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!)

@Backy I’m so sorry!

(Though I don’t think I’m the only person who’s speculated here on her being in witness protection?)

Leonard is Egg's father as far as I'm concerned
I wonder how Lynda is getting on with her Christmas memories.

Yes, Leonard's mentioned a son several times. I don't know about other children or grandchildren. I think the son lives in Asia somewhere.

I love Leonard popping in a few times because I really like his character, and I think the actor is fantastic. He is warm, kind and helpful. If Patricia Greene is unable to have lots of lines I feel it would have been better if we had heard about her being very loving and supportive of Ben from other characters.
"Where's Mum?"
"She's upstairs/out for a walk/ having a chat with Ben"

The Brookfield actors have done a brilliant job with this storyline.

I think it was good to put Leonard in to chat with Ben because he is not family and such a kind gentle soul that Ben would open up to him.

Answers to actual questions:

Sipho was brought to England by Kate for three weeks or so in March 2010; she didn't bring Noluthando because (according to Kate) Noluthando couldn't miss school. He spent his time being told off by Kate for being a nice normal busy interested two-and-a-half-year-old (in rather the same way that for many months we only ever heard Helen telling Henry off) and being dumped on various of Kate's relations so she could get on unimpeded with Being Kate.

Leonard's son (his name is Simon, so if he ever appears in TA he is doomed to be a Baddie) lives in Singapore. 7th February, 2019: "David learns that Leonard has a son in Singapore. He works in finance rather than being a Chartered Suirveyor [sic] like his father. Since his wife died, he has no other family."

Joy told Elizabeth during Mental Health Week in 2021 that she had been lonely and done things to try to deal with this. 11th May, 2021: "Elizabeth has told Joy all about her depression, for some reason. It turns out that Joy also has depression, or rather, has been feeling low, and needs a routine to keep her going. She has tried everything for it from creative paper cutting to Russian phrases for beginners, and is now volunteering for a help-line, having tried to ring them for help and mistakenly dialled the admin number."

It's possible therefore that Joy was accepted as a volunteer in spite of any policy there may usually be in this field about separating service providers from clients as individuals.

It's as though someone told the intern that someone needed to replace Lynda on her 'annual pantomime power trip' and they took it a bit too literally...

weve absolutely demolished this thread - p36!

And thanks for the info @AskingQuestionsAllTheTime !

Grr! Eddie Grundy is really annoying everything is a money earner to him its getting a bit much and his grandson is turning into him I know he gets found out most of the time but the ducking and diving is getting on my nerves.

Agree @Bubbylana Eddie was quite unpleasant last night.

I liked Mick though, and thought he was lovely with Joy. Doesn't seem to be being flagged as a baddy - hopefully his role is to allow us to hear more from Joy, as she's definitely mellowed from her original nosy neighbour stereotype (presumably we are learning that this was born of loneliness, depression and isolation rather than an inherently irritating character).

Two Christmas questions:

• what the heck is going on with Lynda? I thought she wasn’t really collecting memories and it was all a ruse. But now people keep referring to it actually happening?
• what are the choirs for? IME when choir leaders start being tyrants it’s because there’s a gig coming up and they put the fear of god into their singers about it. But there’s no gig is there? (Yet)

I can’t believe they couldn’t get a few people together to sound like a quite crap new choir. Both of the bits of singing have sounded like a proper choir, I’ve been in several and that is not how they sound a couple of weeks after forming!

oh I just caught the end of last night’s - found it quite heartwarming!

poor Joy, wonder if she had a violent ex and that was behind Rochelle’s possible MH problems and estrangement

Bubbylana
Grr! Eddie Grundy is really annoying everything is a money earner to him its getting a bit much

If he tries to sell green branch-trimmings as logs for heating homes, he will catch cold at it; it isn't just illegal (wood for this purpose must have been dried before it is sold) they won't burn well – and he is selling to people in an area where he is known.

The Air Quality (Domestic Solid Fuels Standards) (England) Regulations 2020 outlaw the sale of wet wood and house coal, which are the most polluting fuels. You can buy a moisture meter to check whether your wood is dry enough – not more than 20% moisture – and it is worth getting it right because wet wood being burnt produces a lot less heat, and more importantly soots up your chimney badly, and that may end up causing it to go up in flames: not a good idea.

Clarrie and Emma both have regular wages, albeit low paid. How much of their steady graft gets wasted by Eddie's get-rich-quick schemes which never work?

Slight off topic aside as know there are some other ‘old timers’ here - has anyone else had to give up on the 1000 posts scrolling setting? It just doesn’t work anymore for me on safari - just doesn’t load anymore. Feels like it’s gone by stealth.

I don't have a problem with it @OverArmour, although threads do take a bit longer to fully load. I use the desktop site via safari on ipad.

Thats interesting, I’ll see if it works on desktop, I’m on an iPhone, thank you.

I’m also Safari on iphone, @OverArmour - and yes, if I click on this thread at nearly 900 posts I can get up and make a cup of tea while it slooooooooowly scrolls to the last post. Or manually scroll to help it along.

Not sure what to do - MN lives on my phone, not interested in using it on my laptop.

Just lost another post. I too think the 1000 posts per page setting is a problem. As far as I can recall, MN withdrew it for new users a long time ago and after a bit of a hoo ha agreed existing users could keep it, but by the time of the so called upgrade, I suspect they’d forgotten a few us were still using this. I hate pages but may have to switch over. I find when the thread reaches 800 posts+ it takes me ages to type in the reply box – and this is definitely an MN problem, it doesn’t happen on any other site- and more often than not when I hit post or Ctrl return the site crashes and that’s the post lost. I’ve taken to typing what I want to say in Word and pasting it in. (Chrome on Android laptop.)

I’m a predominantly mobile user too. For me it takes forever to load and then either freezes or gets caught in a loop and then a safari error. It’s gone from slow to unusable now. End of an era I suppose

On my phone (Android) I have very reluctantly switched to using the app, which I don't like. Still not great.

I use Firefox on an android phone, never have a problem loading pages. And Firefox on desktop is fine too.

Aw Tracey! 🔔 🔔

So cynical am I about the (hated - at least, by me) scriptwriters that I immediately wondered if they were going to play the Doom Music there.