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!

I would love a cheese Easter egg. However I am now on a post Christmas pre holiday diet so this talk of cheese is torture. I might report you all to MN for triggering me. All evidence that cheese is a diet food are welcome.
I am a few days behind with TA. I have just listened to Helen and Natasha discussing that Tom has left a tractor in front of the farm shop when the photographer was there. I have never known a farmer’s daughter who couldn’t drive a tractor - why didn’t Helen move it?

Durham Market has a very good cheese counter. I must go there and see if they have the one cheese with additions that I like - Sage Derby. I used to get that in the 70s, when we shopped exclusively at the International (really bad cheap supermarket, for those who can't remember it. But they also sold pig's trotters - excellent for cheap meals on a student grant) Weird that I don't see it now, but could get it in the food wasteland of the 70s.

food in post-war England and the decades that followed was generally absolutely dire Availability was rubbish. You can't do much if you can't find the ingredients. Things that we either couldn't get at all in our local shops in the provincial town where I grew up, or which were regarded as exotic and weren't used in home cooking, included: yogurt, pasta apart from macaroni, avocado, mango, long grain rice, garlic, black pepper, pizza.

However, guilty pleasure is 2 slices of cheap white bread, slice of strong cheddar and ridged salt and vinegar crisps. Corn beef sandwiches with crisps. Haven't had one for years.

Neither Brian nor Peggy are related by blood to Shula, and they are both quite a bit older than her (15 years for Brian and over 30 for Peggy) so they're probably not the best comparators. Shula's siblings are Kenton, David, and Elizabeth. Kenton is her twin, David and Elizabeth are younger (David is very close in age - close enough that Jill must have got pregnant with him in some sort of post-partum twin baby haze, there's a big gap before Elizabeth). Shula's first cousins are Jennifer (RIP), Lilian, and Tony - all quite a bit older than her.

I wasn't born at the time, but it seems as though Phil and Jill went a bit mad with their first borns and then settled down to more classic names. All four of their children have classic middle names - Mary, Edward, Thomas, and Ann. AFAIK there's no story behind it, they just have those names.

I feel a bit the same about Lilian, which to my ears doesn't quite fit with Jennifer and Anthony. I guess it happens IRL as well though. I certainly know siblings where one has a much less common name than the others. My friend's elder children are called Matthew, Grace, and Lucy; she then decided to embrace her Jamaican heritage and her two younger kids have very distinctively Caribbean names which are much less common in the UK.

Oh yes sorry I didn’t mean the example names were related, more than Shula and Kenton don’t feel very “Archers”, not classic “countryside” names. I just wondered if there was something behind it.

My post was prompted by yours, but my distress at mini-spoilers may have been exaggerated for (hopefully) comic effect

But it's true that I do now go "la la la" at 7.03pm

I think Tracy and all would like Dairylea triangles.

I’d be surprised to hear so … Tracy’s sister has worked at the Bridge Farm dairy for years so she must be very accustomed to Sterling Gold. She herself had access to the Grange Farm kitchen and restaurant so must have eaten a decent range of cheeses from there. And Brad and Chelsea are at the Orangery. And Emma at the Tea Room … It would honestly be unnatural for them to have such narrow tastes. (Whatever they might protest when annoyed with their employers!)

Well I like Dairylea as well as chedder,yarg, brie. I thought Dairylea would be nice and cheap as has we know Tracy etc are not that well off, and cheese aint that cheap. Also I dont think I was doing Tracy down by saying Dairylea. Some times you are frighten to say anything with out someone criticising you on here.

@LillianGish Cheese Easter eggs should surely be Cheester Eggs!
Facon is horrible.

@JayAlfredPrufrock Cheese should be left alone. No random ingredients added.
Hear, hear.

@Grimchmas Wenslaydale is fine on it's own but does go well with fruit cake.

@Agapornis , I'm aware that Michael Moseley doesn't do Things Fella Paaaart.
MM's voice doesn't annoy me. I can zone out of both programmes but the trailer for the award-winning programme annoys me.

