🌱 Archers thread #131: A time to plant, a time to reap. 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 also have a few millions lying around you're not sure how to invest, or other unusual things.

Spoilers: not on this thread, please. We don't wait for the omnibus to discuss the week night episodes, but we do try our best to avoid cross-contamination from www.mumsnet.com/Talk/radio_addicts/4197199--The-Archers-spoilers-thread-6-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 to @Roysnewshirt and @Edmontine for title suggestions, and apologies to anyone I’ve missed or forgotten. In the end, inspired by Edmontine's idea and a brief discussion at the end of the last thread, I remembered that it's autumn now and the Ambridge farmers are presumably sowing barley, winter wheat, potatoes etc, so I found myself recollecting Ecclesiastes 3 (King James version) - my Church of Scotland upbringing has a lot to answer for. This led me back to one of my favourite numbers by The Byrds (written by Pete Seeger):

Roysnewshirt suggested Prayer cards, rehab, a glass of scotch, a bowl of chilli or even a dish of lasagne…we offer a range of solutions here to help you solve any Ambridge problem - large or small etc etc, which is as good a point as any to start this thread. Do we think Neil and Susan are solid again? Will Alice relapse? Will Shula confess all to the Bishop?

Reflecting on last night's offering, Edmontine said I’m musing on Baby steps … - but we need the culmination of Alice’s story this week. We have a new nurse in training, a possibly resigning midwife settling in Ambridge, Xander, Martha, Alice somewhere trying to find her feet sans grog, Shula trying to find her saintly feet sans Neil …B(ill)eth & Ben. Lots and lots of newness. Stir in Three’s blood and jam …

The blood and jam made me laugh. A lot. Just as well, as the storyline that line inspired is pants.

Over to you!

Blast. Didn't mean to post; but am demonstrating a variant of Muphry's Law. What I meant to say after Asking's comment was that it's not easy to distinguish actual learning difficulties from the recreational/amateur half-wittedness and fuckwittery endemic in the Ambridge population.

Come off it weevils, there's clear water between Blake's non-comprehension of the world and even the most fuckwitted of the Ambridge residents ... as a matter of interest, which of the Ambridge residents exhibits the most half-wittedness and fuckwittery?

which of the Ambridge residents exhibits the most half-wittedness and fuckwittery?
Recently?
Justin
Neil
Phoebe'n'Rex
Amy
Jennifer
possibly Lee
Jolene
Christopher

enough to be going on with.

@MereDintofPandiculation

Come off it weevils, there's clear water between Blake's non-comprehension of the world and even the most fuckwitted of the Ambridge residents ... as a matter of interest, which of the Ambridge residents exhibits the most half-wittedness and fuckwittery?

On 15th December 2020 Blake was portrayed as nothing like as uncomprehending/foggy-minded as he was last night, and the other two could very easily be heard as just adolescents messing about, making fun of the woman next door putting her pizza packets into other people's dustbins, voicing unrealistic opinions of their own capabilities, speculating about a possible rosy future, and taking the piss out of each other about injuries sustained through being careless.

They didn't sound particularly as if they had mental disabilities which made them vulnerable; they sounded as if they could have been heard hanging about at any playground or street-corner in the country, apart from their not chi-yiking passing women because there weren't any, and no football being involved.

Now, now Weeve, those are people who are not always quick-witted but they're not half-wits

@ILoveShula

Now, now Weeve, those are people who are not always quick-witted but they're not half-wits

Kirsty, on the other hand....

(Can't think how Weevils came to miss her out.)

Krusty's fine, leave her alone Ask

Lynda was good.

Kirsty showed a remarkable blindness with respect to her own competence in her conversations with Blake.

Lynda, on the other hand, got it just right.

I could easily be looking back through the lens of the last couple of episodes but I'm sure I felt Blake came across as a vulnerable adult, probably with some learning difficulties, when he was heard previously.

I also think that he would probably appear noticeably less cognitively able after the way he has been treated in the intervening time. Not that being under stress can affect the extent of a learning disability, but if all his mental resources having been going on coping with the way he's been living, there's not much left for anything else. While he was treated appallingly by Philip, if he was less stressed he might have appeared more able.

Hearing Blake in the last couple of episodes has been very hard. I know young people who I think could be vulnerable to the sort of life he's had and I fear for them.

@ILoveShula

Krusty's fine, leave her alone Ask

Kirsty is the blithering muppet who thought taking a potless victim of an RTA a car magazine was a good idea. On a par with 'Is recently-out-of-rehab-volatile-dipso Alice coming to the pub?'. Other examples of witlessness too numerous to, um, enumerate, but a ONS with the ex who not only jilted her at the altar but who stubbornly persists in being Tom Archer, conceiving, and then not running screaming for a termination does stick in the mind rather. Useless piece of flesh.

