Archers thread #176: In which Ian puts the I in PTA. Discuss The Archers here.

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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!

It's probably simplest to refer you to the podcast where they discussed it - I think it was the first or second one.

A Subway or Costa. Something sensible

Wouldn't they have to tell Fallon if it was a competitor?

Scrap that. They'll be using The Ambridge Law of Contract.

The stupid thing about Fallon is that she didn’t do her due diligence. Even if they gave her the best spot she still has the footfall issue.

she should have quietly signed the contract and kept working at terum until she was ready to open

i can’t imagine there are companies knocking their door down to get a pitch so they may offer her something better. It sounds like it’s been built really badly (do they have architects on ambridge land?). Service stations are always designed so you can pretty much see everything and have to walk past it all when you go to the loo

Gosh that goat naming scene was painful. How down with the kids are they trying to be?

Helen screwing Kirsty over. Quelle surprise she wants the farmhouse. Perhaps Tom could buy it.

Can’t wait to listen and see if this is a kids pun

Also hated the goat-naming scene, more for explaining to the listeners what the Billy-Goats Gruff were.

I think Fallon's dodged a bullet.

What do you normally get at a service station? An overpriced WHSmiths, a M&S Food/Little Waitrose, a burger joint of some description, loos and - inexplicably - somewhere to gamble for those who can’t go 50 miles without a go on a fruit machine.

They might also have a Greggs. I get that the charging station is supposed to be a better class of punter, but it’s still not the sort of place for an artisan bakery.

I don't believe she was offered a smaller pitch. I reckon she's seen the Error of her Ways and is making it up.

Yea Fallen, you big fibber.

Helen makes me laugh. She is such a snob. She has lived in Kirsty's house for a few years and now she thinks its not good enough for her. I hope Kirsty puts it on the market and Helen gets priced out and has to live with her mum and dad.
I wonder if Pat wants to live ìn an eco house and I would think it would cost a few bob to have it built.
I think Tony is not taking into account his model railway because you can be sure if Helen takes over the farm house and Tony and Pat move into Tony's dream house it will only be a matter of time when Helen turfs it out because she wants the shed to make more Borchester Blue.

its about time the bridge farm archers had a sibling fall out I suppose

the sneer as Helen said 'suburban'

Perhaps Fallon will get a van( like Ian's pizza van) and sell coffee and artisan baked goods/cakes at all the winter fairs, footie matches, car boots etc OR she uses the Bull's kitchen to cook her cakes in and sets up a wedding/birthday cake business etc and becomes the Mr Kipling of Ambridge.

Kirsty could sell her house to Azra ?

Poor Kirsty but ultimately Roy shouldn’t be in a rush

helen is a terrible friend

perhaps Tom and Natasha could buy the house with the proceeds from her sale

I moved from a full-time job that for various reasons had become pretty draining to a far more relaxed part-time job many years ago and it made an enormous difference to my wellbeing. Wouldn’t apply so much to policing, but part time makes it easier to be firm about boundaries. Having worked in a place where the expectation was that you worked whatever hours the job needed, dropping one day a week in practice meant going from 50 hours a weeks to 32. I wasn’t going to work a 40 hour week if colleagues were getting paid for 40 and I was paid for only 32!

I don't think it would become exponentially worse with more hours worked. It's kind of just permanently a stressful job and there's always the chance of a really tough shift, but doing it full-time doesn't seem like it would be 20% more stressful than doing 4 days, for example. That wouldn’t be exponential. Exponential would be if every day added a multiple of the stress. I think it’s right it’s about down time. Going from 5 days to 4 decreases your nominal woking time by 20% but increases your downtime by 50%

More like Tom and Natasha will buy Willow farm out from under Kirsty.

It's about time Pat and Tony moved out of the farmhouse, I remember when Phil and Jill did similar and It makes perfect sense for them to build an eco-house on their land (much as Phil and Jill did with the bungalow). I look forward to the bust up this will potentially cause between Helen and Tom. I can already hear Helen arguing that she should have first dibs because Henry is already working on the farm with the goats and it will be years until the starry twins get their hands dirty (except on their veg patch!). I'd forgotten about Natasha's plans to sell Summer Orchard - a business that has always seemed rather intangible with its fruit trees in Wales that Natasha never visits, but which now seems set to provide the pair of them with the money they need for whatever happens next (a bit like Peggy's mysterious fortune which must also be about to come fully into play at any moment). But all in all this would feel like a satisfactory shuffling of the pieces so everyone ends up in the right place going forward.

Exciting times!

Finally Tony has a plan for transfer of ownership of the farm house. Hurrah! (He didn’t seem to know it was a plan last night - I hope the SWs will inform him soon.) Let the sibling scrapping commence.

Regarding Willow Farm - I would think Tom and Natasha might find they want something bigger. Like maybe Willow Farm and Willow Cottage rejoined. Though why they should be forced to pay full price for a house elsewhere if Helen manoeuvres herself into Bridge Farm house … Surely it would only be fair for the Bridge Farm partnership to share and equalise the cost of the next generation’s housing. (Thinking of the complicated arrangements put in place when Phil and Jill moved off Brookfield land …)

(Slow typing … crossed Lil’G!)

Yes it feels harsh that Helen would get the farmhouse and no provision made for Toms housing needs

but Tony and Pat don’t tend to consider Tom very much. I know he’s loathed on here but I’ve always felt quite sorry for him wrt his relationship with his family and think a lot of his negative actions have stemmed from them

@MereDintofPandiculation Sorry, I know what exponential means, I was just typing in a hurry and phrased it badly.

I don't know about policing specifically, but when I was teaching, part time was an absolute con. They reduce the number of classes you have, but everything else has to be done by all teachers regardless of what percentage of a timetable they're on (some schools are better than others about things like parents' evenings and CPD). So in practice part-time teachers just do even more hours they're not paid for. From talking to family members, part-time primary teaching is even worse - you're even expected to provide cover lessons for your day off, and then mark the work anyway.

Oh Helen made my slapping hand so so so twitchy!

And yet everything about it has been so very Helen - no concern about inconveniencing Kirsty, the "too suburban" snobbery and indulged in all of this by Tony - I actually love it

Finally Tony has a plan for transfer of ownership of the farm house. Hurrah! (He didn’t seem to know it was a plan last night - I hope the SWs will inform him soon.) Let the sibling scrapping commence.

I can very well imagine Tom and Natasha talking themselves into why they deserve the farmhouse more, like John and Fanny Dashwood talking themselves out of financially helping his mother and sisters at the beginning of Sense & Sensibility.

Why don’t they deserve it any more or less than Helen though?