Archers thread #160: Ram a lamb a ding dong! To rate the mass wisteria in Ambridge, tap the feedback tablet 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 have given a home to Hilda the Hellcat, 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 @MerryChristmasToYou, @OverArmour and @LillianGish for the thread title ideas.

This week is a bit better than last week, but the Brad/Adil/Lily stuff is very odd. Coming up to the anniversary of Jennifer's death (22nd January last year). We need a new matriarch - could that be Natasha? I find her quite an interesting character. Sometimes she's awful and then she has moments as last night where she utterly redeems herself.

Over to you!

This reminds me of a train trip some years ago to Cambridge. As we pulled into the station, the signs on the platform proudly proclaimed 'Cambridge - home of Anglia Ruskin University'. The chutzpah!

Some of us are graduates from there! (Well, one of its preceding names, anyway. It went through several c1989-1993.)

Everyone always talks over their GP, don't they? And refuses to hear why they've been called in? And don't care about blood test results? It sounded as if he hardly realised he'd even had a blood test!

If he's addicted to opiates he doesn't care what happens when he's dosed up.

It sounded as if he very much did not want a name put to what was wrong with his blood - but had already known there was something.

So Alice will be cured of her own ills through dedication to her sickly lover? (He clearly can’t die, or it’ll be solid funerals in Ambridge for a year at least.)

I do wish Dan would come home …

Wenslydale with cranberries is lovely.

Wenslydale with cranberries is lovely.
What on earth have I just read? Clutches pearls Pass me the smelling salts!
The world really has gone mad.

Just came across Page 2 | To find Michael Mosley annoying | Mumsnet
and don't want to post on it because he doesn't annoy me, there's an off switch, but the trailers for Things Fell Apart annoy me. I have to switch off or mute it.

It's the way he says it. I don't know if it's his voice and the mancunian accent but Aaargh! ... 'Things fella paaart' Eeergh!

Sorry. Needed to vent.

Are we having another fight ding dong?

If they had Wensleydale without cranberries I would buy it. But they don't. And I don't mind @CaptainMyCaptain liking Wensleydale with cranberries - somebody must do

Edited to add my dislike of Michael Mosley, only saw the post when mine posted.

If we are I'm on your side @SequentialAnalyst . Cheese is ruined by having things in it.
Sainsbury's Wensleydale & Apricot Cheese 200g | Sainsbury's (sainsburys.co.uk)
Ginger Spice Cheese | Buy Direct from Snowdonia Cheese
Truffle Trove Cheese | Buy Direct from Snowdonia Cheese
Just why?

I usually buy the big bland mild cheddar from Aldi or Lidl. The one from Tesco doesn't melt properly.

(I appreciate that the last paragraph marks me as a philistine)

What’s wrong with Harry?

I sent that easter egg ad to my newly-vegan cheese loving DS. He replied “looks lovely”. I have failed as a mother.

we have a cheese man who once a fortnight delivers all sorts of artisan cheese. We consider it a treat. Costs us less than going out for a meal. Today he’s delivered his “Burns night collection” - 4 nice Scottish cheeses and some fancy crackers.

I avoid spoilers, and have recently taken to going "la la la" just before TA starts so I don't hear the continuity person say "And now to Ambridge, where Tracy has something to say to Brad." I don't want to know yet!

Quite often I listen on BBC Sounds. Without fail, those are the days some continuity person has made an amusing observation about an episode of TA when it's just finished being broadcast, which I only find out about when it's referred to on here

So not only was the international three-day eventer unknown by other horsey people within his own county, but it now turns out that he lives close enough to be registered with the GP surgery that serves Ambridge. And they still hadn't heard of him. Right.

Also, he believes that how you feel is more important than actual medical results. I'd be dumping him for that alone (not that Alice heard it). It's a short step away from "my opinion is as valid as the experts'."

And so now we have a GP are we going to have a load of medical SL?

have they ended up with the now redundant writing team from Doctors?

These cheeses are flavoured and they are lovely. I will be stocking up again shortly. The baker nearby makes marvellous oatcakes so I usually return to London laden with comestibles.

Can anyone with a small GP practice confirm if the GP themselves would ever call to schedule an appointment, rather than a receptionist (or an automated text message)? I've never seen it, but I'm prepared to hear that it might be common in smaller rural practices.

I don't know about that but my GP phoned me a year after I'd been signed off with workplace stress to see how I was. I was great because I took my pension and never went back. Also a hospital consultant phoned me to ask how my mother was a few weeks after she'd been on his ward - it was the day of her funeral though.

This whole Harry storyline is a load tosh isn't it 🤦‍♀️ hope he's not sticking around long, he seems awful so far. Who bloody talks over people like that, especially when she was trying to give him his own test results. Highly irritating listening tonight!

Maybe Harry has bought The Lodge to get into the Ambridge catchment. Because you can definitely buy places that fast in Ambridge. Maybe he’ll have Hilda back so Alice can think he’s even more wonderful.

But more likely is that we’ll never know who has bought a key location.

the newly-invented surgery in Darrington is where Azra is employed, and when Chris went to shoe Harry's horse it was just the other side of Darrington, so unlike every inhabitant of Ambridge, who was registered with either the Hollerton practice or the Borchester one when Tim Hathaway left and the Ambridge surgery was closed down, it is actually reasonable for Harry to be a patient at a Darrington surgery. The unreasonable thing is for Lynda to have gone there; she is someone else's patient, in a different place.

If that’s the case it seems an odd choice of the scriptwriters? I thought Jim saw her too, or was it just her that told him to go?

I wondered if Harry’s blood test revealed he was HIV positive. Not sure why he would have been tested for it but I kept thinking that his hip was a red herring and the test results were to do with something else entirely. In any case, the entire conversation with the doctor was bizarre.

It really is the case that there was no surgery in Darrington and everyone in Ambridge who had been Tim Hathaway's patient was allocated to a practice elsewhere. Lynda and Robert went to Borchester, as did the people at The Stables, which would have been Jim before he moved to Ambridge permanently.

I have not recently heard of a new surgery opening in a small village, though I suppose it's possible; my experience has been that surgeries close down, not that they open!

So he had a hip injury bad enough to end his career, but not bad enough to stop him riding green youngsters over an XC course?! Something's not adding up...again...