Archers thread #167: Welcome to Ambridge, the world capital of loose ends! Discuss The Archers 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 like The Archers to be wall to wall election conversations for the next month, 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.)

Over to you!

Listening again - if someone said ‘everyone needs praying for’ to me I wouldn’t have been too happy tbh!

fundamentally they are less and less compatible

I know Ian left because of the mess they were making - did he decide to go back?

I got the impression Fallon made that decision after they were married, was not suggesting she deliberately kept it from him. But by then presumably too late for Harrison, addicted to lurve and willing to sacrifice anything to its thrall.

I’m almost certain he went back. The pizza van can’t be his only source of income particularly if Xander is in FT nursery but I don’t really follow anything to do with Ian and Adam closely so not sure. I remember Adam stealing borrowing money from Home Farm to pay the electricity bill but perhaps Jenny’s money solved some of their financial woes. Adam’s fancy car might be one of those hire purchase jobs🤷🏽‍♀️ The Ambridge money fairy moves in mysterious ways.

Back to Alice, I blame her, entirely her own fault. If she had gone for a food rather than drink based addiction, poor unfortunate George (bless the dear, kind, well meaning boy) would have been unable to drag her engorged carcass from seat to seat like a rag doll, so bridgegate could have never occurred. It’s like the evil lush set him up, clap her in irons mi’lud.

How flash is Adam’s car, could he be running county lines as a backup. Also Zanders school fees to be considered, especially now they will be vatted.

He’s not at private school is he?

Why does he need private school?

“Listening again - if someone said ‘everyone needs praying for’ to me I wouldn’t have been too happy tbh”

Got to agree (although it could be argued as a truism, at least in its non literal sense)

Strangely though, I think the song say a little prayer for you is such a caring ditty

why indeed, possibly same reason as sir Keir, but possibly because Adam has inherited nobbery through his mother by Marriage, so I made a provocative assumption.

Yes indeed! I was thinking a) this sounds like a public service broadcast aimed at making people feel completely hopeless about alcoholism b) Azra seems happy to hand out diazepam to someone showing no real signs of wanting to recover and who wouldn’t even go into the surgery c) great, now Alice can get addicted to diazepam as well. All rather bleak!

I agree with pp that Harrison ought to be shocked and upset by nearly losing Fallon. But the miscarriage has triggered something very deep in his psyche and he needs to process it. Of the two of them, Fallon has behaved far better, but I still sympathise with them both (and with all the other listeners)

I pray for people all the time but I don’t tell them about it! Indeed after being quite ill a while ago I was very shocked that my ILs had put me on the prayer list at their church without my permission! Lol

I’ve always thought the kids go to the local primary and then private for secondary in ambridge if they’re going private?

where I am private primaries fulfilled a need because there weren’t enough state places but I don’t think that’s a problem at loxley barrett

Ian did reconcile with Adil, through Oliver's mediation, but in any case he was only contracted to oversee the food & kitchen side of things during the renovations, he was never offered the job on an ongoing basis once GG reopened. Unless he's quietly come back as head chef without it being mentioned on air. But surely we would have been told if that were the case. Unless I missed an episode where all that happened and he's happily slotted back in to the GG kitchen and is subletting the pizza van to the voiceless women who were mentioned as running it for him previously. 🙄

I seem to remember that Martha got £15k, with Chris to act as trustee until she comes of age. Was that Alice's share, in which case did all Jenny's children get £15k? I remember (or think I remember!) that none of the other grandchildren got anything.

If that's the case, £15k wouldn't have lasted Adam'n'Ian long. So unless the dividends from the farm have rocketed, or Jenny's shares in the partnership were also divvied up (thus increasing everyone's share), I assume Adam must be dealing in black market cheese or pilfering kale from the veg boxes.

Didn't Ian go back as a food consultant fond local producers and so on? Thst might have just been for the renovation period, though.

It appears none of us was interested enough to remember...

Maybe Adam is the mastermind behind Markie's dodgy meat scam! Happy to let the petty criminal take the rap when really it's him behind the multi-million pound international set up. Tony should count the Montbéliardes to make sure their precious dairy cattle aren't be sold on as cheap beef!

Keir Starmer started there in 1974 and it went private in 1976 so was a State Maintained Grammar school with 11+ when he started.

Beat me to it. I was going to say this. As far as I know he went to the local state primary school and then onto Reigate Grammar School because he passed his 11+. Not his fault that the school decided to become independent rather than go comprehensive and his parents never paid a penny in fees.

According to Wikipedia, his own children attend a state primary school at the end of the road Mr Gasp and I lived in when we were students, a million years ago. Small world. We lived next door to Tessa Jowell and opposite Salman Rushdie. They were homeowners, however - we were paying £30 a week for a 2-room flat with shared bathroom.

Labour politicians tend not to have trouble getting their kids into the ‘so good they could be private’ London schools though.

Also wiki is out of date as his kids are 16 and 14 now

I did wonder about that! I knew nothing about the schools when we lived there as children were a long way in the future for us and we'd moved south of the river by then. I have the impression all the Camden state secondary schools are fine, though.

A lot of them are better than fine! Eg the school Emma Thompson daughter went to. Whenever I hear her wanging on about how amazing she is for not sending her daughter private I roll my eyes because she made sure not to pick the rough schools

And on the other side of that coin, too: she wasn't the only one who didn't have a prenup about spawning.

Harrison did not at any point before marriage with Fallon say that he did want children, he said some time later (and only when Fallon had nailed her colours to the mast after she had discovered just how little help he was in looking after his niece for a week) that he had assumed they would have them eventually. So he is at least as much to blame for that lack of communication as she is: he assumed (completely without reference to her) that he could expect her to jeopardise her health and compromise her beliefs (and also take on almost all the burden of everyday childcare) for him, by having his children whether she wanted them or not.

@Bruisername , do you think she should have picked the rough schools?

@Fink , my car gets admired but the Whopping household income is woeful. Not sure anyone described it as nice, more like 'Wow, is this yours?'

No - everyone wants the best for their child but when you are able to afford a house so you can make sure you are in catchment for that particular school I don’t think you can then boast about what a great socialist you are for having sent your child state. I can’t remember exactly what she said but it missed the point that the vast majority of people can’t choose where to send their child

What a shit socialist for not choosing to live in a shitty area so she could send her kid to a bog standard sink estate comp.

I stopped listening for a month as didn’t fancy listening to the unravelling of Alice. I finally decided to catch up on the episodes and not sure if I should have. Between the Fallon and Harrison argument merry go round (and inevitable ending), Paul’s spotty bits, dying horses and Alice’s descent, it’s kind of depressing.

And as we know the scriptwriters can spin a story out over 20 years, there’s not the promise of George owning up anytime soon.

If it wasn’t too depressing I’d say Flogging a (nearly) Dead Horse should make the next thread title.