Archers thread #145: The glue that held the Aldridges together is gone. Will they fall apart? 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, and of course we are always delighted to welcome back former or occasional listeners/posters. We don't all agree on all points, although we do mostly try to be civil about it.

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.)

Lillian and I both made the glue observation, so I thought that would be as good a way as any to kick off this new thread. We raced through the last one, for obvious reasons. This one may last until the funeral. Will Tamsin Greig find time to attend? I do hope so.

The poem Jennifer quoted in her journal is here: www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43775/rabbi-ben-ezra It's doubtful whether the last of Jennifer's life was the best, but she had plenty to contend with all the way through.

Over to you!

Ah, Noli!

Kate doesn't have a clue does she, especially about the financial aspect of Spiritual Home. There's always someone else to get her out of a money mess, while she goes hipperty-lipperty onto the next thing.

While Brian's grump is convicting, I'm less so about Jenny not having written out some wishes about her funeral.

Kate is going to get a nasty shock when Brian dies and her siblings turn out to be disinclined to give her an indefinite free ride at their expense. Jennifer did, Brian usually will, but will Alice? Or Debbie?

Adam certainly won't.

That is on a par with getting your tax return done by the end of April.

I’ve learned to label everything with what it is and when I put it there. Quince juice awaiting a jelly making session looks remarkably like chicken stock.

And when I come across something desperately needing eating, whether deep freeze, larder or fridge, I write it up in big letters on the kitchen whiteboard, with jaggedy lines round it to draw attention, in order to inform my menu choice when at about 5.30 I start putting my mind towards dinner.

My ex-MIL (whose entirely accurate nickname within the family is Hyacinth Bucket) had a proper meltdown when her freezer broke and the manufacturer were only offering £50 to cover the loss of the contents.

She's a champion complainer at any time, but this really was a masterclass. Several emails and calls had got her nowhere near the sum she thought she deserved, so I listened in horror as she eventually got a direct line number for the chief exec and gave him a detailed list of what she'd lost (the majority of items prefaced by the words 'Marks and Spencer' - for a woman who spent her entire career teaching Home Economics she serves a lot of processed food), taken from a Word document.

Fink
My ex-MIL ... eventually got a direct line number for the chief exec and gave him a detailed list of what she'd lost ... taken from a Word document.

I could do worse than that: I also keep accounts! I could give date and cost for everything in the freezer apart from what I have made myself...

The things I have forgotten to delete when I used them would be extra, of course.

This, but there was a bit before point A when Alice was assuming Julianne was his girlfriend (after meeting her when telling Ruairi about Jenny) and he was getting uncomfortable about her assuming J was his girlfriend - which doesn’t seem to fit with the next piece of the story, where he does. It sometimes feels like seeing the joins between two different scriptwriters.

I’ve also just realized that the scenes from a few days ago, when Ruairi was supposed to be getting upset about Brian, when they were playing cluedo in the lounge in front of a fire - in my head, that was all set at Home Farm, which, of course it wasn’t. But the whole thing sounded like it was in a big house, where people were coming in and out of the kitchen, and then going to a drawing room, and then Ruairi running off upstairs and hiding in his bedroom, I’m not sure it makes sense in a teeny tiny cottage with probably two rooms maximum downstairs.

Regarding Kate and her selling Spiritual Home, the obvious story there is how she’ll be reducing the family land again, when it’s something that she made out was so important that it made her mother and father have to sell their house. That, in theory should be a huge upset, but I wonder whether the scriptwriters will even go there, when she originally did it, they just seem to gloss over it really. I’m still trying to figure out why Jenny and Brine didn’t move into the cottage they eventually gifted Chris, too?

Also - if Kate’s whole thing is stewardship of the family land - how does selling a chunk of it work?

She could sell the business and the buyer could rent the land, perhaps.

And then Kate could have endless fun explaining to the new owner how they are getting it all wrong...

Once again everything seems murky … Does Kate rent the SH land from Home Farm, or is she essentially squatting on it with the consent of the other partners?

What could she actually sell? Yurts and a client list? Database of suppliers? Plus transferring whatever staff she employs? (That part of professional training was clearly wasted on me; I retain no clear idea of how businesses work.)

Also, I pondered recently whether the money she had from Debbie was a gift or a loan. If the latter, might Debbie not want repayment if Kate decided to sell the business? Maybe Debbie could buy it herself to keep it in the family? (Watching Love Island earlier, a voice on one of the adverts sounded familiar - possibly Tamsin Greig?)

She probably wants to sell positive energy 😆

Why did Kate moan about a simple thing of opening the front door?. Everything with her is drama drama drama. I really do not see what Jakob is doing with her and he was so nice getting her daughter to surprise her, she really dosent deserve it at all. And Brian so rude to Kirsty and Roy. I dont care how bereaved you are you just wouldn't act like that. He must feel really guilty at being such a crap husband in the past.

Brian has had run-ins with Kirsty before, when they first moved into the cottage, so I wasn’t expecting him to react kindly to their good turn, but I think he overreacted and I hope he realises that at some point.

