Archers thread #169: Denise rocks the boat in more than one way! Will Chris find a message in a cider bottle? 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 have liked to have Harrison's behbe, 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 https://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 @LikeTalkingToLassie and @BrightYellowDaffodil for title inspiration. Is this the end for Denise and John? It does seem odd to introduce John now if he's going to disappear. He has a lovely voice.

Over to you!

I think Lily would make a pretty decent lawyer (although agree, she’d need to get her first degree before she could convert) and it would be nice to see someone employed in an actual decent job which is not donated by a family member. Apart from Pheobe (and even she was forced to engage in some pointless rewilding enterprise for longer than really credible) Ambridge seems to have a lot of young people who are allegedly bright/ high flyers (especially women) but who end up working for family or in dead end jobs. Pip, Helen, Alice, Fallon, Emma (until recently) all either do basic minimum wage jobs or are obviously heavily subsidised by family. Even Natasha the juice-magnate is now firmly co-dependent on bridge farm. It would be nice to see someone go to Birmingham or even blimming Felpersham and have a proper career even for a few years!

The discussion between Lily and Freddie was so interesting- “You’re a high fligher”, “Well you inherited the family mansion so what are you complaining about”. It’s like game of thrones/ Midnight’s children in Ambridge with the able/ hard working/ responsible twin disinherited, watching her brother squander all of his advantage in her own home! I like Freddie and generally I like Lily and Freddie together (I think they’re realistic as siblings) but there’s a strong seam of dysfunction running through that family.

Can anyone remember why no one did anything about the inheritance (surely some kind of trust for both of the twins would have worked)? I am slightly surprised that Elizabeth didn’t insist on it before Nigel died- or did she do something? Was it something to do with Nigel’s mother (Julia?) and Nelson? Is Nelson meant to be still alive? I guess it’s too late now as Freddie has technically inherited already- albeit that he’s being restrained from turning lower loxley into a nightclub/ drugs emporium by the trustees!

I assume there's an element of public education around workplace bullying in this storyline.

I think Lily may have just finished 2nd year, but I'm not certain. I can't remember what course she was studying in Manchester with Russ and the three-speed kettle, nor whether she stayed with the same subject in Felpersham or is doing something different.

I thought Vince did say that? Certainly the bit about not being their friend

I feel like the sw are trying to stoke the generation war. I would imagine the majority of listeners are 40+ and listening to the younger characters would just make them think they’re all feckless, entitled idiots

i say HR manager as she reminds me very much of one I met at work!! I find people in HR have superficial people skills.

i also think she is weaponising the word bullying and a good union rep will rip this all apart. Do the staff know Freddie is the bosses stepson?

I think Lily has just finished her second year, and that she was reading English at Manchester. Her A-levels weren’t a particularly coherent collection - English, biology and German.

Yes you’re right - I think he probably needs to say it slower and in simpler terms

Yeah I thought Vince dealt with that quite comprehensively with the story about the man who sliced his arm off 😳Although obviously suggesting that Freddie should start cuffing people about the head is a bit OTT- it’s an abattoir not Strictly!

😂

I was worrying about her stupid A’ Level set as I fell asleep last night …

@EBearhug she left English behind in Manchester and has switched to something like Estate Management / Preserving Your Stately Home As A Thriving And Sustainable Business / What Wealthy Gels Do type of thing. Hence placement at GG. (Which, I protest again, seems almost criminally unambitious on the part of the SWs. Pretty sure other bright young things in her position would be interning in Tokyo or Tasmania - not the little local country hotel.)

Whilst I think Freddie probably does need to assert himself a bit more, I think it’s nice that Lily was concerned about Freddie. I actually really liked Lily last night. I’ve been bullied at work and it’s miserable and lonely. I wish someone had been looking out for me. I thought Vince was disappointing. For the record I’m mid forties.

I also am surprised that Vince is not a bit more sympathetic because Freddie did find the thief and praised Freddie for his role in the interview with Jason. Freddie has shown loyalty to Vince/ the firm. But then I really haven’t liked Vince since the whole thing with Ben.

Edit: I have no idea about whether she’s right or not about the law but liked how she stood up for him

LOL at the abbatoir, not Strictly! 😆

I don't much like Freddy, because he's whiny and wet and has a strong streak of self-righteousness (like the ill-informed painting thing, that suggested to me that he's learned precious little about the history that one might expect him to have learned as part of being heir to LL), and also precious little about the various arguments surrounding post-colonisalism: basically, Nolly said the painting was offensive, so the painting needed to go, no further thought required...hasn't Nolly got him in trouble before? He doesn't seem particularly bright, nor does he ever seem to consider that maybe people don't particularly have any reason to trust him with the management of LL yet, given his lack of formal training and his track record of doing somewhat silly things. It also doesn't seem to occur to him to go back to school and remedy the situation. He does seem to be quite sweet and to have a sense of justice underneath the whiny wetness, so one can still hope he grows a brain and associated spine...

