👑 Archers thread #139: Who’s the Daddy? No ceremonial required to join us – 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 like the sound of Lilian’s Cinnamon Chicken, 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.)

I'm often struck by the time a thread ends how irrelevant the previous title has become to what's currently going on in The Archers. The Queen's death has only been mentioned very briefly in TA, of course, but I suppose that was to be expected in a time of budget constraints. In a few weeks when this thread fills up I wonder if we will still be thinking that, and about Chelsea and her pregnancy. That depends on what she decides to do, which at the time of writing is still up in the air.

As usual, I asked for title ideas and for various reasons then didn't use them. Sorry. Lillian Gish's was very witty - Will Chelsea stay mum about dad? Muddler made a more controversial one - Horrobins thread #139. As a new Great House of Ambridge emerges, come swear your allegiance here.

That's about all I can face saying about TA at the moment. I am expecting to have to travel north soon as my Dad is in hospital and I have to be with my Mum. (They're the same sort of age as Jill Archer, and up to now have been like her and Peggy, very active, managing very well with no help, but this may all be about to change ). So apologies if I'm more absent than present for a while. Will pop in when I can.

Ben is first year university isn't he (?), and Chelsea is 2nd year at college, so only 1 academic year between them
Ben dropped out of his first course. He is 20, Chelsea has just turned 18..

Thanks for all the interesting discussion and memories today!

Maybe it's because it doesn't parallel the sort of land ownership I see in practice. Big estates (the old kind, with a family running them and a big house) being the landlords of half the village, or even the Crown estate. Everyone in the Archers now seems to own their land outright (or near as damnit). Seems fairly ok for the area I know best. OK there us a big estate with big house attached, but mostly it’s series of owner occupied farms, and everyone seems to be related to everyone else.

Same here. Bridge Farm is on the small side at I think a 100 acres, but otherwise, the landownership is one of the few realistic aspects.

Didn’t Hellin try her very hardest to persuade Annette not to have a termination, and effectively suggested that she (Hellin) could help bring up the baby? It all got pretty smothering in the end and Annette slipped away and quietly got it all done.

Shortly thereafter Hellin decided that what she needed in her own life was a baby and was laser-focused thereafter, despite her father’s initial dismay.

Oh yes

@Octothorpe , that's how I remember it.

Where I grew up there was a big estate and several tenant farmers. Some farmers owned their farms. It's changed now, many of the small farmers sold the land, and the houses are either family homes, or holiday rentals now.

The village school has closed. Local families priced out of the area.

Grundys’ Turkeys can do one an’ all too!

What's George's scam?

But when Shula subsequently saw a violent man being violent, she was not a victim and clearly wasn't in the boiling frog situation. Yet she still decided to keep quiet despite her previous experience.

The turkeys are stolen?

Thank you for explaining - I hadn’t understood that, I’d seen one of the messages saying Shula had been handwringing because someone went out with her violent ex and he was violent to her, and thought posters were blaming her for the new woman being beaten. Understand now that wasn’t what posters were saying - thank you for explaining.

With George, aren’t they just going for a new era of inter generational Grundy mischief?

yawn.

It wasn't just that she kept quiet- she actively lied to Harrison in an official police interview that Rob hadn't beaten up the hunt saboteur.

After a period of hand wringing she 'fessed up to Usha who advised her she could potentially be charged with perverting the course of justice if she owned up.

Stolen Turkey poults?

Stolen Turkey poults?

I know there is a global Turkey shortage due to bird flu but can only speculate on how this has resulted in the £5 chicks. Could they be infected and be about to infect Eddie’s prize flock, wiping out all profits for this year? I have no idea about the black market for infected birds but there must be someone else on here who knows all about culling and poult regs…

I don't care about the turkeys.

I thought the business about a holiday in New Zealand felt extremely contrived.

I thought the business about a holiday in New Zealand felt extremely contrived.

Didnt Ruth have an affair in NZ? No wonder she has such fond memories….

Genius idea! This might be the only saving grace of the whole storyline.

Well remembered about Annette. I'd totally forgotten all that.

The NZ holiday thing is like one of those nightmares where something's going wrong and every single thing you try to put it right makes things worse. It's also utter nonsense, of course.

There was another thing - going back to my pontificating yesterday - about land ownership.

In the Golden Age of TA (aka any time in the past for which memory has become hazy) responsible land ownership carried an assumption of moral leadership of the community. This was definitely feudal / patriarchal - and easy for the listener to comprehend when Phil Archer was ‘a JP on the Borchester Magistrate’s bench’. As an intermittent child/teen listener I remember how his authority as a farmer was given weight by his visible position in the wider community. Now I can see how they tried to carry this through to the next generation by involving Ruth / David (??) in NFU business, but I don’t think it ‘took’. Perhaps because times had changed and most villagers were less subservient - but also because the writers just lost the knack of keeping Brookfield integrated with the rest of Ambridge on a day to day level.

It's a farm not Monaco

Thought you’d enjoy these snippets from the Archers Archives!

The first is from 1969:

Eventually, as the summer ended, Dan admitted a partial defeat and announced that he was going into semi-retirement. Phil, Chris and Jack would each get a ten per cent share of Ambridge Farmers; Phil, Jill and the four children would come to live in the Brookfield farmhouse, while Dan and Doris moved into Glebe Cottage (which had been left to Doris by the old Squire's widow, Lettie Lawson-Hope).

Then from 1970:

Dan found it difficult to step back from the farm, and by the end of the summer was beginning to regret his decision. Jack wasn't too happy either. Although he owned a nominal ten per cent of Ambridge Farmers, seeing his young brother installed at Brookfield brought out his simmering resentment at being left out of the running of the family business. In the end Dan agreed to let him back onto the farm payroll, but without any say in the management. He came on the strict understanding that he was to work part-time under Brookfield's existing farm worker, Greg Salt, and would have to do as he was told.

IIRC the same thing happened with David and Kenton. And now we have Pip, Josh, Ben … And then Rosie, and Chelsea’s baby …

(‘Brooklyn’ can’t happen now - and Ben probably won’t allow ‘Lizzo’. Damn! Julianne has probably nixed ‘Juliette’!)

That's exactly what I thought. Didn't she go there for some kind of stupid made up convenient training/exchange thing, had an affair and stayed away for Christmas? It wasn't THAT long ago. Bit tactless of her to go all dreamy about it.

Didn't Shula get cross with Alistair after she suggested that they jack in their work and go to New Zealand too (which prompted her to divorce him)?

I can't remember what prompted Ruth to storm off to NZ, but I seem to remember she came back just in time for New Year and all was good in the Archer world again. I thought there was an affair, but I wasn't listening regularly in 2015.

Was it when Ruth was in NZ that Ben got lost in the cereal cupboard?

Did Ruth go to NZ after her mum died? She was all upset as David and Pip were deciding how to spend her inheritance without considering her so she went off on a long farm visit to consider her future.