🧦 Archers thread #133: Woolley socks it to them! Discuss The Archers and its Woolley thinking and plotting 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 would love to take part 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/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 @ButtonSister and @BorsetshireBanality for title suggestions. I went with their idea in the interests of keeping the title fairly short.

@LillianGish and @FoxgloveSummers made cracking but longer suggestions, which (mashed up) will do a great job of kicking off our new thread.

Evictions (Tom and Tash), depictions (Bridge Farm Christmas card), conniptions (entire cast and crew of the Mysteries), convictions (Philip) and addictions (Alice) - what are our predictions for 2022 in Ambridge? All sure to make this the Best Ambridge Christmas Evah!

This thread should take us through to early January unless something very exciting happens (ha ha, fat chance). My predictions: this is a bit left field, but I wonder if Peggy will offer to buy the shop and flat so Tom and Gnasher (great coinage, whose was it?) can stay put. I don't believe Hazel is sincere about wanting to live in/regularly visit Ambridge. She's always been utterly two-faced and rotten to the core, why would she change now?

The Mysteries will, of course be a triumph and briefly borrowing the🔮 (sorry, Bore!) I expect we are going to hear them at some point over the New Year period.

Over to you!

I find it very annoying that SWs keep changing the critical date for Tom and Gnasher's move.

And embellishing things with the ridiculous WFH stuff and Hazel's future housing situation.

It's gone from having 2 months to vacate, to Tom's frantic and ridiculous behaviour yesterday. Plus, of course, Gnasher's pregnancy.

I like Blake, I would have enjoyed hearing him recover from the abuse he has suffered.

I think they should have stood their ground with Hatezel, and refused to leave.

Pat and Moany should have said no to Tomtasha, as it is obviously not going to work. Tom has as much emotional intelligence as a wet dishcloth

I like Flake too and predict that CMR will be enlisted to give literacy tuition

Blake is gone; it's official, Harrison Burns has said so and it must be true.

but I'm sure there was an element of "no wife of moine needs to work.." and he wanted her to remain a full time SAHM (I can't remember if they were actually married at this point)

It might have come from wanting to be a better provider than his father?

Will has improved a lot recently.

Will tried to say "but you don't need to work, I make enough for both of us" and Nic was having none of it. He wasn't trying to tell her she must not, only that she need not.

It would have been difficult for Will to make a worse job of providing than Eddie did, and Joe before him; Ed did his best to equal them, but Emma wouldn't let him.

(And Ed absolutely did not want Emma to get the job at the chicken factory, but he didn't dare to say so to her.)

Will's recent conversations with Mia and Stella have shot him up the emotional intelligence league table in Ambridge- admittedly there's little competition, but still.

If my spouse/partner was proposing to get a third job that involved working until the small house and rolling home smelling of dead chickens, I'd not be too keen either, especially since the only reason Emma wanted to do it was to add to the deposit so they could get an unaffordable mortgage.

Child/stepchild trying to matchmake for single parent/stepparent is a staple of romantic comedies, but does it ever happen in real life? The very idea of my children trying to match me up with someone makes my skin crawl.

Our adult son lives with us at the moment (admittedly, he's single, so a very different set up) and almost never watches TV with us. He has much better ways to fill his time! Doesn't eat with us that much either. I can't for the life of me see why Pat and Tony would feel unable to watch their own TV choices just because N and T are there. They'll probably be in the office working, or in their own room. Can't see Natasha feeling any obligation to spend time with P and T just because they're all in the same house.

Why would T&T move into his old room if it’s become a “dumping ground” of stuff for the charity shop? What was the set up for Helen and the boys when they lived there- presumably Helen had a double room and the boys maybe shared a room with bunk beds and two singles? Why can’t T&T move into the room Helen was using (just to put her nose even further out of joint after she hears Natasha is pregnant with a girl and Pat and Tone won’t be spending all their waking hours doing childcare for Helen anymore).

I imagine Tom's room as a fairly small one, still replete with tractor- decorated wallpaper.

Natasha is going to have a cow isn't she?

Why didn't Pat point this out?

Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g
If my spouse/partner was proposing to get a third job that involved working until the small house and rolling home smelling of dead chickens, I'd not be too keen either, especially since the only reason Emma wanted to do it was to add to the deposit so they could get an unaffordable mortgage.

Neither Ed nor Will wanted her to do so and both felt it would be to the detriment of her children -- Will had an interest because one of those children was also his.

In a rather nasty scene, Nic invited Ed and Emma to come over for a meal, and she and Emma tore into Will for his unregenerate and sexist attitude; strangely, although Ed had voiced precisely the same concerns, he was not blamed by them for this in any way.

I loved that scene!

Surely a pig @suzyscat

Mia playing matchmaker is ridiculous. Most teenagers cringe at the idea of their parents engaging in any kind of romantic behaviour.