I think Tracy and all would like Dairylea triangles. Nah, cheese strings and those plastic slices. They are pretty expensive if you go by price per Kg

Grange Farm kitchen and restaurant

My mind was boggling there but I think you meant Grey Gables. I can scarcely bear to think what jolly japes we'd have been subjected to if Eddie and Joe had ever bullied Clarrie into cooking for paying customers at Grange Farm.

Am I imagining it or did they once have B&B guests there? I have a vague memory of poor Clarrie cooking fried breakfasts before going off to work, but I might have made all of this up.

It was said by Patricia Greene to have been child's wooden bricks rather than scrabble tiles, and that is what it is in Wikipedia, but the throwing them around until they got something they could pronounce is constant.

Narrowly escaping being named Lusha

Or Shaul.

Although it sounds too spontaneous for Jill and Phil? Were they more carefree as young people?

Grange Farm kitchen and restaurant

D’you know, as I saw the words appear on my phone I had a vague feeling something was wrong - but I was packing and a bit stressed and my brain abandoned the thought. Obviously, yes, I meant Grey Gables!

Not criticising you @Alwaysdieting - we’re just imagining Tracy differently. No harm intended.

Were they more carefree as young people?

Dunno about carefree, @Abra1t - but they were real, individual humans who grappled with life with a degree of enthusiasm and engagement that I miss dreadfully. I think I’m only just beginning to realise how much I loved Phil … David is such a dullard by comparison. And Ruth and David never leave the bloody farm.

hmm but aren't Dairylea triangles essentially diluted cheese? so actually poor value for money?

I've just checked this with DP who confirms that in the olden days you could buy (at the many cheese stalls in our much missed market) you could buy bags of cheese scraps, you could have made those into cheese spread.

Has anyone been listening long enough to know whether there was any SL about Jill being pregnant again so quickly postpartum? Was David very premature so that the gap between the twins' birth and his conception was longer? Was she relying on EBF as contraception and it failed? Were they just a couple who really liked sex, even with newborn twins?!

Blue Wensleydale? Never ‘eard of it.

Crumbly Lancashire is the correct accompaniment to a rich fruit cake.

Nothing wrong with Dairylea. Sometimes a dairylea and crisp butty on an oven bottom muffin is just what’s needed.

Why does Brad have the Grundy connections when Mia is a Grundy?

nice to hear Brian is well looked after!! Given what happened to her mum I can see why Alice is concerned

and yes Alice - it is too soon. What is it with the mothers of ambridge introducing their kids so soon

too soon especially if he has an opiate addiction/HIV

I read the speculation on this thread re opiate addiction as being related to Henry, rather than Harry, and thought that was a bit strong 😂 I now realise my error. This is the danger in listening vicariously.

Crumbly Lancashire is the correct accompaniment to a rich fruit cake.. Definitely Wensleydale. Cheese with fruit cake is Yorkshire not Lancashire.

at the International you could by “processed cheese”, presumably made out of cheese scraps. It was about half the price of the cheapest cheese.

Why does Brad have the Grundy connections when Mia is a Grundy? Brad’s cousin is married to a Grundy. So he has Grundy connections while Mia is a Grundy.

What is it with the mothers of ambridge introducing their kids so soon Depends how they introduce them, surely? “Here’s your new daddy” vs “this is someone I know” and don’t snog in front of the children. But if Alice is agonising it sounds like she’s going more for the first option.

MereDintofPandiculation
"Why does Brad have the Grundy connections when Mia is a Grundy?" Brad’s cousin is married to a Grundy. So he has Grundy connections while Mia is a Grundy.

Well, yes, but Chelsea's cousin is equally married to a Grundy, because (being brother and sister) they have the same cousin.

While Alice was silly about the cholesterol and cake, the chest pain should have meant straight to A & E. Bugger his consoling blood pressure, it's the bloods they'll be eyeballing.

Wensleydale with fruitcake. No exceptions (well, actually, cheddar works well, as do most other crumbly white cheeses) But I'm a Yorkshire lass, so Wensleydale it is.

All this cheese talk is very Python... Venezuela Beaver Cheese anyone?