I also don't much like Lily, because she's like a whole gang of bulls in a china shop, with e.g. seemingly zero awareness that her attempts to rescue her twin from bullying are quite bullying in themselves, and I'm finding her comments about the celebrity chef amusingly unintenionally ironic. But I do like the whole feckless-brother-is-the-heir-while-potentially-competent-sister-is-frustrated thing going on. I'd quite like to see her mature and mellow and become a competent manager for LL.

Can someone explain how big GG is meant to be/how many rooms it's meant to have? I'm finding it rather incredible that the SW think that having it run by the semi-retired part-owner and the intern is at all realistic, and that Roy wouldn't long since have been replaced by an experienced professional manager. I still don't understand where Arrrrrrdill went...or why we went so weirdly loopy with a strange backstory...

The whole GG stuff has been filed away as things sw haven’t bothered to research

workplace bullying is awful but I’m not actually sure that’s what this is. To me this is a failure in management which should be stamped down on but vince needs to be very careful that Freddie isn’t undermined - so Freddie does need to be given the tools to deal with it

I’d have thought Freddie’s stint in prison would have toughened him up a bit from a wet posh boy perspective.

Nelson Gabriel had nothing to do with Lower Loxley passing to the male heir. Nelson was no longer in The Archers when Lily and Freddie were born.

Catching up with the thread and have to comment on this, even though it's a week on and I will probably find the discussion has moved on. Nevertheless! 'Minimally educated'? He's had just as much chance of getting an education as Brad, having attended all the same educational establishments at more or less the same time. He's stayed on beyond minimum leaving age to do some sort of vocational course. OK, he doesn't come from a family with much of a record of valuing education or reading (I'm ignoring Emma's very recent conversion to the joys of literature), and he's certainly no Einstein, but he's not an idiot.

Very nice! I don't have green fingers. I wish I did. TBH, I am also too lazy to buckle down and try to grow nice things in our garden. I do have the excuse that it's a very shady space and constantly traversed by the foxes and cats heading to the all-day buffet next door (NDN puts out food for them in both front and back gardens).

I think George is reasonably intelligent. He has street smarts if nothing else. With the right guidance he could do well but unfortunately he doesn’t have enterprising role models in his immediate family. His parents pander to and overlook his appalling behaviour as do his grandparents (apart from Neil). He doesn’t stand a chance really.

George needs A Good Woman to sort him out. Come on Fallon, you KNOW you want to! 😂 At least he'd be an improvement on Harrison.

Am I the only one having trouble with this site on my phone? Really irritating

i would say he is uneducated but that doesn’t mean he’s stupid.

🤔🤔🤔

Welcome back, @Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g.

I stand by ‘minimally educated’. Although I’ve been impressed by all he’s taken from his vocational course, the fact is that he does not habitually hang out with educated adults who employ much critical thinking, or who have much experience of life beyond scraping an agricultural (in the non-literal sense) living in Ambridge. No one has much sense at his age - but he hasn’t been helped by his upbringing. Caught in the same situation Brad, to my mind, probably would have acted differently. Not just because he’s a better, nicer person, but because he’d have had a slightly more solid grasp of the concept of consequences.

Nevertheless - George employed all his guile and cunning in besting Hannah, so 🤷‍♀️

He's been to school and has had the same opportunity to take advantage of that as Brad has. Not everyone has the ability or inclination to do A levels but George will have had 12 years at school.

PP was probably thinking of Lewis. Every so often I mention Lewis and Asking patiently confirms that as far as we know he's still alive and he did marry Nigel's mother Julia not long before she died. Where he lives now, whether Elizabeth and the twins visit him, what sort of state he's in - we don't know.

(For our more recent listeners, Julia was a fabulous character, played to perfection by brilliant long-standing radio actor Mary Wimbush - but then, very sadly, MW died suddenly during a day of recording Archers episodes - Alison Dowling (Elizabeth) was with her on the stairs when she collapsed, IIRC. So Julia had to be written out. She had been an out and out snob, very sniffy about her son Nigel's wife coming from yeoman farming stock. However, then her sister Ellen turned up (marvellously played by Rosemary Leach) and we learned that Julia started life as Joan, daughter of a Lewisham greengrocer. She later became a chorus girl and that's when she caught Gerald Pargetter's eye. We don't get glorious moments like that much on TA, but I for one live in hope of another one.)

https://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thearchers/entries/695c1185-ad62-476a-b357-8a2da43b3c31

Totters, almost nobody in Ambridge thinks critically. Very few have any common sense. This is possibly because they find themselves trapped inside a Soap Opera ...

There is that!

Bruisername
Freddie’s job is to manage these people

is it though? I don't think he was employed as a manager; I think he is a management trainee with a little over nine months' experience, which is rather different.

Just as Freddie was being made by Elizabeth to do all the various jobs at Lower Loxley Hall, Vince explained when he was signing Freddie on that he would have to do a stint in each department.

Synopsis for Tuesday 19th September, 2023
Vince proceeds to tell him what the job involves in the way of having to get to grips with every aspect of the business and learn properly about what they do and how it works.

And Vince had told Elizabeth earlier in the episode that He's always looking for trainee managers he can train up from scratch and get doing things their way from the off.