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!

I too liked Angry David. The Brookfield family can be very dull.

Presumably Grey Gables is planning to tell prospective guests that they can easily charge their electric vehicles down the road. Does this make any real sense? I doubt it. The field must have been bought by an off the shelf company. No real reason for the Dopeys or their solicitor to dig into the true identity of the purchasers.

Charging stations are going to have to become a thing though - so I'm quite enjoying this storyline. And it's entirely believable that someone like Justin would have spotted a way to make a fast buck (while couching it in CSR terms). It does seem that Jim etc are picketing the wrong target - I'm sure Jim has the wherewithal to find out who is really behind the plan. I don't think we are going to have to wait long for the intercom at the dairy to be left on - in fact I was almost expecting it at the end of last night's episode. I love Debbie because she has such a distinctive voice - hasn't been heard for years, but she only needs to open her mouth and you know instantly who it is (unlike say either of the Fairbrethren, Ben, Josh - in fact most of the youngsters with exception of Johnny (silenced for good now it seems) and Paul.

Given how oddly sited this charging park will be, is it possible Damara have a larger plan to massively increase the population of electric car drivers adjacent to that field? A housing estate, shopping park, whatever? I have no visual picture of the surrounding landscape or what else the company might be planning to buy.

(But of course it may be something the SWs never intend to come to fruition - like Northumberland - so presenting a logical and realistic plan doesn’t matter because it’s all just froth.)

Oh no - Johnny has to return soon / eventually! After all - inheritance … Along with Ruairi and Lily I’m expecting his existence to bring a world of fun to my ears for decades to come.

David sounded deranged. Telehandlers are very dangerous pieces of kit, easy to kill people with (accidentally or deliberately), and if the cops had turned up at Brookfield after all he could have been in serious trouble. He has already killed two people (Jethro and Nigel) through arrogance and carelessness, got away with it twice and has clearly learned nothing. The man is a psycho and should be behind bars.

I'm sorry about the lamb, obv, but that doesn't excuse David.

And the land sale / land use / community reaction / Justin as spy-in-the-shop story is total nonsense.

I have no visual picture of the surrounding landscape or what else the company might be planning to buy me neither. Though it strikes me that it's not new housing estates that will need charging stations since presumably new houses (on an estate type development) would be built with charging facilities. The problems with charging exist more in areas with lots of terraced housing and on street parking (friends in London whose driving patterns would be be ideally suited to electric vehicles say they are unlikely to be converted due to the difficulty of charging at home) or on longer journeys away from home where you can't get there and back on a single charge. I'm actually thinking the farm shop and the tea room have missed a trick here - and encouraging electric vehicles would fit in perfectly with their organic/environmentally friendly philosophy.

There are already apps that tell you where the EV charging points are. If anyone suggested putting one in outlr ill-defined there would be several people offering to help build it - me included.

“The man is a psycho and should be behind bars.”

genuinely really enjoying the idea of David as a serial killer who has been under our noses the entire time.

In his defence (this time) it was made clear he was on his own lane and the protest was on the public verge, so there’s bound to hAve been a hedge or fence between them at least!

I like the idea of the charging station as sort of bait for trying to build a new estate. I am probably alone in also enjoying Justin spying in the shop. He can show himself a pillar of the community making future planning applications look more “friendly”. Also I believe in Jim taking against this - I know quite a few people who seem to get almost pathologically defensive of their home patch as they get older.

On his own LAND*

Yes, if Helen could move on from big windows and apply her quick access to the construction trade and freedom from planning regulations to putting in a solar-panel covered carpark and charging station beside the farm shop it could work very well.

By Easter for preference, but if that isn't possible in time for the Coronation.

There are indeed plenty of apps to tell you where to find an EV charger - Zapmap, Plugshare, A Better Route Planner - to name but 3.
The operators of the networks all have apps too, and they show up on Google maps.
BUT, as a PP said - it would make much more sense to put them in the cafe and pub car parks where they would generate extra local business. And the hotel and B&B. We choose where to stay overnight based on whether we can charge our EV up.

