Archers thread #152: The Dog Days of Summer in Ambridge! Rabid rants, tearoom dogfight, Bully Dog George gets it all on camera. Is Lone wolf Rob waiting in the woods? 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'd love a son like George, 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.)

Starting this new thread a bit early, as we're near the end of the last thread and I'm out all day today. As last night's episode was a banger, I thought I'd better ensure discussion can continue seamlessly!

The original idea for a dog theme for this thread came from the death of poor Weaver. RIP. The Dog Days of summer are associated with storms and the silly season, so quite appropriate for The Archers at the moment! They may technically be over now, as it's all to do with the heliacal rising of the Dog Star, Sirius (no, me neither), but apparently the Anglo-Saxons considered they lasted into September (thank you, Wikipedia), so that will do for me.

So - what next for Helen, Henry and Jack? Surely even the Bridge Farm Archers will see that she needs professional help? After her outburst the other night they might finally grasp that Henry could do with some too. All very grim.

On the lighter side (perhaps), whither Pip and Stella?

Over to you!

I think The toy farm was discovered when David & family were preparing to sell up and move to Northumberland (in 2015 I think) and were clearing the attic. The toy farm was a birthday present to David and still had the tag on with Happy Birthday in Phil Archer's handwriting. I also think it was accidentally sold at the village jumble sale and then was found and returned to David, but I'm a bit hazy about this bit. I'm sure someone else with a better memory will be along later to correct or fill in the missing bits.

Summertimesunshineandfizz
And why on earth would Ruth, dairy farmer for 40 odd years, need Pip to tell her whether a cow has mastitis?

Plot, possums, plot. The new-minted SW needed an excuse for Ruth to walk into her daughter's house uninvited after she had told Pip to have a lie-in.

If you know who has bought a majority shareholding in that hotel that is more than anyone else does: Grey Gables is 60% owned by some nameless faceless folk referred to only as "the Owners". Adil is employed by them.

They are the people with the controlling stake.

That’s actually pretty bad of ruth and makes me feel sorry for pip that she has her as a mother. How could she bit end up annoying?

her mum spends the whole time going on about what a hard life pip has, how tired she must be etc etc, tells her not to worry about an early start and have a lie in and then purposefully interrupts said lie in with a spurious request. Is she gaslighting her by going on about how hard she has life so that pip genuinely believes it and is then fully reliant on her parents?

That means I was listening throughout the toy farm backstory but managed to scrub it from my memory (quite encouraging really). Has it been resurrected recently given the present-day names attached to the inhabitants.

Oh I see - so we don’t know if they own other hotels etc. Are they supposed to be private equity? that wouldn’t make sense.

'The Owners' are whatever the SWs need them to be in the moment. They won't be credible to anyone who knows anything about business or hospitality or even someone who has occasionally stayed in a hotel. Given that Adil gave them an update by Zoom on a Sunday recently, to which we were not privy, they could be aliens from the Planet Zog beaming his orders down from their spaceship. It would make as much sense as anything else.

Round my way there is mostly houses but there is still a 3 year waiting list for an allotment.

I'll stick to my theory...

When Hazel left, very reluctantly*, she said she'd be back. A few episodes earlier she'd gone very sentimental about her childhood memories of playing on the lawn at Grey Gables.

It will be "perfect".......

• can't remember why, was it because people had rumbled her "I'm so ill" act and her bid to oust Tom and Tash from the flat?

It obviously varies a lot.

When Hazel left, very reluctantly*, she said she'd be back. A few episodes earlier she'd gone very sentimental about her childhood memories of playing on the lawn at Grey Gables.

I thought it was Ambridge Hall, though GG would make more sense, given her father owned it.

Since the allotments in question are a Lower Loxley thing, on Pargetter land, they are presumably granted at Widderbeth’s whim; no need to expect LA-type waiting lists and residence requirements to apply. It’s still a bloody silly sub -storyline, though. I hope Adil gets tetanus from an inexpertly wielded garden fork.

Jack Woolley owned Ambridge Hall (which was then simply called "The Doctor's House") and lived there when his step-daughter Hazel was an adolescent. Carol (Grenville as she was then) inherited it when her husband Charles Grenville died, and she sold it to Jack in 1968 when Hazel was twelve. He sold it again in 1973, more-or-less when Hazel walked out on him and went away to London, and it was bought by Laura Archer. Aunt Laura renamed it Ambridge Hall: she renamed any dwelling she stayed in for more than about six weeks, as far as I can make out.

I doubt Hazel could afford to buy Grey Gables; she wanted to inherit it because she needed the money.

Given that Adil gave them an update by Zoom on a Sunday recently, to which we were not privy, they could be aliens from the Planet Zog beaming his orders down from their spaceship

@Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g that immediately made me think of Mork calling Orson - if that rings any bells!

I completely lose track of who lives where. It's like Mapp and Lucia where everyone swaps houses for the summer.

Mork and Mindy? Robin Williams? I dimly remember that but was probably a touch too old to be watching it regularly. It has no connection to Ambridge at all, but I was vaguely thinking of something like Galaxy Quest, which is a film that makes me laugh a lot.

Oh OK, in my memory it was GG which she was having lunch at - there was some scene when she did something weird at GG I feel.

So was it when she was visiting Lynda (bc it was her childhood home, then?) that she went and twirled on the lawn?

I still think she could be the new owner. Perhaps she's entrapped some poor man who's very rich and bought it with him, hence owners plural.

Someone on Reddit agrees, others suggest "Tiger" Crawford will reappear!

I was thinking about Mork & Mindy yesterday. I wonder if it will have stood the test of time? Like M.A.S.H. and Frasier.

Omg I would love this so much!

There's a list at https://ambridgereporter.org.uk/Ambridge_Residences_and_Occupiers.html

I would think Mork and Mindy, which was very big back in the day, might not stand the test of time as Robin Williams erratic comedy style might be seen as a bit over the top these days.

I thought it was quite funny at the beginning, less so after the egg. I don't think it would be funny now.

Yes, I don’t think Mork and Mindy has aged well at all, but Gasp's vision of Adil communicating with his Planet Zog overlords just reminded me irresistibly of Mork's regular check-ins with Orson, wherein he would relate the latest lessons learned from his interactions with baffling humanoids 👽

Argggh that would be amazing!!