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!

You have a visiting Hilda?

Good lord no. A mannerly legacy mog, sadly deficient in psychopathic tendencies. She gets quite worried when I shout at the radio, poor wee pudding.

I'm not sure how old Leonard is supposed to be, but I imagine that he is mid-eighties to Jill's 94.

The bike thing is almost plausible for a continuing cyclist. My inlaws were keen touring cyclists when younger (tandems and panniers etc), but gradually moved on to having e Bikes as they approached their '80's. I imagine they will purchase e-trikes or e-cargo bikes when we have the "are you sure you should still be driving" chat. I think this is more of a storyline about Active Travel than one leading to deading Leonard.

With the news that Leonard was encouraged to get some gear from Joy, I am now having to re-evaluate my mental picture of the lady.

PS: The Mick storyline is stupid and I hope the Parish Council discovers a by-law to send him packing.

Archers skit in Dead Ringers just now

I notice that they cleverly put it right at the end where people who were tuning in for TA would catch it (unless it had been a running theme through the episode, which I missed).

More well written dialogue🙄

as for fallons brick house conversion to a kitchen - yes well that’s the sensible option 🙄

I still don’t understand how all these people are getting home from the pub after all that drinking. Does mick have a car as well as the camper?

how did Justin end up in charge of the rewilding

brad is an idiot and Justin is an arse

If this is Brad's first term at uni, I'm surprised he's doing convergence of series already. He'd need the groundwork of limits and sequences first. But I guess I should appreciate the attempt to be realistic.

Anyway, would Joy have had more success with Mick if she had tried the angle of him staying temporarily until he sorted something else out?

I’m not sure she has any luck if she’s with mick tbh

Bruisername
Does mick have a car as well as the camper?

He did, but I don't think it floated particularly well.

Poor Brad. I know some people think he's a wet blanket but I feel really sorry for a young lad, anxious and trying his best to please everyone. He doesn't stand a chance against someone like Justin who clearly doesn't care about him personally (the Scrooge transformation was as short-lived as it was excruciating) and is prepared to screw him over for the sake of his business. For a man who claims to have been to Cambridge (as Asking said a few days ago), he has scant regard for other people's education.

I obviously am going soppy anyway. I would have given a BOOP for Joy and Mick's conversation; I actually found it quite romantic. Kenton and Jolene, on the other hand, need to be able to have an upfront conversation without lying to Mick's face.

Mick came across as not-awful tonight. However, someone needs to alert Tracy to Justin's bullying, because I know which of them I'd back in a fight!

... especially given that Tracy couldn't give a crap about keeping George's business afloat and wants Brad to drop the whole thing anway, so she's got nothing to lose.

Have I mentioned that I really loathe Justin?

Brad is the first in his family to go to uni. The way Justin is preying on him to the point of interfering with his studies is disgusting.

Oh good, a mathematician! Hello, DDD. My husband, also a mathematician of sorts, comments that a university Maths degree involves repeating what you did at school but this time doing it properly. He says he did limits and sequences in the sixth form (many decades ago).

Justin is foul.

Perhaps we could have another public service announcement if Leonard buys an e-bike and stores it inside at Brookfield? I gather they're a serious fire risk because the batteries sometimes ignite.

@Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g - of course, the concepts of limits and sequences might be introduced at A level (although from what I know of the current A level syllabus, not very much), but the rigorous analytic definition of a limit and theorems about convergence are the stuff of a first course at uni. Off to reminisce about the Bolzano-Weierstrass theorem...

I’ve had it twice, once from a dodgy battered sausage from a chippy, 50 years ago, and once from a pink-in-the-middle meatball when I didn’t want to upset my host. Don’t think handwashing would have helped!

Isn't Jill 90 something and basically housebound, not to mention incredibly cantankerous and forgetful? One out of 4 is correct.

TA is over 70 years old. Its cast get lost for weeks, then can’t remember what they used to do, can’t even remember how big their house is, and act bizarrely out of character. With due respect to all suffering from the dreadful affliction, and their families and carers, it should be renamed The Alzheimers. ☹

Good to have you back DDD - I love to think of you reading along, skimming through all the nonsense and waiting for a juicy mathematical inaccuracy or statistical query to pop so you can interject! Your contribution leads me to conclude that absolutely nothing about this storyline rings true - never mind how Brad might be fitting in all this extra-curricular activity, even the details of his course are unconvincing (is he even on the course or is he just pretending?).
I'm also more than a little unsettled by @Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g's suggestion of a combustible electric bike battery causing a fire and taking out another key Ambridge location, thus contributing to the gradual erasure of the entire village with properties being rubbed out one by one. I love Leonard and I don't want anything to happen to him, but maybe he could persuade Justin to get an an electric bike so the Dower House could go up taking him and Lilian with it.

Now that's a good idea! Nobody would miss Justin, surely.

I'm warming to Brad. He had some excellent scenes with Pat, Helen, Emma, George and Jazzer.

Is Mick genuinely a good guy? I hope so - I like Joy.

As for Justin- what is the point of him?

I am so glad Mick said no to moving in with Joy and it’s increased my respect for him no end. I think a lot of us assumed that he was a cocklodger in waiting.

What I would like in the Archers is for someone to set up a really successful business in the programme. We have people who have supposedly done so in the past like Justin and Natasha and Casey forgot his name, and we have farmers of course and the likes of Helen who has her cheese business employing 2-3 people - but I’d really like Fallon, Chelsea or even George or SOMEONE to actually build up eg a chain of cafes or beauty salons or a factory or anything really. It would change the shape of the village in an interesting way (metaphorically).

2. Fires in e-bikes and e-scooters 2017-2021 OPSS received information on 121 fires that occurred between January 2017 and December 2021, involving an e-bike or e-scooter. The majority (119) were from the London Fire Brigade (LFB) and two were from other fire and rescue services (FRSs). Forty-eight fires involved e-scooters, 32 involved converted e-bikes, 16 manufactured e-bikes, and the remaining 25 were e-bikes with unknown build.

In the 2021/22 annual period, there were 33,389 dwelling (a house, flat, or another place of residence) fires in the UK. Set that against 121 fires during five years and you start to feel that your cooker is considerably more dangerous than an e-bike, and Jill is more likely to burn Brookfield to the ground than Leonard is.

https://fireology.co.uk/the-most-common-causes-of-household-fires-in-the-uk/

Oh, and there are about 100,000 fossil-fuel-car fires a year, though at least eight per cent of those are arson. I can't find stats for motorbikes offhand.