🧦 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!

@WhoppingBigBackside

Didn't Batasha trip over the tools Tom had left n the hall?

I'd be furious if I was Pat. If I wanted a new bathroom cabinet I'd want to choose it

Presumably that is what she tripped on. I do hope that Pat will have a good think about things and point out to Tom that, if he was that bothered about the risk of his wife tripping over his tools, he would have cleared his stuff out of the hall before installing the cabinet in the bathroom? I bet he spent bloody ages faffing around arranging Pat and Tony's belongings in the cabinet, too.

I was wondering whether the next development will be Tom and Gnasher ever-so-reasonably saying it's a large house, far too big for the aged parents, T and G are going to be the ones with children so now is the time for Pat'n'Tone to move out to a naice bungalow. But there's something in the back of my mind about that storyline having popped up before on TA. Has it?

Yes, Brookfield. Long before I was listening, Dan and Doris lived in the farmhouse. Don't know where Phil and Jill lived when first married (Hollowtree?) but eventually Dan and Doris moved out to Glebe Cottage* and P&J and their children took over the farmhouse. Eventually they too moved out to Glebe, so David and Ruth and children could take over the farmhouse. That was a complex move as D&R vacated the bungalow, which had been built for them, Shula vacated Glebe, which Doris had left to her, and moved to The Stables, Christine and her husband George left The Stables for Woodbine Cottage (I think) and Bert and Freda left Woodbine and moved into the bungalow. Woodbine Cottage belonged to Brookfield and I assume earlier it was where Jethro Larkin, Clarrie's Dad, lived, when he was the Brookfield farmhand.

*I believe this was left to Doris by the former Squire's wife in thanks for her time as a servant at the Manor decades earlier, before she married. I find this totally implausible but it just goes to show it's not just the current production team who have foolish plot ideas.

Yes I stand corrected on Tom and hospital trip. I was being insensitive!

When the bungalow was built, D&R assumed that P&J would move into it and they'd have the farm. P&J said no way so D&R started in the bungalow.
Eventually when P&J retired they chose to move elsewhere with more character and the bungalow thus became available for Bert who loved all the mod cons.

No way should Josh have it as a single person. Pip's needs, with Rosie and Toby staying over but separately far outweigh his in my opinion.

Especially as he is pulling a fast one with the paintwork.

This is rather nice, if out of date. www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00w47v9/p00vxs9c Shows 34 key locations in and around Ambridge. (Illustrations, not photos, for some reason ...)

@Darker

I have some sympathy for Tom after Kirsty lost their baby, and he’s got a lot of other baggage (losing his brother, witnessing his sister be so badly abused).

Did he witness it? Rob manipulated him into running away to Canada, so I think he missed the worst of it. Can't remember when he came back, with a strangely different voice.

@Darker

I have some sympathy for Tom after Kirsty lost their baby, and he’s got a lot of other baggage (losing his brother, witnessing his sister be so badly abused).

Well, up to a point but Kirsty and Helen were more directly affected by 2 of those issues and Helen and his parents at least equally by the other.

Why haven't we heard Helen and Lee discussing this development?

Tom may have been slightly removed from all of these tragic/traumatic events but that doesn’t mean they won’t have affected him deeply.

stella and brian sounded very cosy together.

Have had a mammoth catch up of several weeks worth of episodes and thread posts. Phew!

Something I can’t recall anyone mentioning here - what the ever-living CHUFF was that rubbish with Lily and Susan’s costumes? Lily may be a twit at times but she wouldn’t choose a corset as a King’s costume! Things like that (see also Lillian and Justin’s yacht nonsense) really take me out of the story. It’s like a needle screeching on vinyl.

I'm confused. Isn't Alice on maternity leave? So already has a job at home farm?

@Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g

This is rather nice, if out of date. www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00w47v9/p00vxs9c Shows 34 key locations in and around Ambridge. (Illustrations, not photos, for some reason ...)

Lovely pictures. Thank you.

@KimikosNightmare

I thought the cabinet "present" was genius on the part of the SWs

Wasn't it just?

That was a good episode tonight.

Good, yes, but...

Tom is just so irritating. For all the reasons above and more. Did he really need to ask Pat if she wanted milk in her tea? Given that he's, you know, her son.

And Natasha should know that she can call the maternity dept at any time to get advice but going to (presumably A&E) now at a weekend when hospitals are on their knees?

Really SWs? Just really?

Interesting that link about the homes in Ambridge. I'm confused that the vicarage is a bungalow because I thought Usha said she was going to hide away upstairs over christmas! must have misheard.

I think the vicarage is one of several places in Ambridge whose size and structure change according to the needs of the story.

I love Brian

@Taswama

I'm confused. Isn't Alice on maternity leave? So already has a job at home farm?

She cannot still be on maternity leave; she went on it more than a year ago.

Except that at Price Baumann she was covering someone's maternity leave, and stayed for over three years, until she resigned because they were clearly about to "let her go" for incompetence.

So maternity leave in TA clearly lasts a lot longer than it does in the real world.

Not uncommon for a woman to go on maternity leave and not come back, though, or return to a different job in order to go part-time or get more flexible working hours.

@Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g

I think the vicarage is one of several places in Ambridge whose size and structure change according to the needs of the story.

The original vicarage was a Victorian house with high ceilings, which Caroline thought (when she was planning to marry the vicar at the time, Robin Stokes) would be murder to heat and hard to decorate.

After Robin left the village the vicarage was sold and turned into flats. There was then no vicarage in Ambridge; the vicar between 1995 and January, 2003, Janet Fisher, was already the vicar of Darrington and had the vicarage there.

At some point, dwelling plus surgery was built in the Vicarage grounds for the village doctor; this bungalow was then bought by the Church Commissioners from Matt Crawford, who had bought it after that doctor left the village. They needed it for Alan, who now lives in it.

So it isn't that the vicarage changes to fit stories; there have been two quite different vicarages.

Every so often a scriptwriter forgets that the original vicarage no longer belongs to the Church Commissioners and has mention of going upstairs, or the high ceilings. That is because they cba to check about what they are writing.

They also have people going upstairs in in Greenacres, which (when it was owned by George and Christine Barford and called The Old Police House before it was burnt down by Clive Horrobin's arson attack) had an upstairs. It has been a bungalow on the same site since 2005. The Prof's books having escaped the 2015 flood because they were upstairs was cobblers.

How old is Martha then? I have completely lost track of time / what day it is, these past two years.
Normally I can correlate an Archers event with a real life event (Hayley was pregnant about the time I was etc) but there haven't been many real life events lately.

Go. Me.

Think I’ll be taking over that 🔮!

I’m pretty sure Alice gave birth on 9/10th March because it was my child’s birthday too and the whole labour panic was making me feel ill 😅

I had a feeling it was Feb or March too. She was baptised quite young and that was about April IIRC

Martha was born on 9th March 2021, but Alice had stopped working at Home Farm before Christmas.

She was not christened, because Alice got drunk and nearly dropped her and the ceremony was prevented, but the the date was supposed to have been 6th May.