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.

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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!

@AskingQuestionsAllTheTime , the horses are special Borsetshire ones that can untack, clean the tack and groom themselves. Either that or the Ambridge Equine Fairy was at a loose end.

could just as easily be the scriptwriters forgetting held way through a scene that they were supposed to be riding

Picking up this kind of error is surely part of the Script Editor's job

As a rider, I had exactly the same thought- who’s holding the horses?! But being charitable, they only have 12 minutes and the beauty of radio is that nobody can see the horses so only a very few listeners, with specialist knowledge, will notice and even fewer will care!

it slightly reminds of how my husband is when we watch something filmed in a place we know well- I am all “but you can’t turn right into that street from there! That’s St Jude’s church not St Margaret’s” and he (who also knows The Truth) just says “it’s a drama, they are allowed dramatic licence”.

“These timber fences are great”
”This horse could be a three day Eventer”

Its like they got my Dad to write about horse riding basing it on his one visit to Badminton in 1993

I've been thinking about Adil's exit. I wondered if the numerous mentions of Roy taking over and Adil only returning for his next project were softening us up for Roy's demise? I don't know how far in advance they record though so I could be tilting at windmills...

And that entire cross-country course fits into the land round The Stables.

The land round The Stables is bounded by roads on three sides. The roads are (approximately, on the map) 100 metres long, 100 metres long and 110 metres long.

And Harry trains eventers, but Shula’s stables has the best cross country course in the area (that he didn’t know about).

Hold on, I just remembered- wasn’t the cross country course a Home Farm development? Pay per use, like the fishing lake?

If he’s fit and well enough to train eventers why can’t he event them?

I was sort of involved in the launch of Lymeswold. I can confirm it was decidedly bland.

There was a cross country course at Lower Loxley Hall, and I think there was as you say another at Home Farm, but they were not the one which was built at The Stables in 2022.

But wasn't the one at Home Farm a "riding trail" rather than an actual cross-country course? I envisioned it as being a bit like the riding-track round Richmond Part, rather than having jumps and banks and so on.

There was some storyline about having to change one of the jumps because was too dangerous as it was, wasn't there?

Justin stuck his oar in without consulting either the horse experts or the course-designer and changed a bit of the course so that it was dangerous. He was rightly castigated for this by Lilian, and Shula, and probably Martyn Gibson whose friend Jocelyn designed the one that wasn't dangerous.

Gosh I have no memory of any of this, and only 2022. I wonder where I was?

I just remember Alice and Debbie bombing round the Home Farm course on Tolly and Spearmint.

The 🔮is somewhat baffled by Harry. It thinks the most likely explanation is that H is not a carbon-based lifeform.
Probably a hologram or CGI.

(or perhaps he's made of cheese?)

Oh god, yet again we have an 'Ed fails' storyline. It's so tedious and classist that they're going to carry on Ed as pretty much a carbon copy of his Dad. Stereotype lurching from crisis to crisis. I want Ed to get his tree surgery idea going, I want the actors to have some different challenges to the constant worried tones of Emma (Clarrie Mark 2) I'm fed up with the fencing in of their characters into poor hardworking family, ever-striving and ever-never-getting there. It feels like their role is to give comfort to us plebs out here that we're not alone and to have us feel sorry for them and be 'on their side'. It's lazy frankly, and irritating that there is so much scope there with the characters. It would a much better story if the Archers at Bridge Farm were to have a financial crisis.

Yes always lots of raised eyebrows when TA ventures into anything equine - it baffles me how they manage to get it so consistently wrong. There are so many horsey people who could correct them, you hardly need to be Pippa Funnell to be pointing out the many idiocies.

Having a good chuckle at the dimensions of the xc course anyway, thanks @AskingQuestionsAllTheTime

Just spent most of the last few minutes going "Make it stop! Please make it stop!"

But alas I just could not bring myself to turn it off. There is no hope for me.

Harry could ride because of the painkillers. He sounded as if he was on something. He also sounded cheesy.
Harry is actually short for Halloumi and he'll get eaten by Hildarogden.

Do the scriptwriters imagine that rural sports fields are just left empty and unmanaged when not actually being played on. What do they think, that the team turns up in early summer to knee deep grass and nettles and say duh?

These scriptwriters seem to.

Previous ones had the various groundsmen and the rota of volunteers working at and on the cricket field in the winter months as well as the summer.

surely cricket fields aren't fenced???
and surely someone will notice the sheep and recognise them?

They have identifying ear-tags. Texel sheep are quite distinctive and people will know that Ed has lost the 10 acres.

Baffled by Harry especially by way he speaks as if English isn't his first language...

Isn't Tracy the cricket club captain these days? She is Ed's wife's aunt. Why didn't they just ask her?

it slightly reminds of how my husband is when we watch something filmed in a place we know well- I am all “but you can’t turn right into that street from there! That’s St Jude’s church not St Margaret’s” Or a soap episode we watched where a group of youngsters got into trouble in one cave and emerged from a different one. They were conveniently close for filming, but different systems!