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.

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. Most of us are posting tongue in cheek a lot of the time, so don't worry about revealing that you'd like to have the general public watching you work and asking questions, 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.)

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 think Debbie has badly over reacted. Dont understand all the love for her on here. She is a nag bag and should step back but she is just like all her other siblings not letting anyone get a word in and thinking they are right. Poor Joy and poor Brian.

Of course she has over reacted.
But a) she is grieving and b) Brian has a long history of philandering, so in some ways her over reaction is not at all unreasonable.

Debbie overreacted but it wasn't just about Joy I think, she was taken aback by Brian getting rid of Jenny's cookbooks without a thought and how he seems so keen to just get new furniture etc. So the Joy situation was already on top of these things and the last straw.
I have to say sadly the way Brian is behaving rings very true to me after we lost my mum, my step dad tried to just give all her stuff away to randoms without a thought that I might want some bits and bobs to remember her by. It was Jenny's role to always be thinking of the children and prioritising their needs, she's gone now, so Brian is just thinking about himself and his needs, as he always has...

She has believed him to be an unforgivable and unredeemable scoundrel/cad/rotter since December 2002, and assumes the worst about him on no evidence whatever as a result This - and with good reason. But there are posters on here who have been predicting Joy and Brian might get together so she's in good company. Personally I think it feels like a bit of storm in a teacup so Debbie can huff off back to Hungary. I think Brian will also go quiet once he moves into Bloody Hell Cottage.

Some of the Mustardlanders are saying there was always an odd emotional quasi-incestuous vibe between Brian and Debbie - I don't know if that's true, I'm one of the minority who always found her irritating, all that insisting on how wonderful boring Simon was and then retreating under the duvet and having to be lured out with soup when even she had to admit he was a stinker, so I probably didn't pay as much attention as I should.

Who needs commas?

I getting fonder and fonder of Jenny, nice brooches, silk scarves and Robert Carrier recipes. Woman after my own heart, pity they've killed her.

I'll do the RC pasta with broccoli and anchovies soon as a tribute.

I'm getting fonder and fonder of Jenny, nice brooches, silk scarves and Robert Carrier recipes this is EXACTLY how I always imagined her. What I don't understand is that if her kids are so sentimental about her stuff, why don't they take it themselves? Brian offered Debbie the recipe books, but she didn't want them. Certainly scarves and brooches don't take up much room. As for all the furniture - wing back chairs and such like - it would all still be in situ if they hadn't been forced to sell Home Farm through Kate's bone headed refusal to move Spiritual Home (a business she's now thinking of ditching). I wonder if Brian would have been in such a rush to move if he'd still been in the farmhouse? I can't help thinking much of the downsizing and casting off of stuff into storage had already been done long before Jenny died so Brian is really just finishing the job they started together. It's perfectly OK for him to say he doesn't need "stuff" to remember Jenny. We all now know he has a very sentimental attachment to Bloody Hell Cottage. If the others feel they need "stuff" they should take it and make space for it in their own homes.

I agree @LillianGish . They should take what they want and then butt out. Brian doesn't need all those cookery books - probably nobody does. If I need a recipe these days I look online. There are only a few recipes in books I habitually refer back to.

But Jenny's personally annotated recipes! I like to think that Ian photographed all the best ones years ago and has them on a thumb drive.

Agreed. Brian is being very insensitive.

Some of the Mustardlanders are saying there was always an odd emotional quasi-incestuous vibe between Brian and Debbie

I certainly always thought so!

There was a plot line about a proposed solar farm some years back. I don't remember what happened, although I assume it never got built as we never hear of it now. Anyone remember?

what you do if your edible forest develops couch grass as a determined monoculture, or ground ivy ditto, I don't know, but presumably if it gets brambles or nettles you just regard them as food and don't worry too much. if you’ve done your forest layer properly, there’s too much shade for couch. Ground ivy isn’t a problem, is it? Brambles will head out into the sunshine.

Nothing I’ve read on forest gardening in the uk has been convincing about any vegetables in the lower layers.

Market gardening is much more monocultural than that. Field of cabbages, then a field of asparagus and so on.

I was thinking of what used to be our lawn before we took away the grass and distributed the seeds of twelve native flower species and six different types of grass local to our area, then gave up doing anything to it except scything it twice a year; one year what came up was waist-high ox-eye daisies and not a lot else for a month or so, and we lost a grandchild in it at one point. Unplanned monoculture.

(If anyone wants to know, the seeds were for Yarrow, Kidney Vetch, Lady's Bedstraw, Common Catsear, Rough Hawkbit, Oxeye Daisy, Birdsfoot Trefoil, Ribwort Plantain, Cowslip, Self Heal, Meadow Buttercup and Common Sorrel. That was eight years ago, and we are waiting to discover which will thrive long-term and which will vanish. The ox-eye daises are being a bit more moderate now, and for the past three years we have had cowslips, which I find very pleasing indeed, especially since I'd more-or-less decided that they didn't like our garden and were not planning to come up at all.)

That sounds lovely @AskingQuestionsAllTheTime. Just reading the seed names makes me happy.

Heavens!

This is not what I expected from Debbie’s return.

BOOP - I guess …

Sorry haven't caught up with everything either episode wise or on here, but just who was Justin ringing surreptitiously the other night - sounded like "Azil", possible "Ayzel"??

Am wondering if this fits with my 🔮 of Hazel being owner of GG.

Tbh though what we heard of the conversation didn't sound like the sort of chat one has with the lovely Ms Woolley (can't remember, has she ever married - and divorced?)

Also he'd have been pronouncing her name with a weird accent....

I think Justin was speaking to Ardil who represents the new owner of GG.

That would make sense

However have just LA'd for the fourth time and he definitely says "Azil" not Ardil

I'm feeling confirmed in my dislike of Debbie. If at 50+ she can't cope with the idea of a couple being genuinely happily married for a half a century despite a few mis-steps along the way, and the survivor being stricken and in need of support, the sooner she goes back to Hungary the better.

I hope she bumps into Carol Tregoran when she gets to Budapest and that Carol (who was setting up a wine deal) sympathises and comments in passing how glad she was that she and Jenny had reconciled after J's affair (or was it affairs?) with John. I got the impression Miss Prissy Knickers didn't know about that.

In that case I've really got the wrong end of the stick.

I am confident that it was not Adil; I heard it as "Asif" (ahseef) but am happy to wait for the BBC to let us know what it was/is, if the character ever actually appears in the programme, rather than just being a silent on the other end of a phone.

I’m doing the same in an increasingly shady lawn, from plugplants and bulbs not seeds. Successes are wild daffs, fritillaries, and greater burnet, from which you will realise it’s not the short dense flower rich sward that wildflower meadow brings to mind. Oh, and Melancholy Thistle.

Did you ever find the grandchild?

I'm feeling confirmed in my dislike of Debbie. If at 50+ she can't cope with the idea of a couple being genuinely happily married for a half a century despite a few mis-steps along the way, and the survivor being stricken and in need of support, the sooner she goes back to Hungary the better. They’re doing a great job of describing the strange time after a death when all sorts of things come to the surface

MereDintofPandiculation
Did you ever find the grandchild?

We sent the dog in to find her; they came out together looking smug and not answering questions.