She’s known Stella for five minutes and has decided that she’s perfect for Will

Stella listened to Mia. Her memory says that Nic listened to her. Therefore Stella is an appropriate Nic-substitute for Will.

I agree; at fifteen, people on the whole really don't want to contemplate the idea that their parents may once or twice have kissed one another, let alone be present if they are so lost to all sense of decency as actually to exchange a peck on the cheek. There's sort of indescribable "eeuuw" noise that they make about that sort of inappropriate behaviour.

I’m guessing Usha is currently on her favoured internet forum complaining that her erstwhile best friend has ghosted her since a new woman moved into the village - and now they do everything together …

@LillianGish

Both my DCs know when our wedding anniversary is, I've always known my parents' as long as I can remember, so does my brother and I also knew my PIL's - I asked them when we were setting a date for our own wedding. I find it hard to believe that in all those years that Pat and Tony have been married and other weddings have been planned and cancelled the date has never come up or been mentioned - whether they were having a special celebration or because a card was exchanged or something. I don't find it hard to believe that Tom wouldn't have remembered, (though I would have thought his memory might have been jogged when he saw his parents having a special meal). He is entirely self-centred not the sort of person to ask about anyone else which is why he was so tin-eared when Natasha was trying to tell him she was pregnant. Of course now he knows it will be all about him.

I always knew my late parents' wedding anniversary, my father always called it 'the date World War 2 started', it was September 3rd but a few years before WW2!

@LiterallyKnowsBest

I’m guessing Usha is currently on her favoured internet forum complaining that her erstwhile best friend has ghosted her since a new woman moved into the village - and now they do everything together …

I know! I honestly thought Ruth was going to kiss Stella when Stella found those bills.

Well maybe that is the way it’s going… I’m not giving up on this one apparently

If only that were enough to put an end to the end of the Mysteries - Ruth would be elevated to my favourite character (actually I liked her scenes with Stella - who feels like a real,person rather than someone just reading their lines).

If I ran a farm, I would not want the manager from a nearby farm rifling through my financial documents. Especially one I had literally met about six months ago.

@Roysnewshirt

If I ran a farm, I would not want the manager from a nearby farm rifling through my financial documents. Especially one I had literally met about six months ago.

Oh, less than that. Stella was only interviewed on 25th August this year, and I don't think Ruth met her until 18th October, after Pip had been incredibly rude and dismissive to Stella about Brookfield have put its sheep into the wrong field.

I wondered about that, Roysnewshirt - but I suppose all the correspondence, etc, was enclosed in separate files - so Stella would only have seen the file names, not the contents.

I’m pleased Ruth has been allowed off the farm for social purposes - just feel sorry for Usha, as it seems the current SWs have no idea she was Ruth’s closest friend.

@Roysnewshirt

If I ran a farm, I would not want the manager from a nearby farm rifling through my financial documents. Especially one I had literally met about six months ago.

Well, Ruth was intimately involved with running Home farm for years as Ruari’s proxy so it’s quite an unusual situation. Plus I don’t think farms are rivals as such?

This reminds me, how is the whole Home Farm family committee going to work now with Ruari away at university and so “busy” aka sulky that he can’t see Jenny and Brian when they are in London, never mind participate in farm decision-making, plus Alice basically absent?

I thought that as well! Surely that'll come back to bite them at some point. I did like the INCREDIBLY REALISTIC in my experience depiction of farm filings systems though. Plastic bags on the floor is quite profesh compared to the HUGE PILE OF EVERYTHING technique favoured by some I know.

Well, Ruth was intimately involved with running Home farm for years as Ruari’s proxy so it’s quite an unusual situation. Plus I don’t think farms are rivals as such?

Even so, I think they have become far too intimate, far too quickly.

Having said that, I was very pleased to see Ruth standing up to the Snell. I would be so pleased if she carried out her threat and stopped the performance from going ahead at Brookfield. She won’t though. She will calm down and issue a grovelling apology so we have a saccharine and schmultzy end to the year. Sigh. I would be far happier if the Snell was forced into doing some careful self-reflection over the festive season. But of course she won’t….At least she acknowledged it was no surprise Blake failed to single her out for an emotional goodbye.

I liked Tracy giving Lynda both barrels. I like Stella. That's about it, though.

All this talk of bags of receipts takes me back to my auditing days in the 80s. I have a fond place in my heart for the cheery man who explained that sometimes the primitive computer system they used for accounting produced a trial balance that didn't balance (i.e. the credits were more than the debits, or vice versa) but he'd found a way round that which involved powering off mid-transaction, or similar. Happy days!

I once spent weeks on end going through bags of receipts, cheque stubs and royalty payments so I could prepare accounts of a sort for a fairly famous person whose taxes had got a bit behind. Never did any farm accounts, though.