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Archers thread #158: Te Rum? You numpty, numpty, Tom! Empty tearoom follows. Christmas coming, farmers’ stand up, will it make us LOL? No! Discuss The Archers here.

975 replies

Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g · 01/12/2023 10:07

Thank you, @PseudoBadger, for kicking off this long, long series of Archers threads.

Archers 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 Tom Archer is a great businessman, or other unusual views. Grin

Archers 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!

Archers 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 @LillianGish for the title idea, which may plant an earworm if my scansion just about holds up. @BeatriceBatchelor wanted 'plebby coffee' inserted in reference to my Bolivian coffee anecdote on the last thread, so I'll mention it here instead. Grin Here's hoping Fallon and Emma decamp to the charging station or Grey Gables, or both, to run the type of coffee shop/tearoom people actually enjoy spending time in. Tom's cauliflower eclairs and kale criossants approach sounds more likely to drive the casual trade away from the farm shop and cheese window as well as the Google Translate-named Te Rum.

Feeling very uninspired by TA at the moment, so I have nothing more to say for now. Over to you!

OP posts:
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faffadoodledo · 06/12/2023 11:46

EmmasBirthdayEarrings · 05/12/2023 21:29

It felt to me as if Eddie was faking his
concerns for the future or did others think he was being genuine? I thought he seemed to be playing Oliver, employing a new tactic to guilt-trip him into allowing the gravy train to stay on track.

Felt the same to me. He'd only just had a conversation where he'd intimated to his sons that a Grundy scheme wasn't the right fit for the land sale but that was no reason to give up scheming

Bruisername · 06/12/2023 12:13

Given there are so many local bidders I’m not sure how George and wills scheme was going to work anyway

bakedpotatoforlunch · 06/12/2023 12:32

@EmmasBirthdayEarrings I'm not so sure. There did seem to be a genuine note of anxiety in Eddie's voice when he was speaking to Oliver. Mind you with Eddie his own personal anxiety and his inclination to play on someone's emotions for his own advantage aren't necessarily mutually exclusive. He is Joe's son after all.

BrightYellowDaffodil · 06/12/2023 13:08

I suspect Clarrie’s outburst has maybe made Eddie realise how precarious their situation really is and time is running out for them to hit the jackpot in some way (which he’ll have relied on in a “This time next year, Rodney, we’ll be millionaires” way). Also, he was wanting some comfort that they weren’t going to lose the house, at least. That said, I still think there would have been a motive for the conversation because Eddie must have at least considered what will happen if Oliver dies or has to sell up.

Anyway, I reckon none of the current bidders will get the land. Hazel Woolley will sweep in with Daddy’s Money and snap it up for development. And her eagle eyes will spot the planning permission-less caravan and demand its removal.

FortunataTagnips · 06/12/2023 13:15

@Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g My grandparents lived in Morden College - it’s really lovely. Though I’d say far better resourced than most almshouses.

Fink · 06/12/2023 13:20

Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g · 06/12/2023 10:05

Lots of almhouses in London. Many of them date back to the Middle Ages when I believe rich people hoped leaving money for some charitable purpose would help them through the eye of the needle. Fink will know the theology of this. The livery companies of the City of London administer many of them, having been left that responsibility by members hundreds of years ago. A good many of them have been rebuilt in recent years - (a) so that the accommodation can be improved and (b) so that valuable plots of land in the centre of London can be sold for a small fortune and the proceeds reinvested in building new accommodation, and possibly more of it, in leafier areas a lot further out.

This one is not a million miles from where we live and won an award from RIBA recently for a new building. https://mordencollege.org.uk/ It looks absolutely lovely.

I briefly lived in a former almshouse (which had, by that point, been taken over as an independent school's teacher's accommodation). It was the prettist house I ever lived in, although gorgeously impractical in the way that older houses often are (funny-shaped doors, lots of draughty gaps).

The theology of it is pretty simple: do good deeds as a way of making reparation for past sins, much in the same way as you might buy flowers or chocolates to go with an apology. With certain donations there can be an added step of expecting that the recipients will also pray for you.

Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g · 06/12/2023 13:33

I remember reading that the author Simon Raven, whose works I've never read, ended his days in the Charterhouse, which is apparently an almshouse. The same charitable foundation runs the public school of the same name, I think.

My husband (a non-listener, but he has current plots relayed to him anyway) thinks the almshouse in Hollerton will turn out to give priority to people called Grundy born in the parish of Ambridge. Grin I wouldn't put it past the SWs to pull a stunt like that.

