Archers thread #142: Kill Jill? Is Ambridge heading for a Tarantino-style bloodbath on Stir Up Sunday? 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, although we do mostly try to be civil about it. Most of us are posting tongue in cheek a lot of the time, so don't worry about revealing that , 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/4636789-the-archers-spoilers-thread-7-cant-wait-for-702pm-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.)

Well, things have taken a turn for the better in the last few days! The SWs have re-discovered their form and the actors and directors have risen to the challenge. I won't say much more than that for fear of jinxing things. Over to you!

(Thanks to @JanglyBeads for the thread title idea!)

The likelihood of a celebrity cameo (Gareth Malone) crossed my mind when the choir was first mentioned.

Oooooh - another twinny! Welcome @Gonners

@Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g PLEEEEEEEEEEEEEASE can we make the Zoom test compulsory? Partly because the Mailbox might take it up for new SWs too, but mostly because I now have so few Zoom meetings I’ve repurposed my Zoom light for the kitchen.

How is it possible that there will be enough people to form two choirs in Ambridge? I would have thought they could just about cobble together enough people for a couple of Barbershop quartets (but as so many characters are silent or silenced at the moment even that might be pushing it). It's as if the SWs have abandoned any pretence of writing anything realistic.

Maybe everyone will join both choirs, with "hilarious" consequences?

I can’t imagine anything less enticing than having to spend the evening singing modern carols with creepy George, the Pirate and/or the Pirate’s daughter.

The idea of two choirs full of silent villagers amuses me. They could have a silent sing-off across the Green at the big lights turn-on event.

Or maybe one choir will get all the known villagers and one the incomers from Grange Spinney and Beechwood. Wot larks 🎶

(Presumably instead we'll get a couple of strategic speakers/singers in each choir and lots of 'no Usha?' 'No, she's in Fallon's choir instead, but Hilary Noakes is over there - look')

Sounds like the TA quizzes hosted by (iirc?) the founder of @rchers @narchists on zoom in lockdown. They were a blast!

Can't remember, did anyone else on here do one or more of those?

Chsnging the subject, but two to four acres doesn't sound like very much land. A big garden can be an acre! Is a paddock's worth really enough to raise 40 grand, or to get Jill upset about the sale as if it were destroying the Archer legacy?

Agricultural land with no possibility of planning permission goes for about £10,000 an acre where I live.

The current wheeze round here is to get (permission) for an agricultural barn -it helps to have it near other farm buildings, then flip it to become residential (either converting the building itself or using the astonishingly sturdy footings of a corrugated steel barn to build 2 storey property a couple of years later).

We had to pay £35k in 2 instalments for the 4-acre field near where I live.

If we had bought it with the house when we first moved here we would have been quids in.

If it's anywhere near the farmhouse, perhaps Kindly Uncle Vince will buy it and turn it into a sanctuary for howler monkeys.

i continue to be baffled that the Dopeys (yes I know, dopey) seem to have jumped into the arrangement with Vince who they knew perfectly well was cunning and exploitative without getting a beady eyed lawyer (NOT Usha) to check the paperwork very carefully. Just because he's doing sex with Lizzie doesn't make him trustworthy.

Paperwork. Agreement documentation. That stuff every business is knee deep in. That they can't manage their income stream, their tax affairs, their insurance, without.

As so often, the sense that the SWs have never met an actual human being hangs heavy.

That said, a duelling choirs yuletide special with comic rustic asides and a heartwarming surprise pregnancy/death plunge/furtive shag will make it the BEST CHRISTMAS EVER

again.

Hello all, I'm new here but have listened to the Archers on and off since ca 1972. And have Opinions.

Hollowtree, which is where this "strip of land" said to be, is quite a long way from Brookfield farmhouse and on the other side of the river, but close to the village; the road past it runs along behind the end of The Green (the street of that name, not the feature with the duck-pond) and Manorfield Close.

www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/archers/wallpaper/ambridge_1024.shtml

Well, that didn't work! Sorry.

www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/archers/wallpaper/ambridge_1024.shtml

All right, why is something which is fine in preview not appearing when I post?

Love your opinions, @DeanVolecapeAKAelderberry

Huh. So much for "If you have used any links in your post, they should be working correctly in this preview." They are; just not when posted.

The file is at https: //www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/archers/wallpaper/ambridge_1024.shtml

And since it refuses to link, if you take out the gap after "https:" and then copy-and-paste into a browser you ought to get the BBC wallpaper map of Ambridge.

The link(in yr latest post) works fine for me even on my phone, thank you.

Altho that looks like a map drawn by someone who's never looked at a similar scale map of a real village. Certainly nothing like the one I grew up in. The road shapes and footprints of the older properties should look nothing like the road shapes and house footprints of the newer bits!

No, not a prognostication
The 🔮doesn't do frivolity.
But if the BBC is thinking choirs, then it is surely thinking Little Gareth?

Thanks Asking.

Welcome newcomers!
@DeanVolecapeAKAelderberry do I recognise another one-time denizen of the late, great Mustardland?

The available size of the cricket field (looking at the paper copy I have of that map, which spreads out further at the edges and has a scale) is about fifty by fifty metres, so in Ambridge they play miniature cricket.

Yes, it's a rubbish map, but it does give some idea about what is where, and that can be useful.