🧦 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!

Well go Hazel ! I enjoyed tonight's episode

@suzyscat

Also really hope that picture got deleted. I used to have a good opinion of Jonny but felt he was needlessly cruel then.

Yep, especially with that storyline about his hair.

Tom was going to build a house with Kirsty, until he jilted her at the altar. I imagine all the funds he lost with that would have meant he couldn't buy for a while.

IIRC Tom wanted to build a house on Bridge Farm land with Brenda, when they were engaged. Then she backed away very carefully …

I don’t exactly recall whether he wanted the same with Kirsty - all I remember is that they eventually put down a (presumably huge) deposit on a huge executive new-build somewhere away from Ambridge. Think Peggy’s wallet might have been involved. And we never found out what the financial fall-out was for either or both of them from the wedding debacle.

So far Natasha has preferred the prospect of some Insta-palace that would impress her friends and associates. But Bridge Farm is the obvious end point.

Poor Tom 😂

The Tom/Tash eviction story is too irritating for words. SWs bring back pantomime villain that is Hazel Woolley, no real hinterland so up for complete reinvention. She’s forcing them out of a flat that was only ever meant to be a stop-gap (and that I’d actually forgotten they lived in since we’ve heard nothing from them or about them for months on end in spite of it being in the middle of the village). We can now safely predict the wrongful accusation of Susan (though I can’t remember a single instance of her taking in parcel forthem which could easily have formed an extension to or replacement for a change counting scene) the inevitable discovery that the information came from Fallon - leading to further bad blood between her and Natasha - and Tom and Tash being forced to move in with Pat and Tony for Christmas. My main objection is that I don’t really care - I’ve never understood why they were still living in that tiny flat (indeed I’d forgotten they were) and I can’t believe they wouldn’t be looking for somewhere to buy or that they couldn’t afford to rent somewhere else. It’s not like Ed and Emma being made homeless for example. It’s better than the Mysteries - which I now realise are about plugging a few holes in the R4 Christmas schedules - but only marginally so.

Charlotte Higgins in The Guardian. (It’s not exactly thrilling …)

www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2021/dec/07/charlotte-higgins-on-the-archers-its-party-time-in-the-cider-shed?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

@BeaLola

unmerited perhaps she is going to sell the shop &flat and build on it ?

The shop is protected by some action Jim took way back, making it a Community Asset. She can't just shut it and sell or develop the site.

I had somehow forgotten just how deeply unpleasant Hazel is.

Hazel is vile but I am quite liking her shaking things up rather than having to listen to endless Snell drivel.

Is Hazel out to cause Peggy as much misery as possible? She's evicting her grandson, wanting to rub Peggy out of the rewilding.

Is her new house which "needs work" Home Farm which she has bought from the invisible Gills?

That Hazel is the new owner of Home Farmhouse would be a great twist Flumpaphone

I'd just dare her to take them to court to evict them for working from home when everyone in the country was under orders to do so if they could. I'm sure it would also be perfectly fine to register your home as the address of the company. Look on companies house, absolutely millions of businesses registered at residential addresses, not at all against the rules.

These rules on tenancies are about running a business out of your home (meant to deter people e.g. setting up shops in houses), not making a few phone calls during a pandemic. She'd be laughed out of court. If they take this seriously they are the mugs.

And the idea that she's "collected enough evidence" - LOL! this business is a bloody orchard good luck when natasha shows photos of the trees and asks how they were likely to fit in the flat. And the "too big for a barn" bottling place.

@EBearhug

Tom was going to build a house with Kirsty, until he jilted her at the altar. I imagine all the funds he lost with that would have meant he couldn't buy for a while.

Tom & Kursedy had bought a big house away from the farm IIRC Tom wanted to build a house for him & Brenda

Tom and Kirsty put down a deposit on a house which had not yet been built, because Kirsty refused to be sold the idea of "the same as Brenda" for her and rejected the idea of building a house on the farm.

The Hazel storyline is stupid. She has so little connection to Ambridge and really wouldn't have had much to do with Peggy as a young adult.

I wonder if we'll find out who lives at Keepers Cottage? I suppose even Tom would notice if the village doctor was suddenly "not around".

It's a mystery why they bothered bringing Richard Locke back at all. The story petered out within weeks and he's never been mentioned since. Keeper's Cottage is next door to April Cottage, where Kathy Perks lives. Perhaps the locale has been cursed in some way and nobody who lives there can make themselves heard any more. Kathy may be communicationg with Grey Gables staff and guests through the medium of mime for all we know.

Richard Locke, however, has almost certainly moved on with nobody bothering to comment on it. Did we ever hear what Usha, his former cohabitee, thought of his return to the village? I can't even remember what Shula said, in spite of their brief but steamy affair all those years earlier. I was sure he was being lined up for Elizabeth, but now she has Vince I suppose Doc Locke was surplus to requirements or William Gaminara got a much better offer and was no longer available.

So much vacant property in Ambridge!

We have Keepers Cottage which may/may not be tenanted
Home Farm with the absent Gills (who have never popped into any scene)
The Bungalow to become vacant in the New Year
Blossom Hill Cottage empty?
Whichever bit of Lower Loxley Julia Pargetter lived in (is Lewis still living there...is he still alive, even)?

Goodness we deserve some incoming residents.

@FoxgloveSummers

I'd just dare her to take them to court to evict them for working from home when everyone in the country was under orders to do so if they could. I'm sure it would also be perfectly fine to register your home as the address of the company. Look on companies house, absolutely millions of businesses registered at residential addresses, not at all against the rules.

These rules on tenancies are about running a business out of your home (meant to deter people e.g. setting up shops in houses), not making a few phone calls during a pandemic. She'd be laughed out of court. If they take this seriously they are the mugs.

And the idea that she's "collected enough evidence" - LOL! this business is a bloody orchard good luck when natasha shows photos of the trees and asks how they were likely to fit in the flat. And the "too big for a barn" bottling place.

Let's hope they go to see Usha the omniscient lawyer, then. It would be quite fun to hear Hazel's lawyer advising her that T and N are going to fight any eviction based on the business argument and that she hadn't got a hope in hell of winning.

@Madcats

The Hazel storyline is stupid. She has so little connection to Ambridge and really wouldn't have had much to do with Peggy as a young adult.

I wonder if we'll find out who lives at Keepers Cottage? I suppose even Tom would notice if the village doctor was suddenly "not around".

By the time Peggy was friends with Jack, Hazel had left for London.

Locke was not the village doctor when he reappeared most recently; he was a locum in Felpersham. He is also yet another example of someone who left Ambridge because they hated it (and had made the place too hot to hold them), or who had a relation who once lived there for a few years before they were born, "coming back" for no apparent reason.

How old is Hazel W supposed to be ?

@TherapistInATabard

Poor Tom 😂

Why? Is the inadequate little tit a'cold? (Good, if so)

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/profiles/KThJHXKSCg0Q9PfWcBTtn9/hazel-woolley

I was right about Natasha assuming Susan was the one who blew the gaff on her.

Look, I am almost never right with predictions, allow me to preen just a little!

And well done Lynda for spotting the flaw in Hazel's dastardly plan and pointing out that working from home was the norm during the past year.

@LiterallyKnowsBest

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/profiles/KThJHXKSCg0Q9PfWcBTtn9/hazel-woolley

65.

Thanks. She sounds so querulous that I thought she was at least a decent older Hamming up the long covid or about to expire and tie up those loose ends?

And well done Lynda for spotting the flaw in Hazel's dastardly plan and pointing out that working from home was the norm during the past year
@AskingQuestionsAllTheTime well quite! Govt told us to work from home...