OP posts:
AskingQuestionsAllTheTime · 06/12/2023 13:34

Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g
Going off at a tangent now I've mentioned Susan - it never seemed realistic that Susan was appointed as subpostmaster in spite of having a criminal record. I could have swallowed it if we'd heard some mention of Susan having to declare it and after prolonged deliberation the Post Office had decided it wasn't relevant. The fact that it was (IIRC) simply not mentioned did rather raise the suspicion that the SWs had forgotten all about it, or didn't grasp quite what sort of organisation the Post Office is.

Susan's conviction was in 1993, and was spent when she was offered the job of Manager in what was then Jack Woolley's shop in 2006.

Her conviction, and it being spent, was in fact mentioned in the programme, as was her having to go on a special course before she could become a Post Office employee and do that side of things as well. Peggy pooh-poohed the idea of there being any difficulty, of course, because Susan taking the Manager Of The Shop job after Betty died was what Peggy wanted so it was going to happen. But the potential difficulty really was mentioned.

There have been a couple of threads elsewhere about the likelihood or otherwise of this, and I have a memory of someone employed by the Post Office popping up sounding rather surprised and saying that TA got it right. Possibly on umra? Anyone remember them?

EBearhug · 06/12/2023 13:50

AlexCabot · 06/12/2023 10:14

There are people on my apprenticeship who don't have GCSE maths and English.

They are able to do a functional qualification instead which is far less time consuming.

I finished a Level 5 apprenticeship in covid, and I had to provide my GCSE certs for Maths and English (despite the fact i have other qualifications I wouldn'thave been able to do because English and Maths GCSEs were rerequisites, but rules is rules, even if logic isn't.)

Others on the course didn't have GCSEs, having been educated outside the UK - they had to provide certain recognised equivalents and/or do functional English and Maths qualifications.

I doubt Emma struggles with arithmetic at all, but there are probably parts of the GCSE syllabus she's not touched since school, like geometry and trigonometry and algebra. (That was all there in my day, anyway.) Although we all use slgebra every day without realising, it's not the same as using it in an abstract way in an exam, or drawing a graph of a quadratic equation.

AskingQuestionsAllTheTime · 06/12/2023 14:41

Not getting at you, Gasp0de, honest, but you've missed out some of the steps in the Grange Farm/Estate Saga.

The owners of "The Estate" under its various names have always played quite a large part in the programme; they have never been faceless landlords. (And the Grundys didn't actually exist on air until Joe first spoke in April 1970, opening and complaining about the injustice of a letter demanding the rent he had not paid for past quarter...)

At the beginning of the programme, in 1951, the Ambridge Estate of rather over 4,000 acres was owned by Squire Lawson-Hope. On his death in 1954 it was divided up slightly; that was when the tenant farmers were offered the chance to buy their farms and Dan Archer bought Brookfield, while the shiftless George Grundy didn't have the means to buy Grange Farm. Most of the land (what was not sold to its tenants like Brookfield) was sold to George Fairbrother.

Fairbrother left the village in 1959 (having been there since 1951) and he sold his land to Charles Grenville, who ran the Estate firmly and efficiently until he was in a car-crash in 1963 which killed his passenger (John Tregorran's wife Janet) and crushed one of his legs so badly that it had to be amputated. He went away to America, selling his Ambridge property (all but the house and garden) to Ralph Bellamy. It then became The Bellamy Estate.

When Charles Grenville died in 1965 he left house, garden, an annuity and his interest in three prosperous companies to his wife Carol, who later married his friend John Tregorran, but that belongs in parentheses because she had no hand in the disposition of the Estate.

In 1975, fifty-year-old Ralph Bellamy decided to leave Ambridge for Guernsey with his wife Lilian because he had a bad heart and was advised by medics to retire, and sold a bit more than two-thirds of the Estate: 1,500 acres to Brain Aldridge, and 1,000 acres to someone called Mr Barnet, who set up the Blossom Hill Estate. (Neither the Blossom Hill Estate nor Mr Barnet seems ever to have been mentioned again, so that bit of land in the middle of Ambridge can be ignored.) Ralph hung onto the Dower House and 1,000 acres, which he renamed The Berrow Estate.

After Ralph's death in 1980 Lilian inherited the Estate and became among other things her mother's and her brother's landlord (Peggy in Blossom Hill Cottage and Tony in Bridge Farm). She sold the land (apart from the Dower House, and also Blossom Hill Cottage, which latter she sold to Usha Gupta the following year) in 1990 to one Cameron Fraser, who turned out to be a crook: he embezzled money from all and sundry and ran off leaving Elizabeth pregnant. The Estate was taken into receivership and then bought by Guy Pemberton.

