Archers thread #175: Crime, punishment and kittens. 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 your current highlight is the kitten naming, 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.)

As I am posting this on Sunday morning at a point where some omnibus listeners won't have caught up with this week's events, I've kept the title less spoilerish than I might have done. Below this point, everything broadcast to date is of course fair game, so be warned!

Of course the main interest for most us at the moment is indeed the kitten naming competition. Isn't it? No?

Oh well, since you insist ...

How do we think George is going to cope now? Whither the Grundy and Horrobin clan? Will Lilian choke on her G&T (please)? Will Kenton get septicaemia from a kitten scratch? Will Alice die of sanctimoniousness? Will Fallon spend the rest of her life with the appalling Harrison and his unfulfulled longing for a behbeh? Will Adam and Will come to blows in the Bridge Farm packing shed?

Over to you!

Yes but there’s something about his naivety that I find creepy!!! I found the way he assumed Lily was after him weird and thought it said more about him tbh

That’s what I understood - although that may have just been plot device. Just like Emma and Fallon falling out caused a staffing crisis at the terum even though she had already left that job

It's more of the CRAP (Character-Related Amnesia Problem) writing, isn't it. And then when Tracy told him Emma wanted to do some shifts at The Bull recently, Kenton refused to entertain the idea. Would he have sacked her for being George's mother if the sequence of events had been different, I wonder.

Not being able to get a loan for the massive build-out costs of a new catering unit alongside with leaving her job too early for the at least six month process.

If only she still had all that upcycled furniture!!

I expect she can ask Grey Gables to let her have it back....

What happened to Eddie's business with the limo? Is he still donning the chauffeur cap and earning an intermittent income from it, but we just don't hear about it?

I don't remember him selling it; is it still fully taxed and MOT'd somewhere on Grange Farm?

It fizzled out of the scripts and we just don't hear about it any more.

.... is it still fully taxed and MOT'd somewhere on Grange Farm?

I'd be surprised if it was ever taxed and MOT-ed, and would put money on it not being insured!

Everything that Ed n Emma said about having their own business etc makes no sense if there was an existing business - the limo - sitting around rusting in Grange Farm.

Everything Ed and Emma says tends to make no sense. I think their nadir was "Let's impress George with how cool and transgressive we are by stealing some wood from the rewilding site."

Come to think of it, that was another instance of Emma encouraging Ed to break the law, wasn't it.

I think their nadir was "Let's impress George with how cool and transgressive we are by stealing some wood from the rewilding site."

Pretty much everything to do with Emma and Ed at that time was stupid dross: Emma being shocked (and predictably envious) that a couple with two steady jobs and no kids had more disposable income than a couple with a hodge podge of various wheeler-dealer schemes and minimum wage jobs and two children; the ridiculous sex in the woods and then confusion because of the matching coats ... it would be hard to pinpoint the exact lowest point!

Just listening to the film. Maybe it’s only me but if I went into a cafe at closing-time and was told sorry, they were shutting up but just hadn’t got round to putting the 'Closed' sign on the door and weren’t serving any more, I wouldn’t get bolshy and start challenging them and arguing the toss in a mode the SWs would undoubtedly describe as 'feisty'. I’d say 'oh, I’m sorry, no problem' and go out. I might feel a bit miffed but I’d be politely obedient. Do people really do that? OK so it’s another kind of meet-cute so Chelsea and Zainab can become best-girl buds but <sigh>
(And my local such cafe closes at 4pm - tea-time)

Plus - Natasha. You may be businesswomen of the year or whatever but go to any local street-market, autumn fair, etc etc and there will be inventive cake-makers nearby desperate to supply you with cupcakes iced with spider webs and green sprinkles, if you really must. Strike a good deal with them to supply your terum with whatever you desire. Hire someone else to work full-time doing the serving and coffee-making. Job done.

I wouldn’t get bolshy and start challenging them and arguing the toss in a mode the SWs would undoubtedly describe as 'feisty'. I’d say 'oh, I’m sorry, no problem' and go out. I might feel a bit miffed but I’d be politely obedient. Do people really do that?

I wouldn't do it either, I'd die of embarrassment, but people definitely do. There's a sizeable enough minority of the general public who act like that, making sure that any retail job is like a roulette wheel of whether you'll get through the shift without a major CF turning up.

If the Bridge Farm idiots weren't so idiotic they would have included as part of the deal with the housebuilders that they got a house on the land they sold as near to the farm as possible at "cost price" set off against the sale price. They knew at that point that they needed at least one additional house.

Getting planning permission now wouldn't be difficult as there's a need for a second generation farmhouse. I don't know the English equivalent but in Scotland that would come with a "section 75 restriction" meaning occupation of the house is tied to a current or retired agricultural worker.

Ambridge
Maybe it’s only me but if I went into a cafe at closing-time and was told sorry, they were shutting up but just hadn’t got round to putting the 'Closed' sign on the door and weren’t serving any more, I wouldn’t get bolshy and start challenging them and arguing the toss in a mode the SWs would undoubtedly describe as 'feisty'. I’d say 'oh, I’m sorry, no problem' and go out.

It wasn't even at closing time; it was at least ten minutes after closing time, from what Chelsea had already said about "we should have been out ten minutes ago". I say "at least" because I assume that after the customers have been hoofed out or no longer let in there is still a certain amount of clearing up, wiping down the tables and cleaning the floor, cashing up and so on ready for opening the next day.

I wonder if the SWs know that "feisty" properly means "windy" and was originally applied to little dogs that farted a lot?

I could never fathom the SWs long term goal with preventing either Tom or Helen building a house on the farm.

I know they used the possibility of it as a prompt for Brenda to flee her relationship with Tom. (Though it was just about the best idea the awful scrote has ever had.) And of course it enabled the sting of having The Lodge snatched back from prospective inheritance.

But Tom and Natasha renting elsewhere in the village doesn’t actually serve to make them noticeably more connected to everyone else.

And to be honest very little of Helen’s post-custard life would have been different if she (and the boys, and Lee) had been living in a similar house on her own land. She could still have been friendly with Joy, and engaged in tiny snippets of gossip about the Beechwood residents - and been gossiped about herself.

In the end there’s going to be a fight over the Bridge Farm house wherever Helen and Tom are living …

I’m guessing the goal is to have a fight over the farmhouse. Assuming no more children there are also 4 grandchildren to fight it out later on too!!

Don't forget Johnny! 5 grandchildren, unless he's lost at sea.

Ha ha! I thought they’d written him out! Maybe they will leave him the farmhouse and really set Hilda amongst the pigeons

The Verb on right now are discussing Lily's hot girl summer. The speaker identified himself as a part of TA fandom but called her 'the lovely Lily Pargetter', so I'm not convinced he's ever actually listened.

Oh - will I have to listen to the Verb again? I cannot tell you the sense of freedom I experienced when I finally realised I was allowed to turn it off. (That was a few years ago.)

I had that feeling of freedom way back in my 20s when I realised that the only person who really cared what I was reading was me, so I could pick books I really wanted to read, not the ones I felt I ought to read. Hence my failure to progress beyond page 3 of Ulysses after a number of attempts, and my multiple re-readings of Agatha Christie and other classic whodunnit writers. Low to middlebrow is where I belong. And that brings us neatly back to The Archers ...

Have we heard a single word from Lily since she announced her summer plans?

I don't think so. Brilliant, isn't it! Perhaps she overheated?