Archers thread #165: Bridge over troubled waters! Discuss The Archers here.

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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 believe Rochelle exists, or other unusual views.

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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.)

This thread may well fill up as fast as the last one, so let's just get stuck in!

Annoyingly I can’t find the theatre poster on the Internet - but here’s the show if any Tamsin Greig fans are in Bath:

https://www.theatreroyal.org.uk/events/the-deep-blue-sea/

Having been a boat dweller for several years - you'd want to moor up near(ish) to a road so you don't have to slog up and down a muddy towpath with all your shopping etc.

Sorry, @Tophelleborine , hadn’t read yours when I replied

I suspect if you’re actually living on your boat, being able to park your car nearby and not have to carry shopping half a mile along the towpath beats rural idyll any day.

Besides, this wasn’t the main road bridge was it?

In my head Tamsin Grieg, not Debbie, lives in Hungary. I immediately thought ‘oh that’s interesting she’s visiting Bath before she goes back’.

I know there is a lot of love for Debbie on this thread but I think she behaved appallingly when she was over last time. And TG’s delivery is very similar to Pip’s…

I am looking forward to Stella kicking Pip to the kerb. I don’t think it will be long now but that SL is on the back burner for now.

It’s a busy enough bridge to have created traffic jams on a Sunday morning when closed

I’m not a Debbie fan either!

It wasn’t over a canal, but a tram famously derailed over Coronation Street, crashed into local corner shop The Kabin and eatery the Bistro, and wreaked havoc in a week of cobbles-based drama in 2010, culminating in a live episode. Two named characters died, along with a rather less-famous 'Taxi-driver', and a third was discovered unconscious, presumed to have been a victim, but was later discovered to have been dragged into the wreckage and cunningly planted, having already been hit over the head with a hammer by evil ex-con, teacher, kidnapper and serial killer John Stape.

I'd say TA still has some way to go in matching that for sensation.

In my head I was impressed the Theatre Royal Bath had the wherewithal to stage a version of the film about a medical research platform in the middle of the ocean, rearing v.large, fast and aggressive genetically engineered sharks. Doh

In which Village is Fat Rosie’s school? Can there really be so much traffic?

If Rex is away, perhaps he's moved the boat to a place where it's easier for Pip etc to keep an eye on it? A boat parked remotely would be at greater risk of being broken into. And if he was concerned about being broken into, he might have cameras/a Ring doorbell...

As for Fallon, poor her having everyone treat her with kid gloves and talking as if they know how she feels. I'm just waiting for her to snap and scream "I DIDN'T WANT THE BABY!"

Clearly things are not great between her and Harrison as she was adamant she didn't want to be at home.

Yay for Chelsea who managed to have more common sense than the rest put together!

ambridge seems to be a bit of a metropolis at the moment

There do seem to be a lot of places where you can buy a cup of tea.

The damage to Rex’s boat made me realise we don’t know nearly enough about Rex’s boat! I can’t remember when we last heard from him or anything about him, he’s just been left to languish off grid in the wilds somewhere when a canal boat feels like it should be such a vital, colourful part of the Ambridge landscape with sound effects all of its own. Pip and Kristy carrying out random repairs seemed a bit - well random. It’s another dropped stitch that the SWs are now trying to rapidly knit back into the plot.

“It sounded to me like George was on the bridge And the other car went screeching off the side before the bridge to avoid him. I still think I heard a splash at this point (someone said it was described as running water, but that was the unofficial synopsis). The later splash perhaps being a bit of the bridge that George crashed into which stopped his (Alice’s) car going in.”

Yes I thought the first splash sounded like one of the cars driving into the river shallows, but that did not make sense.

On listening to it again I had come to a similar conclusion to you about the wall causing one of the splashes, but assumed it was the first splash and that the car that went in was on the bridge, hence

• car breaches bridge wall, splash as wall falls in
• the creaking as car hangs in the balance over edge of bridge
• George’s no no’s (like something terrible is going to happen)
• and the big splash as car overbalances and falls in

the splash after the initial crash but before the creaking presumably then being the smashed bridge wall being thrown into the river whilst the car teeters on the edge (creaking) before following the wall into the river.

thought in that case (tipping on the edge) car would have flipped over and fallen into the river upside down - but that didn’t seem to be the case.

In another board someone has posted how we can know just where Rex's boat (The Serendipity) is moored. He guided a group of people to it when he held his boat-warming party on 22nd September 2022.

They left The Bull and walked along the road and over the bridge (which is pictured in the "Ambridge Locations as large and solid, made of stone, and if an elderly car hit that the car would fall apart rather than fall in the river) to the church, where they turned right along a footpath to the river "near the country park". (Which must in fact be on the other bank of the river from the boat, because it and the church are on opposite banks.) So it may be within sight of the bridge between shop and church, but I don't see how the sound effects we heard would fit with the car having had anything much to do with that particular bridge.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00w47v9/p00w1ssz

BBC synopsis for that day doesn't give the details of where they walked, it just says "When they arrive at the river they discover it’s a narrowboat called ‘Serendipity’, covered in fairy lights and moored by the country park."

Loxley Barrett.

There is very unlikely to be, and absolutely no reason for a cricket team coming from the north to a cricket field at the north end of Ambridge well north of the Am to be delayed in any way (on a Sunday) by a bridge to the south of the village having been closed. Which we were told they had been.

BrightYellowDaffodil
If Rex is away, perhaps he's moved the boat to a place where it's easier for Pip etc to keep an eye on it?

Except that apparently it's at an official mooring, and so it might not be easy to shift it around casually.

We were told on air that "Rex has got a narrowboat, on the river at an official mooring near the Country Park".

Not that I am entirely convinced about taking a boat large enough to live on under the arches of the bridge in their illustration, mind. If the river were high you'd scrape the cabin top, and if it were low you would run aground. So maybe it was brought in by road, except it is not moored all that near to a road... And they can't have brought it downstream from the bridge near Grange Farm because of the ford downstream from that bridge, and come to that they can't have brought it upstream because of the ford between Brookfield and Keepers Cottage which Emma used to use with a four-year-old George.

Skyhooks. It's the only answer.

Those stone bridges, don’t build em like they used to ;)

Yeah, cars can run into them without any glass breaking at all. Not so much as a sidelight.

This has been bothering me - the night in the pub where Mick jumped into with the entirely unlikely poorly sheep story. Does he know Alistare and Deneez are bonking, or trying to, or was that just spontaneous?

I think he worked it out from Alistair's behaviour under Paul's questioning.

Don't know why Alistair bothered attempting to answer snotty little Paul's nosey questions.

Which suggests he's got a history of it himself.

Or just that he has more than three functioning brain cells? Although, all things considered, comprehensively spilling his beer might have been a better distraction than the phantom sheep narrative.

I get why he worked it out but I don't really understand why he inserted himself into that narrative...

Think he was trying to save Alistair from Paul’s dog with a bone interrogation, and would feel loyal to Alistair after his heroics in the Am.

The car I thought ran into the bridge wall (before falling into the river) apparently basically totally fell apart as they tried to lift it from the Am, according to a recent episode.