Archers thread #143: In the Bleak Midwinter, Ambridge Folk Make Moan. Best Christmas ever? Probably not! 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 you'd love to be in Jolene's choir , 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, we made it through Stir Up Sunday without bloodshed, but poor Ben is now in the grip of psychotic depression. Not going to be a happy Christmas at Brookfield, sadly. When will Jill swallow her pride and go and give him the abject apology he deserves? Would it be a good idea anyway for Ben to see his gran at the moment?

Will Jazzer say yes? I hope so. We could do with a Horrobin wedding to look forward to.

Will Emma and Ed end up in court if they go ahead with this idiotic scheme to nick the logs from Peggy's Folly?

Will the two choirs put on a joint concert at Christmas? I assume so, and also that the BBC will continue to fool nobody by using recordings of what is clearly a really good well-rehearsed established choir, not a scratch choir of half a dozen novices.

Over to you!

I imagine he can’t invite friends home

To Grange Farm? Why ever not?

To the caravan?

Yes, I meant the caravan. I suppose he could invite friends to Grange Farm but most teenage boys would want to hang out in their own room rather than the communal area of a house they don’t actually live in.

Does George have any friends or does he just go round winding people up and pretending to have got off with girls?

Emma was so stupid in that scene I was rolling my eyes.

she would be just the type to get sucked into a pyramid/MSM scheme. Now THAT would be a great storyline.

Emma has married two Grundys. Need I say more?

George (weirdly) has a room in each place - Grange Farm and Little Grange.

(Anyway - he’s surely better off without any nasty, snobby classmate who would turn up their nose at his family home in the middle of the countryside?)

I do hope Emma & Ed don’t start stealing the logs, they can’t really think it’s a good idea, surely.

Agree that a pyramid scheme would seem more in character than stealing damp branches to sell as seasoned firewood! I did think she might accidentally steal the green man carving, willow sculptures etc. Wasn't she previously desperate for a Truman Show-style suburban life?

Wasn't she previously desperate for a Truman Show-style suburban life?

Yes, wasn't she after one of the houses on that estate where Joy lives? Something (inevitably) went wrong, but I filed whatever it was under "yet more stuff I don't need to remember".

Haven’t they already discussed that you can’t sell ‘fresh’ wood for fires? So if they did they would soon get their comeuppance.

I know I’ll get an answer here, but has there been any comment from Elizabeth about her mother being an idiotic villain and moving out and her boyfriend being an idiotic villain about the loan? Are they even still together?

I just find it all needlessly frustrating. Why can't anyone access benefits on The Archers it's not riches but it's some help surely. There's a big campaign at the moment with signposting to benefits grants etc available.

Why doesn't Ed just ask Kirsty? He's cutting the branches anyway he could say that they could be dried for firewood she would understand surely.

It's the Grundy antics and wheezes which I find so depressing.

Possibly there are older stacks of wood lying around in the rewinding land that they could steal. That would really bring the wrath of Kirsty down on them, since they would, presumably, be colonised by insects etc. I’d like to see them both in court because their stupidity and ignorance is tedious. Why would Emma feel driven to such a pathetic crime by her employer and fried having the audacity to buy a new coat?

Friend, obviously

I think they will steal the logs and will be caught.
Emma will probably lose her job at the tearoom.

Chemenger
That would really bring the wrath of Kirsty down on them, since they would, presumably, be colonised by insects etc.

The wrath of Kirsty is a busted flush which frightens no Grundy. This is the same Kirsty who, when she discovered that the Grundys had been keeping their pigs on the Site of Special Scientific Interest at Grange Farm because it was "packed with rich grazing relished by the pigs", said "you'll have to reinstate it" and did no more about it.

You cannot reinstate land which has had pigs on it for any length of time to anything even remotely similar to what it was like before the pigs, of course, so there cannot now be a SSSI at Grange Farm. All the rare wild flowers there used to be there will have been eaten, and their roots grubbed out by the little porcine snouts and eaten as well. I don't suppose the then-editor Huw Kennair-Jones had ever seen a field which pigs had been in for more than about a week, but the best way to clear land for planting is half a dozen pigs. They eat everything.

