think the Mysteries replace the usual fun storylines around giving things up for Lent? Light relief while we wait to see if the SWs go for realism and tragedy when Alice’s baby is born, or bottle out (as it were) and go for everything being fine? Will Jazzer and Tracy get back together again? (No bookie in the land would take money for that, of course they will.)

Over to you!

The project could include a salary for someone to run it? It's not like we were party to full details of any costings for any of the projects proposed.

@theThreeofWeevils

Disagree with that descriptor for Adam, even though I assume it was made in the sponging sense of the word. It's just too hard to separate from its other meaning

Your assumption was incorrect.

'^BRITISH, informal, derogatory
a pretentious, affected, or effete man^.'
He's certainly pretentious and affected. As well as pompous - and touchy.

You missed a bit out But you know that

British
1informal, derogatory A pretentious, affected, or effete man.

1.1offensive A gay man.

Pimp is the other main meaning, I believe. It's not the primary go-to word for insulting specifically homosexual men.

I think it must have included SOME money for someone to run it. Or at least the rewilding pitch probably did. It's a lot to ask people to do a large project as a hobby. But I strongly doubt that the £500,000 included enough to employ Phoebe, Rex, Pip and whoever else on anything like a full time basis. And there's been no chat about the financial impact of Pip leaving (on her or on the project) so I presume she's not been scooping much from it. Also no chat I remember on Phoebe "running it" i.e. getting the lion's share of the management money, quite the contrary Rex and Phoebe just discussed that they are splitting the work.

So I ask again, WTAF is Phoebe doing the rest of the time? Or to earn anything like a living? And if she isn't why haven't either of her parents mentioned it - or any of her extended family tried to find her a job. I'm sure between Roy, Kate, Brian and Jenny etc alone they know every opportunity in a 20 mile radius.

@EBearhug

The project could include a salary for someone to run it? It's not like we were party to full details of any costings for any of the projects proposed.

Quite. I demand the spreadsheets.

Presumably it is now fine for Ian and Adam to move away as there is a new gay in the village?
Nice to hear Ian again though, I do like his voice.

And thanks for the info that Masterchef is on again, just what I need right now.

isn't R bisexual, as far as we know?

Close enough to tick the relevant box.

C8H10N4O2
"What I find depressing is enforced vegan cake"
Its just cake isn't it? Why would you even know or care the ingredients of cake offered unless you had an allergy/restriction?

What I wrote was
"Vegan cake is often excellent. What I find depressing is enforced vegan cake -- and if Mia is proposing to do all the cooking, an enforced vegan diet for Eddie and Clarrie."

The operative word is "enforced": if Eddie doesn't want a vegan cake for the celebration of his seventieth birthday, making him have one is rude. And if he and Clarrie and William don't particularly want to eat a vegan diet because that is all Mia proposes to cook, why should they have to?

Vegan ought to be voluntary, same as giving up your main Sunday meal and eating bread and cheese in Lent, giving the cost of the meal to the Church, which I remember Clarrie forcing Eddie and Joe to do one year. One was not even a church-goer, but Chapel, but she still decided he was to give money to the church he didn't go to.

Also,

If I was Adam I'd be pissed off with taking a pay cut whilst effectively still working full time because my job share couldn't do their time.

Alice was employed as a temporary measure while Adam had a broken foot because he had run himself over. I assume, since he has been batting around throwing his weight about, that his foot no longer bothers him. He was very strongly opposed to her being employed, and ought to be delighted to get rid of her interference with the job he has been doing for several years.

It has never been suggested that her being employed meant he got a pay-cut to his salary as manager of the farm.

The rewilding monies never made sense (TBF nothing remotely to do with money ever makes sense in Ambridge)! I seem to remember that the Agricultural Story Advisor chipped in that they would be earning an income from set aside grants etc. but presumably they had to do something to the agricultural land first and fork out for rent. They have been rewilding for 18 months now; how time flies!

I've concluded that Phoebe joined one of those "Sugar Daddy" websites when she went to Oxford! That might explain why she disappears for weeks at a time and Roy and Kate fail to notice that she doesn't have a job.

PS: Does anybody else miss Hayley Tucker? She could help with Ian and Adam's childcare woes and sort Phoebe out at the same time!

The other difference between Jenny and Clarrie as cooks is that Jenny can afford to make mistakes, Clarrie can't. Clarrie needs to be sure that anything she makes will be eaten by her family and not go to waste.

WTAF is Phoebe doing the rest of the time? Or to earn anything like a living?

I know we've discussed before that Phoebe is/was doing some 'research' for either Damara or Borchester Land. But there was never any indication (like family celebration for instance) that it constituted a 'job' or the beginnings of a career.

Are we supposed to assume that all her family are so ignorant they have no idea what sort of future she might have aspired to. Or is it we who are behind the times? Maybe every one of Phoebe's Oxford peers is admiring her chutzpah and cheering her on to global environmental domination? It's the 21st c - who needs a mere job?

