Archers thread #177: Will Bridge Farm get a PassiveAggressivHaus? 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 love to have a moribund camper van parked indefinitely outside your home, 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.)

Over to you!

I vaguely remember her saying she left at some age or other, but that info went in one ear and out of the other without even being temporarily filed under "useless information".

Left at 10

married Eddie at 6

Sorry - yes. My mistake. But even if she left at ten, I still maintain her memories would have been people of her own age not village "characters" - I doubt you'd even register someone as a "character" at that age, they'd just be someone's grandad. Thinking about myself at ten and also my DCs who moved at a similar age and invariably ask: "Did they have any children and who were they?" when we insist they must remember such and such a person. It's different if you make return visits and see these people again in later life, but having moved at ten and never gone back or had any contact with anyone I doubt it.

I can imagine her remembering Joe if she used to visit the ferrets etc

otherwise memories more likely to be second hand from hearing her parents stories

To be fair, they have explained why they aren't an option.

I have distinct memories of older people I knew at age 10 - mostly people like my parents' friends, my friends' parents, and teachers, but If Faith knew Eddy that would make it reasonably realistic that she would remember Joe.

I think you’d remember adults in your life. I remember reception teacher, parents of friends, my mother’s grocer, who delivered, and gave me a box of sweets at Christmas.

I wonder if the barn will still be full on Christmas eve and if a pregnant couple and a donkey will turn up after being turned away from Grey Gables and Linda's B&B.

I moved countries at 10. I really don't remember anybody clearly from the last place we lived before we moved south. We were only there for four years, though. I think it would be different if you lived in one place for the first ten years of your life, especially if you had family in the area. We didn't have family in the same town.

Mind you, I don't know why we're all trying to work out if this one detail is realistic, when nothing, but nothing, about this story is realistic. There are many American actors who could have played Faith - why instead cast Emma Fielding? Or why not let her do it with her own accent? I still have my original accent, or at least I revert to it when I speak to other Scottish people. She could have done the same.

I really don't care if it is likely that Faith would remember Joe etc al because, as@Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g says, nothing else about this ridiculous SL is at all plausible. The only people who have responded like real human beings are Jakob and Chuck, and even Chuck appears to be coming round.
I thought we had plumbed the depths with Justin's short-lived Road to Damascus SL, but this week we have descended into total farce (and not in a good way).
I simply don't understand what the SWs think they are doing. Do they actually think it is amusing and/or heart warming? Are they completely stupid, or do they think we are - or both? I am just so angry that they are insulting my intelligence in this way.

Mirroring the Christmas story and also Dickens’ CC is so ham-fisted. Christmas is not a new thing. I would prefer the SWs to come up with fresh material rather than treading down hackneyed old paths.

My sister-in-law is doing a creative writing course and TA is becoming like a Christmas-themed assignment I imagine she will be set on December 1st for completion before the final session before they break up. To be inspired by traditional Christmas stories and read aloud to much hilarity while mince pies are consumed…

I can’t believe I have just written ‘Christmas is not a new thing!’…

23 Oct 2024 — Radio 4's The Archers remains the most listened to on-demand radio programme for all adults again this quarter (including for under 35s).

Yes I agree, but I don’t think they’d be the first people you’d ask about when hooking up with an old primary school classmate 50 years on. I had exactly such a meeting earlier this year and we spent the whole time trying to recall the names of everyone who’d been in our class (and the classes above and below) to the amused irritation of our DHs. Teachers were mentioned, but I don’t think they really count as they are part of the school context. It’s the moving away that’s crucial - it made me reflect how as children we exist in our own little world and reference people in terms of who played Mary in the Nativity play, or the boy who broke his leg playing rounders and an ambulance had to be called. As @Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g says, it’s immaterial really, I just found Faith and Eddie’s encounter extremely poorly imagined in an already unrealistic situation.

Do you have a source for this information? I haven't seen a RAJAR figure for years, not since the editorial team stopped talking about them on the blog in 2016.

Before that, it went
Q1, 2011 - 5,010,000
Q2, 2011 - 5,080,000
Q3, 2011 - 4,980,000
Q4, 2011 - 4,920,000

Q1, 2012 - 4,750,000
Q2, 2012 - 4,630,000
Q3, 2012 - 4,850,000
Q4, 2012 - 4,870,000

Q1, 2013 - 5,080,000
Q2, 2013 - not found
Q3, 2013 - 4,820,000
Q4, 2013 - 5,000,000

Q1, 2014 - not found
Q2, 2014 - not found
Q3, 2014 - 4,700,000
Q4, 2014 - 4,740,000

Q1, 2015 - not found
Q2, 2015 - 4,620,000
Q3, 2015 - 4,760,000
Q4, 2015 - 4,840,000

Q1, 2016 - 4,700,000
Q2, 2016 - 4,950,000
Q3, 2016 - not found

though they frequently boasted that the figure had risen.

The return of Bartleby? Well, it would be better than the nonsense we've had this week.

@AskingQuestionsAllTheTime A summer of sport, politics and BBC Proms brings the UK together across BBC Radio & BBC Sounds

Thank you.

I was under the impression that they don't have crackers in the USA at Thanksgiving or at Christmas or, indeed, at any other time. My DIL is American and had not come across them before she moved to the UK. I gather they are banned from sale because they are classed as explosives. (Obviously more dangerous than firearms which can be bought everywhere.) Have I got this wrong?

I do know you cannot send crackers to the USA in the post (even the Hotel Chocolat ones that contain chocolates).

You can't take them on flights, either, whuch really upset someone in front of me in an airport queue some years ago.

Ah, doesn't it give you a warm glow inside? I'm sure we're all full of seasonal good cheer now, our cups runnething over with the milk of human kindness and the true spirit of villagey goodness.

Aren't we?

Something like that...

I would just like to say, I haven't milked by hand for many a year, but I think I use a different technique for milking than I do for getting the last bit out of a tube of toothpaste.

That was my first reaction to the mention of crackers, but it is just possible that they were 10-year-old Faith's favourite thing and her exile has been blighted all these years by their absence.

her exile has been blighted all these years

Good.
Also, #TeamMrEllie. And Jakob, you’re a fool.

Even Jakob has now succumbed and thinks it is normal to invite total strangers to stay in your home while you move out. It's not Jakob, it's really not.
I also have a horrible feeling that Ellie is going to become a permanent Ambridge resident.Why for Heaven's sake?