Archers thread #148: Unseasonably, it's panto time in Ambridge. He's behind you, Pat! BANG. 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. Most of us are posting tongue in cheek a lot of the time, so don't worry about revealing that you think George Grundy isn't a psychopath, 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.)

Will Rob return, or are they playing with us? Will Pat run amok with her shotgun and wipe out half the village? (We can but hope ...) Will Oliver come to his senses and turf the Grundy clan out of Grange Farm? So many questions, so much time.

Over to you!

I missed how he found her, what day was that, anyone?

I thought their conversation didn't sound terribly true to life at all.....

Thank you for the new thread, Gasp0ode

Surely Freddie must by now have twigged that the the entire existence of Lower Loxley is underpinned by slavery, so what's he going to do about that in time? Also, if Blake is what pricked his conscience, why on earth didn't he tell his mother?

Also, I may have missed it, but would have expected more reflection by Adam on having both parents shuffle of their mortal coil in short order. As Lady Bracknell said: "To lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune, to lose both looks like carelessness".

Sir John Pargetter made his fortune in India, so it is entirely possible that the existence of Lower Loxley Hall isn't particularly underpinned by slavery; not everything was. We don't even know for sure that Sir John was a member of the East India Company, or at least I don't think we have been told that he was: there were a fair few Europeans in India who weren't. And there isn't any particular evidence the ship in the background of the painting even was a slave ship, because most of that company's business had nothing to do with slaves. (The opium trade, sure, but that's not such a "hot topic" at the moment.) Freddie is being irrational, but it's understandable that he should be: slavery nearly killed him, after all, so it is what might be called a sore subject. I think he should be allowed to get rid of something which upsets him so much, not sacrificed on the alter of Elizabeth Is Always Right.

I think Freddie doesn't tell things to his mother because she talks at him as if he were a small child and the result seems to be that when he talks to her he talks like one; when talking with Uncle David he sounded completely different, and quite able to make a sensible argument rather than just whining and growling.

One might opine that he would have entirely different feelings about the pairing were it proven to be connected to the opium trade.......

*about the painting

Thanks for the new thread!

Or indeed to check his own paternity! I mean, we only have Jenny's word for it that Paddy was the culprit.

I thought it was assumed it had to be Paddy because Adam inherited his red hair.

I may have imagined it but I thought Ian was being a bit cautious and voiced concern Erin might be a scam artist. Adam is convinced she can’t be as she only got in touch because she was researching her family tree. I find it bizarre that he’s just accepted that story. If Erin’s done enough research she may have found out he was adopted by a wealthy farmer, his mother has just died and (presumably) left him some money. Maybe she’s playing the long game and grooming him with a view to scamming him further down the line.

I think at the very least Adam should verify Paddy is actually dead and ask to see her birth certificate.

I think the first we heard of Erin was Adam and Iain talking about it.

Strange Adam is relishing having another sister. He has far too many already…

Good point, you'd thing he's have preferred a brother! Do we know whether Erin is an only child?

Someone help me understand the picture thing. What I remember of the Nolly/Freddie conversation was that Nolly saw a ship in the background that belonged to slavers (bit fuzzy on this), so I assumed it was a seascape of some kind. But last night they were talking about a portrait (Freddie talking about how his ancestor must have thought the person in the picture was absolutely marvellous). So is it one picture or two? A portrait with a ship in the background (but no name of the subject)? Or what?

Yes, I think Adam said that she was an only child.

Like another poster, I thought that the phone conversation with Erin was very unnatural-sounding, and it was beyond ridiculous that they were small-talking about pizza vans instead of getting straight down to Adam asking about their mutual father, or Erin leasing with that information. It was crap scripting for the sake of a dramatic finish/cliffhanger. 0/10

Given that no one noticed it for decades, I was imagining a portrait with a ship in the background. It's definitely not mainly a painting of a ship, because Nolly had to point the ship out.

In my head it would be a bit like this.

As far as I could make out, Noluthando recognised that a man in a portrait was wearing East India Company uniform (how, for goodness' sake? Intuition? Not only would that have been very much like any other navy-type uniform, it certainly changed from time to time) and therefore leaped to the conclusion that the ship dimly visible in the background of the picture must be a slave-ship and that the man in the portrait must have been its commander. That led to Freddie similarly leaping to a conclusion, in his case that his ancestors must have been hand in glove with slavers. There doesn't seem to have been any evidence for either conclusion given on air: all we have actually heard about it is "this is a picture from a date we have not been given, with a picture of an unnamed person in a uniform about whom we know he was not a member of the Pargetter family but nothing else, and it has a ship of an unknown type in the background".

I wouldn't hang a gerbil on that sort of evidence, let alone a dog.

I thought Adam's reaction to learning his biological father had just died was completely bizarre.

Thanks both - Fink that portrait was helpful!

It was a bit ‘cornershop’s just run out of tomato sauce,’

Maybe it would take a while to hit though.

I don't expect he'll disappoint us, though. He'll realise that it's all the fault of Brian/Alice/Martha/anyone else you can think of that he didn't immediately contact Paddy the moment he read that letter, so that he could have dashed over to Ireland for a deep and meaningful drone at him.

you have to "watch this thread" and bookmark a post, IME, then it shows up

the Adam story screams scam somehow, and i haven't given up hope that his actual father is Sikesey (sp?) because that would be so cool. Maybe he'll meet Erin and she'll murder him and we'll all be put out of our misery.

Freddie was acting like a child. Wiser heads than his have ways of handling exhibits like this - why can't he speak to the people, say, at the M Shed in Bristol, or the other museums highlighting how the country was built on slavery. I imagined him stamping his foot at one point. How come Liz only invited one of her children to her birthday dinner (i am too lazy to try to remember what Freddie's sister is called)

It was usual for the things in the background of portraits to be relevant to the subject of the portrait, usually in the “I am really wealthy and this is how I became so” sense.

Maybe the subject of the portrait owned the largest shipbuilder in (presumably 100% inland) Borsetshire? 🤔

There must be a reason why Adam is being given a fourth half sister. Maybe a scam, maybe it will turn out that he is really Tom Forrest's long lost son. He did not sound overly fussed about the death of his birth father. However, that fits in with his laissez faire attitude to ever trying to meet him when he was alive.

Elizabeth alluded to the fact that Freddie will one day be in charge of Lower Loxley. I really hope he has married Chelsea by then. He needs someone with more than two brain cells to show him the way.