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!

Ruth and David are not Leonard's keepers, and nor is Lynda. She needs to wind her neck in.

Besides which, there is no hill inside the village of Ambridge, so she is talking codswallop about him speeding through the village anyway. Pretty-much the only place downhill from the village shop, which is where she saw him and from which she claimed he went off down hill towards the County Park, is the bed of the River Am.

@MereDintofPandiculation , it's a wonderful language and many place names in the UK have some Brittonic connection - e.g. Dover and Avon.

I'd love to have already learnt Russian. The learning bit looks a bit challenging.

I've visited Northumberland and Newcastle-upon-Tyne several times, and the accents are different. I think it compares with saying Harrison butchers a Mancunian accent. He doesn't but Richard Locke did.

At this point I really, REALLY want Leonard to be cycling along at his own pace when he finds the helmetless Ruth badly injured in a ditch after crashing the quad bike on her way to harrass the ewes at Home Farm. (Well, better if it is on her way back after feeding them; I don't want the ewes to suffer.)

Why do those nitwits assume that an electric bike is too dangerous for him to be allowed to have it, when they were entirely happy for Leonard to be out on Josh's bike, which would go down the local hills just as fast? David gave him that one!

I don't want anyone to get injured.

I want her to look and feel the fool that she is with her attempted nannying of a man who is not her relation, not her infant, and none of her damn business. If to achieve that she has to knock herself unconscious because she chooses to ignore basic safety precautions and not wear a cycling helmet, so be it.

If Russian (arghh, it nearly killed me) is easier than Welsh, I'm glad i stopped my attempt to learn Welsh at the "window is 'fenster' same as German" stage

Am always amazed how people just don't get how fab e-bikes are for older people (not just but we're on the topic of Leonard). I live in a village 5km from the nearest town (flat to one town, down a steep hill to the other which means steep hill back home). Most of my village are elderly now (young 'uns moving away for work) and they all cycle everywhere in all weathers. It's fab.

Yes; this is at least in part why I am hoping that the accident being signposted in neon green letters fifteen feet high happens not to Leonard but to Ruth, and his being out on his bike is instrumental in saving her from dying of exposure.

@Brefugee , it's ffenestr, but very similar. Window is from Norwegian, I think.

It's flat where I live but I see many e-bikes, usually with food deliveries on the e-cyclists; backs.

FlyingFlapjack
Window is from Norwegian, I think.

And I have a feeling it is even from the word "wind", and means something like "wind eye" or "wind hole".

He sounded much more like the Leonard of old this evening, which was A Good Thing. His last couple of appearances didn't seem quite right to me. I can't really explain why without <shudder> listening again.

@AskingQuestionsAllTheTime , that sounds right.
Some British place names have Norwegian roots. York is one.

Joy for some reason loves Mick so I think she would say his F C voice was good but I think Lynda is up to mischief a bit which is a bit out of character, but most of the actors have been acting that way recently.

I initially thought Lynda was playing it quite cleverly: saying she loved Mick's FC and then going on about it being dark and scary and different would hopefully cause Mick (whom I presume was aiming for a straightforward jolly fat man FC) to take stock and ask for help.

However, she took it a bit far and so I wonder whether she might be serious with the Krampus idea.

My son has moved to Norway to live, and studied the language for his citizenship exams; every time he rings us he has another word which was part of our vocabulary at home, or a phrase like "gang yer own gait", which he says with surprise is Norwegian. I've tried explaining that's what Yorkshire and points north does, but apparently he didn't notice anyone having a grue in Durham when he was at university there and so as far as he's concerned these are "family" words and he wants to know why! It doesn't help that one of his favourite folk-tales as a child was "The Bear on the Dovrefjell", which of course IS Norse – from Sir George Dasent's translation of "Tales from the Norse".

Just popping on to point out that speed limits do not actually apply to cyclists. (E or standard).

Maybe Lynda should let others gang their own gaits.

She absolutely should, the interfering owd bizzum.

Except on Hampstead Heath where the speed limit for bicycles is 8mph. I think there may be other specific places where local limits apply, but that is one I know. Oh, and in Richmond Park it is 20mph, which might be the same as for cars? But there is always the offence of "wanton and furious cycling" if the bicyclist injures someone.

I haven't listened to last night's epi yet, but want to express my shock at the distressing suggestion that Ruth should be killed in order to drive home the message of Bicycle Helmet Awareness Week.

A head injury that would leave her able to look after the animals, but prevent her from ever speaking again, would be okay.

I am with you on Krampus @Brefugee - attaching a photo of one we encountered at a Christmas market in Berlin when we were living there about 15 years ago. DS - who was about two at the time - was utterly terrified which is kind of the point. He is the Santa Claus for naughty children - part goat part demon. I’m not sure why Lynda thinks that would be in any way suitable for a family brunch at The Bull. Poor DS was actually trembling after his encounter - a bit too young to be persuaded it was just men in masks.

Terrifying.

I learned Russian at school. Well I attempted to.

The Russian alphabet is a lot quicker to learn than one imagines it will be. I’ve forgotten most of the language now, it was 40 years ago I was learning.

Dangerous things, those electric bikes! Friend of mine had a bad leg injury when his stationary bike toppled over.

ffenestr - very similar to French fenêtre (a circumflex accent seems to have substituted for an earlier “s” eg: pâte, hôtel, côte)

see also eglwys, church, cf Fr eglise

gang yer own gait - gait as in road, I take it? Which is why eg Micklegate in York is the road, and the gate is Micklegate Bar.

@MereDintofPandiculation , fenetre, eglise etc are from Latin. (fenestra, eccles-, I think)
pont is a good one (Pont Neuf, Pontardawe, Pontefract, but not Ponteland)
-gate is way. Deansgate, Northgate etc but not agate
Learning the alphabet might be easy but I still wouldn't know anything!
I don't really know much.

Aren't electric bikes just as dangerous as regular bikes?

Yes, I presumed it was the common Latin root. Hence "defenestrate" in English.
Whereas Portuguese (janela), Galician, Mirandese come from ianuella, diminutive of ianua, door. That's what I like about languages, the questions that it throws up. Why should one batch of Latin derived languages have "window" whereas another has "little door"? Does it reflect something in history? Like the way knife and spoon in Welsh are unfamiliar words to the English, but the much later fork is fforch, similar in Scots Gaelic.

Ecclesia for church. THought Eccles didn't look very Latin

Sorry this is getting well OT, despite the number of Welsh characters in TA and the fact that Will's accent hovers somewhere around Tenbury Wells, halfway to Wales from Ambridge.