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

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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.

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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!

Internet varies but one source says goats can have up to two years lactation.

Justin will probably want to keep them alive to farm them for castoreum. I'm sure he has contacts in the food indsutry to whom he could market it.

Beavers are famously counted as not-meat for Catholic fasting purposes. Dodgy Markie will be well out of the criminal justice system in 5 years' time and could probably set up a business selling beaver steaks to desperate Catholics in Borsetshire, for times when goat is off the menu (beavers are not kosher and questionably haram, so the market is quite small; maybe all the Filipinos at Casey Meats will be queuing up for it). Emma and Ed have form for stealing from the rewilding site, they could become embittered at the beavers stealing their tree surgery work and start poaching them.

Ah yes, the SW are obviously playing the long game here. Beavers will keep us entertained for years to come. 🙄In fairness, I much prefer any everyday story of fauna to the melodrama.

We have not been told that anybody has.

Madcats
I do seem to remember that Pat bought some goats a few years ago

Tony got her a pair of goats as a Christmas present in 2017. She was unable to milk them and appealed to Lynda for help, which is why those goats are called Lynda and Scarlett (Scarlett being Lynda's second name). If Pat has bought more I haven't been paying attention and noticed, but I suppose they must have done if they needed to hire a contract milker for them. Except I think the contract milker was for the Montbéliardes, Helen and Tom both being too idle to milk those and Tony too old to do it in the winter.

So the big question is would Natasha prefer the farmhouse or Beechwood (assuming no other houses are on offer) and will the farmhouse meet with the approval of the very fussy and entitled Helen? I thought Kirsty’s mum asking about Rex felt v realistic ditto Kirsty giving the matter some consideration (though I thought for long enough she and Roy might have got together - a similar dynamic). Peggy’s birthday was seriously underplayed considering the fuss made for much less significant birthdays. Have there been any other 100th birthdays on TA? It could have been a bit bigger and still taken place off stage.

I'm a bit hopeless with guessing ages but, to my mind, the Fairbrothers are early 30's (possibly a couple of years older than Pip). Kirsty is early 40's (so a similar age to Tom and Natasha).

If they do decide that Kirsty deserves to fall in love again, I do hope that they pick an actor with a distinctive voice.

When she first came on the scene, driving her flashy car and maxing out her credit card, I would have said that Natasha would want to gut a Beechwood house. Since her character transplant she's more likely to want the farmhouse "for the twins".

Madcats
I'm a bit hopeless with guessing ages but, to my mind, the Fairbrothers are early 30's (possibly a couple of years older than Pip). Kirsty is early 40's (so a similar age to Tom and Natasha).

The Fairbrothers are five years apart in age.

Rex was born on 11th July, 1987
Toby was born in 1992, but I don't think he was ever given a birthday on air
Pip was born on 17th February, 1993

Kirsty was born on 5th May, 1981
Tom was born on 25th February,1981
Natasha was born on 8th March, 1982

I'm confident that Natasha will want whichever house gets offered to Helen.

No - Natasha is going to go for Willow Farm

But she said she liked modern buildings and would buy the Beechwood house if Helen decided not to; and Willow Farm is a semi.

Well it was originally a semi. SW probably have it as a palatial farmhouse now

I can just see there being a spanner thrown in the works and Kirsty feeling totally betrayed by Helen!

on house prices - I assume beechwood and willow are broadly the same size. Beechwood is detached (?) and a new build so how would that compare to a semi part converted farmhouse?

Speaking of inter-generational property transferrals … On the one hand we have Bridge Farm royalty, on the other we have (vaguely) the Tuckers. Whatever did happen about Brenda’s prospective share of the Willow Farm house division? As I recall, the arrivals of her niece, Abby and half-sister Bethany rather negated Mike’s promise that she would get her fair share.

I know she was supposed to have disappeared into a life of London luxury - but it does appear that Roy has a house of his own to sell in Ambridge, but Brenda doesn’t. 🤷‍♀️

Bruisername
Well it was originally a semi. SW probably have it as a palatial farmhouse now

It started to be a semi only when the original farmhouse was divided in 2009 to make a three-bedroomed house and a two-bedroomed cottage.

Bruisername
I assume beechwood and willow are broadly the same size.

Willow Farm we know to have three bedrooms now; the Beechwood house (the whole estate is called "Beechwood", so Helen's house really ought to have a different name or at least a number, only it doesn't) has a room for Helen and Lee, a room for each of Henry and Jack, and a room for "Lee's Girls" to sleep in when they visit and are not being palmed off onto Pat and Tony; I make that four bedrooms.

TottersBlanklyTopplesOver
it does appear that Roy has a house of his own to sell in Ambridge, but Brenda doesn’t.

Enormously to my surprise, it was mentioned at one point that the house is not just Roy's, but also Hayley's. I do hope that she has agreed to allow Brenda to be in charge of its sale, and to accept a below-market-price from Kirsty.

Why Brenda should have agreed to sell it when it must be massively inconvenient to do so from London with no vested interest, rather than Hayley, in Birmingham and therefore more local, and with a vested interest, baffles me.

In that case if Kirsty puts the beechwood house on open market she should make more than enough to buy willow farm? Plus port her mortgage

You'd think so, wouldn't you. And that is what she ought to do now that Helen has started to make it clear she is not a serious buyer.

IIRC Hayley remarried years ago? I can’t believe she didn’t also insist that Roy buy her out of Willow Farm either when they divorced or when she married someone else.

So while I was pleased to hear of Brenda again, I didn’t believe the reference to Hayley this week.

I assume Mike and Betty own a house in Brum where they live with Bethany, purchased with whatever they got from the silent and forgotten Kemps. Did Vicky have a property of her own before she and Mike got together? I can't remember now. I also can't remember what the financial arrangement was when Mike converted the house into two dwellings. Hayley and Roy could have got a mortgage and must have had a deposit, as they had been looking for a place to buy without success for some time. Surely they must have paid Mike something to buy half the house, or funded the building work?

What I would be expecting if this were real life is that Mike and Vicky would have made wills making financial provision for Bethany, who almost certainly won't be able to live independently, but also for Brenda, belatedly giving her something equivalent to whatever Roy got all those years ago.

But perhaps they can sell off their buck's semen in due course?

Just so long as we're not treated to the scene where he's encouraged to produce it, of course.

I thought they probably decided to keep it low key precisely because it might feel in bad taste if June Spencer had been on her deathbed or, indeed, had just died.

I thoroughly enjoyed that, and feel it couldn’t have happened to a nicer shrew of a post mistress.
Neil to drop dead by Christmas, and George to be blamed for it? The only thing that would be better is Alice falling off the wagon over the festive season, driving drunk, and mowing down a pedestrian (Poppy Grundy would be favourite)
Jingle Bells

It occurs to me that there is one sort of cake which is very nice if made the same day and served practically hot from the oven, and that is the fat-free sponge cake my mother used to make. If anyone wants a recipe for cake that is safe for people with a bad reaction to lactose, I can post it here (I can't remember if I have already shared it with other Archers listeners).

I think the Gills bought the house.

Was George mean to his grandparents? I saw his name in the teaser and couldn’t bring myself to listen

The Gills bought Brian and Jennifer's previous house, Home Farmhouse.

The Kemps bought Willow Cottage, into which Brian and Jennifer moved when they left Home Farmhouse. The Kemps rented their house to Brian and Jennifer for six months, back just before Christmas 2018, and after Jennifer died some years later and Brian moved out we have not heard that anyone else has moved in there.

George was as might have been expected: a loathesome little scrote.

Honestly, Susan is a classic example of hope over experience a lot of the time.