I hope that Ruairi goes off to study land management or agriculture at Cirencester. Did they ever cover his University plans? It would be a quick drive back home every so often and it would really annoy Adam and Ian.

I remember Ben discussing where/what to do with Jill, but perhaps I dozed off when Ruairi was filling in his UCAS form.

Equally, it would be good to see Lily go back to a University after she and Russ go their separate ways.

Well said @BoreOfWhabylon

a boss who persistantly puts his own children in front of you, even when they have zero experience for the job

Au contraire: Brian for many years favoured dear Adam and Debbie over his own offspring, something JD encouraged. In the case of Debbie, I always ascribed it to fancying her (ewww, I know, but...). JD always supports dear Adam.
It was very odd and out of character that the Kate Yurt Preservation Society suddenly carried the day and precipitated the sale of Home Farm. Yeah, because Plot: but the square root of fuck-all has been done with that, so it's left looking a bit daft.

Re B12 and Mia - she did mention adding yeast flakes to her lasagne which provides extra B12. (And I know this as I have one Vegetarian and one Vegan daughter - both of whom avoid Gluten - which makes life very interesting.)
I think Adam has quite a lot of money squirreled away - and I wouldn't be surprised if sometime he just had enough of Brian and went off somewhere.

We're expected to believe that no one in Darrington knows Eddie or would question him auditioning for their Mystery Play, when they must have heard that Ambridge is doing one?

Really?!

@JanFebAnyMonth I thought exactly that. I can't bear months of this play it is such a bore. We've only just got over the Christmas Freddie saves the poetry at lower loxley business.

Misery guts Adam agreeing to attend a baby shower is very out of character.

I really wish Alice would just tell her immediate family what's going on. If she's going to teeter on the verge of a nervous breakdown every time someone produces a bottle of alcohol in her vicinity this situation isn't going to end well. Chris sounds desperate and delusional.

I've just caught up on three episodes and agree that Jade is preposterously dreadful. Is she a gambit to have Jazzer go back with Tracey?

Not too sure that Adam kicking off is an overreaction. While a good idea is a good idea, it's Brian interfering again. The sheep dunging on the rented land I think was also part of the medieval system, where the serfs and villeins' animals dunged on the landlord's land, not their own.

This is getting tiresome. Clarrie sounded like a simpleton last night. She is a woman who has been married for 40 years with a grown up family not a six-year-old worried about her starring role in the Nativity. The actor even changed her voice to take on a slightly more babyish tone. V weird.

Good to have Alice back though. A display of uncharacteristic quick-thinking from Chris, but I think Alice would have confided in either Kate or Jennie by now. They are a pretty tight-knit family.

Dire. I could just about swallow the Alice part of that episode, but the Eddie/Clarrie bits were appalling.

A display of uncharacteristic quick-thinking from Chris, but I think Alice would have confided in either Kate or Jennie by now. They are a pretty tight-knit family

It's not the quick thinking that impressed me, it's the vision of Peggy displaying Ronaldo- like diving skills. Mind you, her closing line sounded more Ernst Stavro Blofeld, so I also envisaged Hilda morphing into a white Persian.

I don't agree that Alice would have confided in JD or Kate. She is the only person who knows exactly how much she was putting away - ok, Chris might have a rough idea - and she won't be keen to share that. Imagine the high-pitched wails of reproach and 'Oh darLING, how COULD you?' turbo-wittering from her baby-fetishising mother. She'll be terrified of recriminations for having caused irreversible damage to the foetus, and presumably is just despairingly hoping that it might turn out 'normal' after all, or the world might end, or something, anything, to get her off the hook. She didn't want a baby in the first place; she certainly won't want to be saddled with a damaged one. Since Chris did, I feel he should be left to wrangle the wretched thing, with child-rearing advice from Peggy. But no doubt there will be some disaster ex machina to prevent the issue being an, er, issue: we've already seen they can't hack the 'sprog with disabilites' narrative, after all.

Was Kate channeling Miranda Richardson playing Queenie in Blackadder last night? She's gone up about four octaves during lockdown.

Lord ...

Reading the latest comments I was suddenly afraid I'd acquired some sort of 24hr onset dementia. Didn't remember any of the stuff you're all talking about.

Did I Miss An Episode? While at home, beside the radio. This has never happened in my entire life. Felt the beginnings of palpitations.

Then I remembered the stupid bloody waste of time zoom workshop I paid for and was therefore obliged to attend yesterday evening.

Seriously, This Cannot Happen Again. Way too destabilising. I don't mind missing TA if I'm not at home, or if I have other people to attend to, but to miss it when I'm here alone, sitting on the sofa, is unspeakable. There can't be any skill I need to acquire that much.