Archers thread #160: Ram a lamb a ding dong! To rate the mass wisteria in Ambridge, tap the feedback tablet here.

[Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g]

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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’m sure I remember him saying he had to pay a third

Also, isn’t he a minority shareholder so wouldn’t be in the 50-60% range

The interview yesterday was claiming Oliver owned 40% and the others 60%, so he would still be a minority owner either way. But I don't know if he owns 40% or a third. We know he put in £250k to bail Adil out, so the total mess was either £750k or £625k.

I remember him saying relatively recently that the other owners had contributed proportionately to the extra money needed. I don't think the proportion itself was mentioned then, it would have been back when the sale was going through. But I don't remember what was said then, only that I've spent months thinking he owned 1/3.

I thought you meant he owned 40-60%

I'm sure when the amount was mentioned he said it was a third

given adil can’t keep track of whether he married or not I’m not sure I’d trust him to get the share right

I absolutely think that he retained 40% of the hotel, because that was what he stated on air.

Tuesday 19th April, 2022
He talks of Caroline, and becomes emotional before announcing that he has sold a 60% share in Grey Gables; he will be stepping down and Adil, the representative of the new owner, will take over.
https://ambridgereporter.org.uk/synopses/2022.html#April

However, Oliver also stated on air that he was expected to put in half as much again as the rest of the owners, and that his share would be £250,000, which would make the total of extra money required £750,000

Friday 20th October, 2023
The partners will put forward a huge lump sum to enable them to complete, on the proviso he stumps up half that amount, which will be a quarter of a million pounds.
https://ambridgereporter.org.uk/synopses/2023.html#October

I heard that speech as them expecting him to cough up half as much as they did, but if they were demanding half of the total from him it wouldn't be £625,000; it would be £500,000. I'll go and have a listen to the episode and see if I can get the exact words.

The synopsis is actually pretty exact. "The partners say that they'll put forward a huge lump sum to enable us to complete, on the proviso that I can stump up half that amount."

It's really ambiguous, as it was written. I wish that sentence hadn't ended there: two more words would have made it crystal clear one way or the other. "half that amount as well" would have done in one direction, and "half of it" in the other.

(Drat you Sarah Hehir!)

If the partners were hard headed business men they would have asked for 40% but perhaps Oliver was rounding?

I can’t imagine any big chain having a 40% partner so curious to know who the partners are

Ugh. I thought the point was that he was a minor shareholder and was supposed to be stepping back a lot.

The whole storyline is so bloody stupid, I hate that it’s so central but feels so meandering and badly thought out, like it’s being made up as it goes along.

Did a previous poster use an analogy of the game where you fold over a piece of paper and each person draws a body part of a different animal, to make a randomised monster? That. That’s this storyline.

(I’ve been bawled at by a 6 month old with bad guts for the last 30 minutes, probably isn’t helping my mood - but does make my time quite precious and I’m annoyed at wasting it on this stupid storyline!)

AngryBirdsNoMore
Did a previous poster use an analogy of the game where you fold over a piece of paper and each person draws a body part of a different animal, to make a randomised monster? That. That’s this storyline.

I think it has been suggested before (like, a couple of years or more ago as well as earlier in this thread) that it's like that; it does seem very apt as an analogy.

A long time ago when the scriptwriters seemed to have more autonomy, one of them, who hated Shula, sent her to Singapore. Another, who liked her, brought her back again as soon as possible.

The Brian/Susan scenes are what I tune in for!!

was there no spa at the old grey gables?

why the baby chat with Fallon? Feels like that’s leading somewhere.

Natasha showing good boss skills.

At what age can you sell lambs?

Ed’s constant whining about the weather/dead lambs irritates me. Texals are difficult to lamb, but the ones that survive make better money than most other lambs, being an excellent “butcher’s lamb”. He’s lambing early to make the spring lamb market - better prices etc than those who lamb in the spring and sell in the summer/autumn . Trade off is of course bad weather, but he must have factored this in when he decided on this course of action.

And 30 ewes are very much pet/hobby farmer territory - he would be lucky to make a couple of thousand profit from them, unless he’s constantly producing “Pepper Pigs”. Someone keeps a similar number on my land, and it is very much her hobby.

Yes, it sounds like the SWs have looked up some old scripts, in which the lambing of much larger herds featured rather a lot during the lambing season - various characters dropping with exhaustion etc.
And then the SWs just copied and pasted

I like the idea of a monument to Ron - The Rob Titchener Memorial Patio, perhaps? After all, Helen did try to take the usual MN advice.

Flocks! not herds

Ed won't make money from his lambs if he doesn't sell them, and last November it was clear that he hadn't sold them yet, because he still had fifty-two at hand.

"At what age can you sell lambs?" At any age of lamb that someone else is willing to buy, I would guess. Also at a guess, when they are eleven months old is rather late to be doing it unless you are keeping them another eight or ten months to sell as hogget.

For me the whole lambing difficulty is all about keeping the Titchener/ Helen SL going, and nothing else. Bloody boring.

Totally agree echt. If they decided this piece of land was going to keep them in SL for years I really don’t want to hear them

Yes, me! But also very possible said in the past too!

A long time ago when the scriptwriters seemed to have more autonomy, one of them, who hated Shula, sent her to Singapore. Another, who liked her, brought her back again as soon as possible.

The Ambridge Hokey Cokey

My wandering brain sees Darrington and immediately comes up with ‘Darrowby 385…’

"I said to myself 'I haven't seen Susan for such a long time, I'll pop in and see her!'

How are Alice and Chris getting on with the Shetland? Both of them seemingly never having actually been near a pony before 🙄

Adil/Ardil will take Roy’s job and I hope Roy is whisked off for a happy ending with the surrogate whose name totally escapes me yet I can hear her accent in my head!

Lexi.

And he took a cake with him to the vets, too, before embarking on the long detour leading from the straight road between the vets and his home, along a quite different road at right angles to it, and to a house on the other side of the village – which is up a farm road which goes nowhere else.

Nobody can ever be "just passing" Ambridge View!

Wasn’t that a Hancock episode?