I am with Freezer on this one.

Back in December Blake was regarded by the other two as what would probably be called a bit lacking by the polite, thick by them, but he wasn't the incoherent, terrified mess he has been for the past couple of episodes; that is probably the result of what has been being done to him for the past nine months or so.

The other two didn't come over as vulnerable adults in that December episode in the way that Blake did; but we were told in an article that we had heard on air that they all were.

Lynda was just right in the way she was with Blake: kind, calm, honest, open and straightforward; BOOP for her.

She will probably end up taking him under her wing, and making a good job of it. She's always been that sort of person: I remember her being the only person in the village who could cause Kate to be even half-way sensible or civil.

Wot FreezerBird said.

I recall the episode in the horse’s flat - it wasn’t easy to separate them one from another - but at least one seemed not to be able to manage money, at least one was generally very naive and at least one had left home because of his mum’s bloke. So maybe a victim of violence there, or perhaps just rejection.

Do we know how old they are supposed to be? They’ve obviously missed out on crucial bits of being brought up - nurturing, guidance, love. No matter the quality of the acting, it’s horrible to think of young men left so adrift in the world.

I thought it was clear that the horses had SEN and/ or came from extremely difficult backgrounds - the actors were all rather OTT with the script when they were talking to each other.

Blake is just carrying on with the same over-acting as before

I would like Blake to get to a good place. As has been said - there are jobs to be had. But that would be a bit too fairy story for the Archers

Eat yer heart out, Dickens. Joe the crossing sweeper is not a patch on the hosses. What ails Kirsty? Can it be smallpox? Hurrah!
Enter Mrs Snell (from the wrong book) disguised as Mr Brownlow. Boo!

I have great expectations of your next installments Weev
These are hard times as far as Ambridge is concerned

Judging by the breastbeating and vicarious guilt that everyone indulged in when Moss was accused (on no actual evidence which would stand up in a court of law that we ever heard) of people trafficking or whatever it was

It's hardly likely that they'd enumerate all the evidence on air because most would be incredibly tedious, but presumably the prosecution would have gathered together all the financial records to show what was going on. Plus there isn't actually any doubt that he was trafficking from the listeners' point of view, is there?

Since he was taken to court and found guilty of something, it would have been polite of the blasted production team to bother to say WHAT THE FROD IT WAS. Given that there can have been no evidence from his slaves, who had vanished of the face of the earth at the time of his trial, and no mention was made of any evidence having been given by anyone in Ambridge, what exactly was he convicted of having done?

(It all happened remarkably quickly, too. Arrested on 24th December 2020, brought to trial and sentenced to eight years' imprisonment on 1st April, 2021. The police must have really concentrated on that paper trail. During a pandemic.)

Kirsty has lost all common sense/ability to deal with things sensibly - she’s driving me potty.

Moss very helpfully pleaded guilty I seem to remember

I think they would have struggled to have a convincing trial. As with many things in Ambridge they hadn't really thought it through.

If Philip was smart enough to have two sets of books, presumably the 'fictional' one had payroll and would have looked legit and would have been what got filed with HMRC. Obviously the wages (less the legally permitted deductions for bed/board/transport) would have gone straight into Philip's back pocket.

The sole witness would have been Kirsty (who had been seen having a blazing row with him) and seems particularly erratic these days.

Presumably they were expecting the actor to return to Wicked.

Aside from getting annoyed with Kirsty, I rather enjoyed last night's episode!

@WorriedWishingWell

Moss very helpfully pleaded guilty I seem to remember

Guilty to what? That's the point. We don't know what he was accused of or charged with. And yet he walked out of his house, to which the police had been called for what they must have assumed was a domestic (Roy knew nothing more when he rang them) and turned up in about ten minutes after dark on Christmas Eve, saying his name and "I'm the man you're looking for" -- why? About what? The police hadn't said anything at all at that point, nor accused him of anything.

You'd think nobody on the Archers team had ever listened to any BBC crime drama at all -- and that's absurd, because Jeremy Howe used to commission it when he was BBC Radio 4's Commissioning Editor for Drama and Fiction, before he took over at TA.

If Philip was smart enough to have two sets of books, presumably the 'fictional' one had payroll and would have looked legit and would have been what got filed with HMRC. Obviously the wages (less the legally permitted deductions for bed/board/transport) would have gone straight into Philip's back pocket

That assumes he was bright enough to produce a water-tight set of records covering tax, NI and pension arrangements. And then there's the question of how any fictional wages got paid. If it's cash in hand the process is quite complicated - www.gov.uk/guidance/paying-employees-cash-in-hand-or-guaranteed-take-home-pay