I think it was nice of Kirsty to try to help B in the same way as she’d appreciated, but I guess everyone reacts to grief in different ways.

I agree. I think it is hard to say 'no one does grief this way', as people react to grief in very different ways.
Brian would see it as interfering and implying he isn't coping / doing things well enough. Other people would see it as a helpful gesture.

I think it was nice of Kirsty to try to help B in the same way as she’d appreciated - that was slightly different though. Kirsty and Roy live together as housemates with a shared responsibility for keeping the shared house tidy. I didn't find Brian's reaction so surprising - he probably doesn't like the implication that he's not coping well and may even have had some sentimental association with Janney having been the last person to touch the garden (look how upset Jenny was at the changes to the Home Farm garden). He and Kirsty have had disagreements in the past so I thought it was entirely in character. Listening to last night's episode and Kirsty recalling her own grief, it occurred to me that the person Brian really needs to have an encounter with is Will. I wonder if SWs will engineer a meeting between the two of them?

I’ve also just realised that the scenes from a few days ago, when Ruairi was supposed to be getting upset about Brian, when they were playing Cluedo in the lounge in front of a fire - in my head, that was all set at Home Farm, which, of course it wasn’t. I have this problem all the time. Apart from immediately after the move with the tagine dish dilemma, I don't think the SWs ever really bother to convey the fact that Brian and Jenny had to do a substantial downsize. There's always plenty of room for however many of the family are there at one time - no sense of squashing in and squeezing up to make room or bashing into over-sized pieces of furniture that no-one could quite bring themselves to get rid of even though they are entirely unsuitable for the smaller proportions of the rooms.
Like @TottersBlankly I also wonder how Kate will be able to sell Spiritual Home if she doesn't own the land. It's not in the least bit surprising that she has lost interest in it - the wonder is that she wasn't expected to move the yurts back in the day to save Brian and Jenny's home.

The fact that it was never credible that Jenny and Brian would sell their home to satisfy Kate is a slight weakness in the ongoing narrative!

But yes, I have been waiting and waiting to hear from Will. In all of Ambridge he must be one of those who was closest, over a long period of time, to Brian and Jenny. Through all the travails of the ‘love triangle’ with Ed n Emma; Greg’s suicide; the daily routines of game keeping - they were always so supportive of him. I recall Brian’s finding him another job away from Ambridge for a while as one of the kindest things I’ve ever heard. So the absence of Will from the immediate grieving and comforting is a strange lacuna in the narrative.

I also struggled not to picture things like Cluedo being at home farm.

And what exactly is the point of a yurt if it's not moveable? They're the dwelling of nomadic Mongolians.

I didn't mind Ruairi's swift cycle through different attitudes. He was obviously lonely and unhappy at uni but was selling himself the line that he was happier at business events and working towards his future.

Where is Will though?

Of all the implausible storylines I’ve heard in recent times the one involving Julianne taking a boy barely out of his teens to important business related social gatherings is the most ridiculous.

She is supposedly a hard nosed businesswoman and yet invited a grieving, unstable (by her own observation) Ruairi along to help close an incredibly important deal because….his family home happens to be close to where one of deal decision makers lives. What kind of value would Ruari add to the proceedings? He’d be able to engage in charming chit chat I’m sure but cannot offer any business expertise or even talk knowledgeably about rural affairs. She would clearly look old enough to be his mother so what must all her important business contacts have thought about this ‘friend’ accompanying her to these events.

If she’d hired him purely for her own personal needs then it would make (horrible) sense but parading him in public like that was bizarre.

Didn't Julianne say something to the effect that the business contact in question had met Ruairi and liked him or something? Though I agree it would be bizarre if that were a major factor in sealing an expensive deal.

The fact that it was never credible that Jenny and Brian would sell their home to satisfy Kate is a slight weakness in the ongoing narrative!

The primary motivation for selling the home was obviously to pay Brian's debts. Obviously moving Spiritual Home and selling the land made more sense, but ISTR Kate threatening legal action and Brian may not have been on solid ground given that the problem was entirely of his making.

@LillianGish
yes, good point about Brian probably feeling a need to have 'Jenny's garden' exactly as she'd left it last.

Casting my memory back several decades to my professional training, Kate would be selling Spiritual Home as a going concern, including any tangible assets (Yurts) plus the goodwill. She has built a reputation for the business and can pass on the name, the mailing list, the various freelancers she gets in to do whatever goes on in the yurts, any branding she's had designed, etc etc. It might be worth something to somebody. The business could be conducted in any suitable setting. That was, as everyone has already said, the huge problem with the idiotic 'We'll have to sell Home Farm!' storyline. She could have been forced to relocate to the Millennium Wood or some other family-owned plot, or even (sharp intake of breath) looked outside Ambridge for another suitable place to pitch the yurts.

I found Brian's reaction entirely credible. Grumpiness, reluctance to accept help or to admit that he isn't coping, procrastinating over essential admin he doesn't want to face because it would be upsetting - all seems to me to be entirely in character for the kind of man Brian is.