Guy married Caroline Bone, and when he died the following year (far too young; he was only 65) he left his property – apart from the Dower House and his share of The Bull, which went to Caroline – to his son Simon, who also turned out to be a villain: he hit Shula more than once and beat up Debbie. Because she was dilatory about persecuting the Grundys (ie failed to force them not to hold car boot sales in their yard) he had also got Shula removed from her job as Estate Agent and replaced with Graham Ryder, which explains her rather wry comment about having worked with Ryder decades ago. Simon tried unsuccessfully to evict the Grundys, which although entirely justified by their behaviour was obviously villainous in the context of the programme, and, after being taken to court by Debbie and become loathed by all in the village, ended up selling the Berrow Estate to Borchester Land in 1997.

BL finally managed to get rid of the Grundys in 2000, when Joe lost his assured tenancy by being declared bankrupt after not paying the feed bills from Borchester Mills as well as not paying the rent and running unlawful businesses on the farm and all the rest of his shenanigans. Brian was not told that this was about to be done, but Joe being Joe Brian was blamed for the entire mess by the old scrote.

BL sold Grange Farm and fifty acres of land to Oliver Sterling.

AngryBirdsNoMore · 06/12/2023 14:42

@AskingQuestionsAllTheTime please become the Archers archivist. Please.

AskingQuestionsAllTheTime · 06/12/2023 14:44

Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g
the almshouse in Hollerton

The almshouse mentioned by Eddie as having one of Joe's friends living in it was in Penny Hassett....

AskingQuestionsAllTheTime · 06/12/2023 14:45

AngryBirdsNoMore · 06/12/2023 14:42

@AskingQuestionsAllTheTime please become the Archers archivist. Please.

And work with that shower? No chance on God's green earth!

MereDintofPandiculation · 06/12/2023 14:45

Minimammoth · 05/12/2023 14:16

poor Clarrie must be pension age, but maybe not enough NI contributions.

Probably not enough contributions.

And also I think she’s old enough that Married Womens’ contributions were a possibility in early tears

AskingQuestionsAllTheTime · 06/12/2023 14:51

Clarrie was born on 12th May 1954, and has therefore been in receipt of her state pension since 6th January, 2020.

https://www.gov.uk/state-pension-age

She will most certainly have been eligible for her stamps being paid between 1983 and 2000, because I was born in the same year as her and was given NI retrospectively (greatly to my surprise at the time) for all the months my children existed and any of them was in education.

Check your State Pension age

Work out your State Pension age and Pension Credit qualifying age

https://www.gov.uk/state-pension-age

AngryBirdsNoMore · 06/12/2023 14:56

Oh god this just reminds me that I really do need to understand National Insurance. I just keep reflecting that I have another 30-40 years of work ahead of me so I can ignore, but that’s an attitude that would cause horror on the Money Matters subforum…

buries head further in ground

AngryBirdsNoMore · 06/12/2023 14:56

AskingQuestionsAllTheTime · 06/12/2023 14:45

And work with that shower? No chance on God's green earth!

🤣

TeenDivided · 06/12/2023 15:00

AngryBirdsNoMore · 06/12/2023 14:56

Oh god this just reminds me that I really do need to understand National Insurance. I just keep reflecting that I have another 30-40 years of work ahead of me so I can ignore, but that’s an attitude that would cause horror on the Money Matters subforum…

buries head further in ground

You need to go onto the government website & get yourself a login if you don't already have one.
Then you can see how many 'full' years you have, which are the ones that qualify you for a state pension. If you have any empty/ part filled years you can make additional contributions (currently ~ÂŁ820 or so for an empty year, this pays back after 4 years of being retired. Part contributed years are less to top up.)

OverArmour · 06/12/2023 15:53

Isn’t Peggy also paying for Christine to stay at the Laurels? Do any of the family know that at this point?

AskingQuestionsAllTheTime · 06/12/2023 16:00

I think topping up the payment of Christine's rent was taken over by her son Peter when she decided to stay at The Laurels in a small flat after she no longer needed nursing.

harriethoyle · 06/12/2023 16:23

@AngryBirdsNoMore how's baby ABNM? 🤞

Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g · 06/12/2023 18:13

@AskingQuestionsAllTheTime, well, I did say you'd have chapter and verse! Grin Many thanks. So much I'd forgotten, including something I only heard early this morning ...

OP posts:
OverArmour · 06/12/2023 19:14

AskingQuestionsAllTheTime · 06/12/2023 16:00

I think topping up the payment of Christine's rent was taken over by her son Peter when she decided to stay at The Laurels in a small flat after she no longer needed nursing.

Oh I missed that bit somehow, thank you!

Bruisername · 06/12/2023 19:15

Justin isn’t going to let her keep the house - she screwed up there. He is a swine though. I don’t know how she has put up with him for so long.

I said Kate was resisted because she’d miss her!

newtlover · 06/12/2023 19:16

go Lilian!

what a swine that man is