By following France and covering all large car parks with solar panels (I have no idea where they are going to get the construction workers and the materials) it should be possible to have lots of charging points all over the place, rendering Justin's dream project a white elephant. If he's lucky that will happen before sod-turning and they'll be able to build something really profitable instead. A ten-story casino complex maybe.

it makes much much more sense for charging stations to be at least in the approximate vicinity of petrol stations. Most people who drive cars are already aware of where these are, and any petrol companies who aren't at least investigating putting in EV chargers are daft.

I'm not sure what planning permission is like in the UK, but surely at some point it will come out who has bought the land?
And again we're left wondering who bought Grey Gables (who are presumably installing at least a few EV charges of their own?)

A ten-story casino complex maybe.

Never, ever did I think I’d see ‘P- Valley’ and Ambridge intersect, even if only in my imagination!

But if petrol stations aren’t doing that surely it makes sense to set up a sort of all electric equivalent with shops, maybe a hotel etc - which I presume is what Justin is doing

There's a farm cafe / ice cream parlour near us which has a big window into the adjacent milking parlour. No intercom or interaction, though.

I think the window is a good idea - their USP is the welfare of their cows, and that their ice cream is a quality product. Actually seeing the cows supports this.

I'm not so sure about the intercom, though. Clarrie's going to get flustered and start sticking strawberry lids onto the blackcurrant yogurt or something.

Isn't the window into the dairy though @KeepingTheWaterOut - as in where the yoghurt and cheese is made. There's no cows in there, just Clarrie and Susan trying to do their jobs and being interrupted by the visiting hordes (presumably attracted by Adam's forest garden?). I haven't quite worked out the layout of Bridge Farm in my mind since they've started making themselves a tourist attraction rather than a working farm with a shop and a cafe.

Yes, I was just giving an example of a window into part of the process being part of the attraction for visitors to a farm shop / cafe.

There's an awful lot of fuss about this window - surely a bit more natural light would be a good thing! Realistically as you've all said how often are people going to be happening past with a burning question about fungus. (the cheese kind anyway)

for me it's not the window as such it's Helen's high handed way of assuming that the people she employs will be super happy to have people being able to look at them. Not to mention the crap new uniforms.

The shock in her voice when Clarrie told her that it was a shit idea and how were they only learning about it when it was about to happen, says it all.

Sounds like a typical employer to me!

Yes this was infuriating.

Also probably more annoyed than I should be about Jim's too hat. Local activism is definitely in character. Local activism in attention seeking fancy dress isn't.

Now that Suzy I must agree with! Totally out of character. (And if it was in costume it was more likely to be as a Roman philosopher who stood up for democracy, or something)

I do not know the current answer to this, but when I last had anything to do with it, getting change-of-use for agricultural land, which anything at Hollowtree apart from the farmhouse which was turned into flats decades ago surely must be, was very difficult and took a long time. Is it not fairly absurd for Justin apparently to have got it in less than two months?

(On 25th November, "Brookfield has had a serious cash offer from a buyer, according to the land agent: someone who wants two acres for a horse paddock and is therefore prepared to pay a higher price." and later that month, "There is good news from the buyer; the sale of the land should go through quickly, perhaps by New Year." And it wasn't until 13th February that "David opens a letter from the council: the buyers for the land they are selling have put in a request for a change of use – for an electric vehicle charging station.")

Jim is fighting the wrong battle: what ought to be being disputed is the change-of-use, which surely cannot have been granted this soon.

Incidentally, if the land had already been sold and contracts signed on 13th February, why would David have been notified of the change-of-use request? Surely it wouldn't have been any of his business what the new owners wanted to do with it?

How many charging points can you fit into two acres, if you also plan to have some sort of coffee stop, too? Presumably not enough to provide sufficient custom for said coffee stop.