Archers thread #157: How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless clan! Discuss The Grundys here. Bicker about The Archers as well if you like.

[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, 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.)

Thanks to @OverArmour for the idea of making it clear in the title many of us are inveterate bickerers!

Now over to you, as we are about to eat and I won't hear tonight's offering till later ....

I don’t think it’s a fair criticism of Helen that she didn’t get her children a pizza from her friend’s artisan pizza van business maybe not, but I did think it was slightly unbelievable when Henry was saying they never had pizzas because I'm pretty sure (and @AskingQuestionsAllTheTime will correct me if I'm wrong) that Ian's pizza has been consumed and raved about by the entire household and would have been a go-to option in the absence of any other takeaway options in the village. It just didn't ring true to me.

Also the lack of pizza ordering being blamed on Lee because of an insistance on healthy eating felt like a rewriting of history to ensure the boys are not too disturbed by his sudden ousting.

Yes, they've definitely had Isn's pizza, testing out prosciutto and asparagus or something. Not quite a deep filled mighty meaty.

I reckon Stella, with her own dreams of land-owning, will try to buy the land and rent it to Ed.

That would be sweet, @EBearhug. Though Pip wouldn’t be pleased if Stella wanted to do it without her.

Alternatively - Fallon and Harrison?

Or New Harry?

Whose land would the 10 acres be closest to?

I’d definitely like to see it going to one of the ‘younger generation’, to disrupt the status quo.

Aha! After last night’s rant …

William and Ed.

It would be stupendous if Oliver’s long term legacy were to be the re-joining of the Grundy brothers in a common goal.

I'd prefer it too. We have an artisan sourdough pizza place a short walk away. We have had a couple of pleasant meals there sitting down in the restaurant. One time we ordered a pizza from there as a delivery. It didn't have to come far but it was very disappointing. Clearly best straight from the oven. Also, the leftovers were too tough to eat the following day. Back to Domino's for us! We have been getting a pizza delivery from Domino's once or occasionally twice a year for over 30 years (we know how to live!). It's far from gourmet stuff but it's tasty and the leftovers are ace. Never had chocolate fudge brownies but now strongly tempted to try them out. UPF? What's that?

All the more reason for it to happen.

Well said, @Chemenger .

If what @Chemenger is saying is the case then it would have been more realistic for Henry to ask if she meant proper pizza (instead of Ian’s gum searingly etc etc) rather than blaming poor Lee.

Maybe, like eating Jim’s biscuit, the pizza ordering was a signal that Helen is at last relaxing

I think ordering from Ian is a total red herring. Yes they may have had it in the past but if ordering in that wouldn’t be the one you’d think of

I don’t think Ed deserves either Stella to but the land for him to use (don’t forget he doesn’t pay a market rent) or Oliver to leave him the farm when he dies. I’m not sure why everyone in the village is expected to put themselves out for the grundys all the time

Henry is now 12 (13 on 2 January and no talk of a party!). My teen was into sourdough pizza by that age (it might help that Franco Manca is our closest outlet), but would still order Domino's for bulk takeouts as they travel better.

I am still trying to get my head around Oliver's finances (and that blog piece upthread reminded me): What happened to the money from the sale of the place in Italy?

@Madcats Henwee is NOT nearly 13. He is 7 or 8, and will continue to forever be that age (in my head) 😅😋

I am really not looking forward to hearing how they develop him as a teenager and young man who had DA in the household as a young child and has experiencedall that he has gone through already in his short life so far. I don't want to hear it, and I don't trust the SW to be able to navigate it successfully at all.

The Grundys never owned Grange Farm. They rented from the Lawson-Hope Estate, then from Ralph Bellamy, then from Lilian, then from Cameron Fraser, then from Guy Pemberton, then from Simon Pemberton, and finally from Borchester Land. When Joe (who had ceased to pay the rent some months earlier) finally got declared bankrupt because he didn't pay the feed bill either, he forfeited what had until then been an assured tenancy, and the farm was repossessed and the Grundys evicted.

Borchester Land then sold the farmhouse and fifty acres of the land to Oliver Sterling.

Henwee is NOT nearly 13. He is 7 or 8, and will continue to forever be that age (in my head)

In the same way, I do not understand how friends' children are graduating from uni, when it was only last year they were a shepherd or angel in the nativity...

I agree. I have been a Helen critic, but she seems much nicer this week.

ah, ok. I stand corrected regarding the grundy's and their eviction from grange farm.

must suck to not have secure tenure.

The Grundys would have lost Grange Farm if they'd owned it. Eddie and Joe always swayed towards the short cut, get-rich-quick scheme.

They originally did have secure tenure: that was how they got away with it for so long. Joe threw that away by not paying the feed company for best part of a year and ignoring their bills, until they had him declared bankrupt, and his bankruptcy invalidated the tenancy terms.

Meanwhile: Ian was going on about longing to cook in the new kitchen at Grey Gables, but why would he be doing that? He was employed to be Interim Head of Food to manage all the ordering, not to be a chef.

Yes, my thoughts exactly upon hearing that!

And, more to the point, if they are that close to opening, would they not have been recruiting a flagship new chef to run the restaurant, and indeed be involved in food purchasing strategy?

• of course the scriptwriters just felt that being head of food was just Ian trying to get people to understand how important his role is because just being head chef (when he would become head of food in the future) would mean people don’t take his feelings so seriously

words are transient and using the wrong ones can just be explained in multiple lengthy scenes that just show the sw up a idiots

Yes, like in that scene where Paddington destroys a bathroom, the Grey Gables version.