Archers thread #176: In which Ian puts the I in PTA. 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 to hear more from Wesley the ashtray collector, 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 @DeanElderberry for the pithy phrase in the thread title and @CaptainMyCaptain for suggesting it should go in there. At least we've got the spooky disco out of the way for now. Plenty of wooden dialogue in the last few episodes that could go on the village bonfire next week. It's all been too dispiriting to discuss in greater depth. I'll just say that I don't hold out any great hopes that the production team will make a good job of reflecting concern in the farming community about the changes announced in the Budget to inheritance tax for farms. So often they get an expert to talk them through stuff like this but instead of ending up with a realistic storyline they pick out the bits they like the sound of and cobble them together in a totally unrealistic way. Maybe I'll be proved wrong this time. I hope so.

Over to you!

Can it be?

Thanks for the new thread, Gasp0de. This board may be helping me to retain my sanity; if I were alone and listening to The Archers, I might seriously start to worry that my distaste for so much of it at the moment meant that I was going mad, rather than that the programme was going mad.

'Trial a cat' 😀no such thing. There is a thing called 'failed fostering' where you take one on just for a few weeks and it ends up moving in! I'd love to see Hilda move in with the Maliks and suddenly become the lovely fluffy pussycat that Peggy obviously believed she was. Tony and Pat don't really like her.

However, chickens would be much better. They are by far the easiest creatures I have ever looked after (apart from their tendency to turn up their toes with almost no warning), they scoff up all your food waste (shh, don't tell Defra), are hugely entertaining and they produce eggs. I've had cats for years, and have they ever laid a tasty golden-yolked egg? Nah - they just provide piles of puke where you least expect them.

Are you trialling a cat or are they trialling you?

No problem. I was just thinking the other day that if I happened across TA now, having never listened, I'd rapidly switch off. Ah well. I am a hopeless addict so probably stuck with it until either it kicks the bucket or I do.

But cats don’t need to be put to bed at night. Having to be home at dusk rules out chickens for me.

There was a fashion for keeping chickens in urban gardens some time at the end of last century, and every single one I knew of was eaten by either urban foxes or an urban fox that had discovered the free buffet. It was terribly discouraging for the kind people who had rescued battery chickens from a sad death, on the whole.

I have friends whose hen house door closes with a timer. The hens always get themselves indoors in time.

This might be an example of survival of the fittest, I feel. Any that didn't, stop being there to be counted.

They haven't got so many they'd not notice any missing. They are also secure inside a large run though.

You don't trial a cat: the cat trials you, and may move on if the service is not up to scratch.

Our neighbour puts food out in the back garden. This was originally for their own cats, of which there were many, but of course every cat in the neighbourhood caught on very fast, and then the urban foxes moved in. I can't see chickens doing well in our garden, given the frequent traffic of predators strolling in and out on their way to the 24 hour buffet next door.

Nope - I kept them for ten years and never lost one. They had a large secure pen - I only let them loose in the garden when I was there to supervise. They put themselves to bed, you do need very specific criteria for the run though. Not chicken wire because a fox can bite through it.

Does it open with a timer too? When I was hen-sitting for a week in summer, I did not appreciate the hens wanting to get up at 5.30

I’m picturing the foxes figuring this out and sitting outside the coop with a napkin tied around neck as they wait for the timer

Thanks @Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g.

Sincerely hoping I don’t keep falling asleep during tonight’s episode, as I did last night.

Who was it who was talking about the non-status of a common law wife? Looks as if we will soon have a PSA on the subject.

Yes.

The wire for the pen goes quite deep too to stop foxes digging through.

The hen house is in a secure pen.

That was AlanFranksDiary and me.

I don't think Lilian has the slightest chance of staying in occupation of the Dower House, which doesn't belong to her. My hope is that once she has left it, Justin finds that nobody in the entire village will have anything to do with him, and Miranda is gloating loudly and telling tales about him out of school, so he goes away to London or the Arctic or somewhere outside the force-field and is never heard of again.

Indeed, she'll be out on her ear. Is she going to start camping at The Bull, or what? And they are going to be a bit cramped at the pub, what with Fallon and Burns Out reaching crisis point.
The Fallon Leaving Do already sounds like a disaster. What a bizarre concept.

To say nothing of the 'signature cakes'....

What is the point of Justin?

Well, quite! I mean, it's not as though we don't have other characters to loathe. I am specifically thinking of ... well, most of them, really.

It must be galling for the more recent crop of editors and scriptwriters to realise that very few characters in the programme are not disliked, and the ones that are not were inherited rather than thought up by those people. (Not that inherited ones are not heartily disliked as well; Neil may be the only character almost universally approved, I suspect. Possibly Tony.)

Listening to Henry and Khalil what caught my ear was the alteration in Henry's speech. Definitely less of the posh and (re-wound it) a slight "f" in "teeth" before rescuing it with the 'th", not the full-blooded Chelsea teef but still there.

The business about Justin and the mud was ridiculous. He's a keen horse rider who will be very familiar with mucky yards. It was written as if he was some city boy experiencing the reality of the Great Outdoors for the very first time.