🧦 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 enjoyed witnessing a window into life at Bridge Farm. Poor Tony in his pink vest! Pat was very naughty bullying him into watching what appeared to be Sleepless in Seattle.

And it’s only going to get worse…

Gnasher is completely demented.

She and the twerp don't have enough money to find somewhere else to live; Pat 'n' Tone, Gnasher and Twerp are going to be cheek by jowl/ falling over each other in the next few weeks yet her priorities are buying expensive clothes for Pat (has Pat ever expressed any interest in clothes?)and enforced family bonding over a movie chosen by Gnasher.

I liked the part where Pat referred to the the pleasure of the baby as being all the better for being a grandchild, so "not quite so hands on". That is so going to come back round to haunt them, as no doubt Tom and Gnasher will still be with them, needing childcare, and Gnasher still wanting to move her business nearer"home".

I caught the second half of tonight's episode in the car and have now listened to the whole.

I was right about them all getting on top of each other (broken mug/ pink vest- incidentally why the latter ? Gnasher and Twerp presumably are old enough to know how to load a washing machine?)

May I revise my post to say Pat sounds demented too? Pat's wittering on about them all being together was absurd.

Poor Tony. Bullied by Pat into giving up his relaxation time in order to watch an awful film and ‘bond’ with Natasha. Ridiculous.

The Mike situation is really odd. I also wondered if he’d split with Vicky but then he was telling someone (Kirsty?) how settled and happy he is in Birmingham now.

I’d also completely forgotten Roy had another child until Mike mentioned Abbie.

Shula is good, kind and decent (apart from the affair with Dr Locke, and having seen him in Silent Witness, I can see the attraction).

Well, there was that little matter of lying to the police about Knob bearing up the hunt tab, and letting down Helen because it meant she couldn't be seen as a reliable witness on her behalf.

Beating up, not bearing up.

The Mike situation is really odd.

Yup. And, as you say, all the more so since he implied he was happy in Birmingham. He must surely be retired - so I wondered if the Tucker household might be struggling financially (Vicky perhaps spending more time on Bethany and not progressing in her career?) - but no one would leave Birmingham for Ambridge if they needed to earn more money. And he can’t take back either half of Willow Farm / Cottage, can he? So what’s going on?

And he can’t take back either half of Willow Farm / Cottage

Who owns these houses?

Roy owns one half (can never remember which!) and the other was sold when Mike and Vicky moved to Birmingham. Don’t know who the owners are, but Brian and Jenny are (inconceivably) renting it at the moment. I always feel slightly resentful at all the time and emotional investment I expended on the Willow Farm conversion, the carving out of a home for Roy and Hayley when they couldn’t afford anywhere locally, Brenda’s alarm and discontent when she seemed to be cut of any share of the property, Roy’s sharp retort at the time Hayley went into labour, Mikes reassurances … All for the whole story to be exploded with Roy’s Lower Loxley betrayal, Hayley being pushed out of her job and home, (and on-screen mothering of Phoebe) and then the BBC exiling Bethany + fam to Not-Ambridge.

It was a poor show all round.

(Waits to be told how many parts of this I have misunderstood …)

Roy owns Willow Farm. Willow Cottage is the small 2-bed extension, now rented by Brine & JD.

Easy to remember as the Farm part was there first and is bigger

An excellent summary @LiterallyKnowsBest. It has irritated me ever since on so many levels - the final straw being Brian and Jenny moving in and the SW (apart from immediately after the initial move) carrying on as if they still live in the spacious luxury of Home Farm. I thought Moike’s reference last night to it being like “the good old days” was significant as well as his suggestion that the work might take longer than a week. The two suppers also ties in with Vickoi being in the gym, but Moike not being interested in that sort of thing. I think it’s over between them.

Brenda was badly served there. Iirc Mike split the house so that Roy and Hayley could have a home and Brenda was supposed to inherit the other half in the fullness of time. But then Vicky came along. Don't think we ever heard any mention of Brenda inheriting again.

Indeed …

Oh my! D’you think the return of Mike might presage the stately and majestic return of Brenda-My-Most-Adored-in-Absence? Oh, wouldn’t that be wonderful? I have missed her so much, for so long.

Only, the writers would screw it up and send her back weird. I recall she popped back for no good or sustained reason some years ago - apparently engaged to some city slicker … Heaven knows how they’d write her now.

Wasn't she an international jetsetter, cavorting with oligarchs and the like, when we last heard from her on Keri's vanity project Ambridge Extra?

Least said, soonest mended …

A morbid thought but I was wondering if Mike is terminally ill with a degenerative condition and wants to spend as much time as possible with his loved ones, doing good deeds, living life to the full while he can. I’m clutching at straws here!

That would be awful. But would make sense of the clues so far.

Oh, I’ve just been reading Charlotte Higgins’ Guardian article as mentioned by someone above. Some of the reader comments are hilarious:

“ Will hasn’t been a gamekeeper since he developed too close a relationship with his shotgun. “

Adam could have explained the buyer was exhibiting sexist and classist prejudices.

Alice - ouch that was brutal. I had a tiny smidgen of sympathy at her having to listen to Lighthouse Lil's inane wittering.

@Eastie77Returns

A morbid thought but I was wondering if Mike is terminally ill with a degenerative condition and wants to spend as much time as possible with his loved ones, doing good deeds, living life to the full while he can. I’m clutching at straws here!

If he's ill it hasn't affected his appetite. He could be on steroids though.

I didn't have much sympathy for Alice, she said it was over. She can't have her cake and eat it.

1. what is Natasha's game, and why the emphasis on her morning sickness? is she faking it?
2. No one wants to eat 2 dinners. No one would decorate an entire cottage just to be paid in cake, and why are Pat and Tony happy to just accept this?
3. Surely Chris just needs to offer evidence of adultery and that would do for a divorce. IIRC people wpuld do this for a fee (be the evidence, that is)

@CaptainMyCaptain

I didn't have much sympathy for Alice, she said it was over. She can't have her cake and eat it.

Oh yes, quite agree. The drama on the day out was just Alice making everything all about Alice with no thought of the consequences or how it affects others.

@StillWeRise

1. what is Natasha's game, and why the emphasis on her morning sickness? is she faking it?

1. No one wants to eat 2 dinners. No one would decorate an entire cottage just to be paid in cake, and why are Pat and Tony happy to just accept this?
2. Surely Chris just needs to offer evidence of adultery and that would do for a divorce. IIRC people wpuld do this for a fee (be the evidence, that is)

No idea

No idea

As Chris hasn't been adulterous offering fake evidence of adultery is perjury.

If you testify in a criminal or civil case and make a false statement having sworn to tell only the truth, you have committed perjury. ... You can also be prosecuted for committing perjury if you lie during a deposition, which is sworn testimony you give in a civil or criminal proceeding but outside a courtroom .

So 3 would be a really daft idea.

I’m giving a BOOP for tonight - it was tense.

And, after anticipating a comedy cheese making disaster, I found the sexist put-down of Susan even more brutal than poor Chris with Alice.

‘Poor Chris’? 🤨😂 I’ve been despising him for months but in the past few days I’ve wanted to give him a non-virus laden hug. He does ‘end of his tether’ really well.