Archers thread #147: Spring is sprung, the grass is riz, I wonder how old Ambridge is. Discuss The Archers here.

[Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g]

Many thanks to @PseudoBadger for kicking off this long, long series of Archers threads.

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Title comes from this poem, with which I drive my family to distraction at this time of year.

Spring is sprung, the grass is riz
I wonder where the birdies is.
The bird is on the wing.
But that’s absurd, the wing is on the bird.
Or so I’ve heard.

Ogden Nash

Apologies to @TeenDivided for ignoring her good ideas for the thread title. Here they are to kickstart our ruminations:
'window on the world of cheesemaking'
'how long until the intercom is fatal'
'will Brian settle in new pastures'
'Springing towards Easter with Widowers, Windows, and wails'

Over to you!

Nice episodes this week.

Neil, appreciating Susan's lovely figure
A tiny Thelma and Louise moment
Adam and Brian enjoying each other's company
Jakob being right back in character
Paul ready to become à permanent fixture
And Brian moving just far enough that we'll know he's nearby but understand that he won't necessarily be speaking (sob)
etc
etc

This is what I enjoy about evenings at 7pm - hate it when I end up thinking 'as if'

I'm so glad Paul is staying, at least for a while. The actor has lovely voice.

What is the name/provenance of the Usha's TA house fairy property?

Blossom Hill Cottage.

ambridgereporter.org.uk/Blossom_Hill_Cottage_History.html

which will need to be changed now Brian is to be the tenant.

Rob and Helen lived there and that's where Helen stabbed him. I expect some local people would have found the associations a bit offputting but Brian is made of sterner stuff.

Agreed, a good week.

One of the nicest things about Paul is that you don’t find you’re already half way through the conversation and you’re still not sure which man is speaking.

Yes @TottersBlankly I was a bit 😳 at Usha and Brine's tones, especially when she said he still had some fire in him!

Yes it has been a good week.

“Looks good to me, Mrs Carter!” was a highlight. (Definitely a chilli night as someone suggested above!) And then Susan, in turn, acknowledging she was more than happy with how her life has turned out. Excellent.

Alistair, Jakob and Paul make a promising trio - and I’m glad Paul will be taking the Stables room. He hasn’t grown up as a landowning Archer - so his presence may prove thought provoking to Josh and Lily. It should be entertaining to hear them negotiating life with someone who isn’t part of the clan.

Haven’t heard tonight yet but I agree it’s been a good week. I’ve noticed this week’s writer Naylah Ahmed often writes my favourites so I was hoping for good things.

Off to read up about Blossom Cottage.

I liked the Usha/Brian scenes, she was treating him like a fully capable adult unlike his children constantly looking after him.

I know the Ambridge Accommodation Facilitation Fairy has acted swiftly with Brian (and Paul) but how lovely to hear Usha use her common sense “no references required, you can keep the keys”

Ambridge Reporter has a succinct chronology of its ownership and tenants:

ambridgereporter.org.uk/Blossom_Hill_Cottage_History.html

I couldn't agree more. He is so unmistakably him.

And this:

www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thearchers/entries/f636663e-d982-49f6-b288-03e389b8173f

on ‘The Curse of Blossom Hill’ is mist fascinating for the feuding in the comments underneath!

I did like the question "Who in this century would want to be named Gideon?" Not a chancellor of the exchequer; George Osborne was Gideon at school, but he dropped it when he left.

I thought it was even earlier than that - early teens. I've never voted Tory in my life and I never took to Mr O (although compasred with some recent Cabinet Ministers he now seems less objectionable), but it annoyed me intensely when some Labour supporters insisted on calling him Gideon and implying he'd changed his name for political reasons. They didn't call Tony Blair and Tony Benn Anthony, and I would see the cases as similar. George was his middle name and his grandfather's name.

My OH was at school with him, and says he was Gideon until he left; but OH couldn't stand him (nor the Ocado founding bloke Jonathan Faiman who was his exact contemporary) so he may have deliberately failed to notice him after working out that he thought the bloke a waste of space. He was two years younger than OH.

I did like Usha saying the house had been painted several times since Helen lived there 😄

Changing to a completely different name is rather different from using a common nickname, though, isn't it? Blair was certainly using Tony well before he went into politics - DH knew him slightly at university.

This is what Wikipedia says, for what it's worth. George Osborne was born in Paddington, London,[3] as Gideon Oliver Osborne;[4] he decided when he was 13 to be known by the additional first name of 'George'. In an interview in July 2005, he said: "It was my small act of rebellion. I never liked it [the name 'Gideon']. When I finally told my mother she said, 'Nor do I'. So I decided to be George after my grandfather, who was a war hero. Life was easier as a George; it was a straightforward name."

Meanwhile, of course, our ex-PM but one was rejecting his perfectly nice first name for his frankly odd but memorable middle name. Names are tricky, as the Baby Names board here illustrates every day.

Feel a bit left out that I wasn’t at school with any future prime ministers. Oh well I guess there’s still time.

I was at infants with Nick Clegg (or Nicky Clegg as he was then).

Maybe you’ve had a lucky escape, @GoldenCupidon. Not school, but one of my closest undergrad friends later emerged as prominent member of UKIP …

(And the House of Lords is seemingly entirely populated with my former erm .. peers, from my first profession. Ho hum.)

Has anyone mentioned Oliver’s opinion on the second-hand pergola now erected in his no doubt expensively landscaped garden??? 👀

What's wrong with a nice sage green pergola?