Lowfield, 18th May, 2017
Kirsty calls at Grange Farm to photograph the SSSI. Joe and Eddie do their best to put her off, suggesting she return in a month or so, but Kirsty will not be deflected. When she sees the site, she is appalled, and none of Joe's protestations carry any weight with her. Does Oliver know what has happened? he will be the one who will have to explain to natural England. When Joe and Eddie offer her assurances that they will restore the site to its pre-pig state, Kirsty agrees not to report them - but she will back to check on it.

(She never was as far as I remember. The story ended there, because she got distracted by opposing the Berrow pig-unit.)

Thanks for the Ed/Emma/Will backstory and to Gasp's audio link. I like Ed even less now - stealing your brother's wife is unforgivable.

.... stealing your brother's wife is unforgivable

I think it was even more complicated than that - there was rather a lot of brother-switching before they even married. It's probably about time they swapped back again!

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/bvX3vgWhPVjvd5ZS85Y2N7/a-history-of-emma-and-ed-two-decades-of-ups-and-downs

I'd suggest that his reaction was normal; most adolescents who are not mind-shatteringly self-satisfied almost certainly think about suicide occasionally

What an unpleasant way to describe resilient young people who don't indulge in suicide ideation.

I think it doesn't cross the minds of most people which is why I sympathise with Leonard for confiding in Pip - it was too much of a burden for Ben to impose on him.

And much as I dislike Pip, I thought her upset was very believable. She handled Ben the best way she knew how, and I don't think it was a bad way actually.

It was a lot more complicated than that. All three of the behaved badly. Will had the most justification but was really nasty at times, which was not pleasant listening. Emma knew Will and Ed from babyhood. Their families were very close. She was in the same school year as Ed from the age of 4 or 5. She went out with Will, but was also attracted to Ed. She was very, very young to be settling down with anyone, but as her mother's daughter was drawn to Will's steady job, tied cottage, decent salary and inheritance. She slept with Ed once before she married Will. She was drunk but as I recall the part that played was that it loosened her inhibitions rather than making her vulnerable to a predator (I've never heard Ed as predatory). She shouldn't have gone ahead with the wedding, but decided it would be OK. It wasn't. She was pregnant with George when they got married and didn't know which brother was the father. Turned out to be Will when they split up and Will got a DNA test done. Terrible mess.

Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g
She slept with Ed once before she married Will. She was drunk but as I recall the part that played was that it loosened her inhibitions rather than making her vulnerable to a predator (I've never heard Ed as predatory).

She left her hen-party and went to find him, so no, he wasn't being predatory. Not that he turned her down when she got into his bed... He just thought that she had finally decided on him instead of his brother, and was horrified and very unhappy when she told him afterwards that she was going to go ahead with the marriage to Will. He left the country to get out of being Will's best man, in fact.

Emma later decided that this one occasion must have been when George was conceived, and made Will very unhappy indeed by telling him George was Ed's son; he of course didn't know it had been just the once, and thought she'd been having sex with Ed all the time she'd been with him, and made a complete fool of him laughing at him with his brother for months, possibly years. He said so once, but I can't remember to whom: possibly Roy, with whom he was friends at the time.

Yes there was at least one terrible fight between the brothers wasn't there? Emmur was awful.

Oooh, I go away for the weekend a whole new shiny thread pops up. Thank you, Gasp0de

Thinking of the soggy logs, yes, the Grundys will get caught, with others, also boggled that they haven't twigged (see what I did there?) the uselessness of the scheme. It reminds of the illegality of coal-picking, which still went on in the winter of discontent. Here in my bit of Australia, most areas forbid wood-collecting for fuel because they're for the insects.

Will was a sexist 1950s throwback with Nic and, IIRC, with Emma too. Going out to do a day's work and expecting that literally everything else in the household would be done for him by a woman, regardless of whether she also worked outside of the home or not. His washing, ironing, shopping, meals, etc. were all handed to him with barely a word of thanks, let alone any effort to contribute other than by bringing money home. And that's not to mention the stuff he wouldn't notice like cleaning, gardening and so on. I don't like Emma much as a character, but even she deserved better than him.