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!

Blame Jamie Oliver

https://www.jamieoliver.com/recipes/pork/kale-sausage-stew/

I love Kale and actually used to put it on my kids' pizzas!! I especially love the nero stuff and I would have that and no sausages any day!

MereDintofPandiculation
DH and I are completely puzzled. Kirsty doesn’t want to live in the Beechwood house because Philip. So she’s living in Roy’s house. But Roy has gone to join his lady love and is selling up. So Kirsty is looking to buy somewhere to live and is selling the Beechwood house. Helen is living in the Beechwood house but can’t afford to buy it.
Last thing we heard Natasha say was “how about me and Tom make you an offer?” An offer on what? Does Helen own another property and that’s what she’s selling? But isn’t it the Beechwood ”executive home” that Natasha wants? So why is she talking about making an offer to Helen when it’s Kirsty that’s selling it?

Kirsty wants to buy the house in which she is living at the moment, Willow Farm House, which belongs to Roy and Hayley.

In order to afford Willow Farm House, Kirsty wants to sell her house in Beechwood, which she has never wanted to live in because Philip.

Helen does not want to buy the Beechwood house and is pretending that she can't afford it because she is embarrassed about letting Kirsty down – she was renting it on the understanding that this was with the intention of buying it, but what she actually wants is Bridge Farm House. She won't get that from her parents if she has a perfectly good house of her own already.

Natasha was talking to Kirsty, not to Helen, when she asked about making an offer on Kirsty's house. They had just finished their conversation about Kirsty going to see Gavin.

wrt registrars- DD got married a year or so ago and both she and her intended were formally spoken to in private (separately obvs) to determine that it was not a forced marriage, apparently this is done routinely (in that place anyway, not sure if its national

I think it has been national policy at least all this century for bride and groom at a register office to be interviewed separately when they are booking the wedding; the object of this is to make sure that they do actually know each other, and it's not a marriage just to get citizenship for one of them.

Certainly OH and I were asked questions about each other with the other one in a different room; this caused me a little anxiety, because his interview took forever and I started to think he had forgotten my birthday and was being seriously grilled, or something, but no: he was mending their printer for them! My fault for telling them he was a computer wrangler when they asked me what he did for a living.

wouldn’t they only be concerned about you not knowing each other if they thought it was a passport marriage?

its not just to do with marriage for citizenship
some people are forced into marriage by their families
PSA- this is illegal and anyone at risk of it can obtain a forced marriage protection order

Well, seeing that I had been living with my now-husband for a while and we are both British with the birth certificates to prove it, I asked about that, and was told they had to check everyone or they might be accused of prejudice.

In the same way, for a while in some areas medics were not supposed to reveal the sex of babies after a first scan because there were some sections of the population who might pressure a woman into having an abortion if she was carrying a female foetus; my son and his wife were not told the sex of their first baby at the twelve-week scan for that reason. (I think that may have been national policy as well, at least for a while, because it looks prejudiced to be selective about these things.)

That's basically "Leftover's stew" isn't it? Why does one need a recipe?

that makes sense @AskingQuestionsAllTheTime

i suppose if they are worried about forced marriage then they would surely have different questions?

I got married 20 years ago (to a foreigner) and didn’t get any questions!!

Natasha was talking to Kirsty, not to Helen, when she asked about making an offer on Kirsty's house. They had just finished their conversation about Kirsty going to see Gavin. I thought that might be the solution. It didn't sound wheezy enough for Kirsty.But you're right, the context makes it Kirsty.

Why would Kirsty accept an offer from Natasha when she's refused on offer from Helen? Is Natasha planning to slip into the gap between Kirsty's asking price and Helen's offer?

I think it has been national policy at least all this century for bride and groom at a register office to be interviewed separately when they are booking the wedding; We weren't. But that was last century (suddenly feels even older)

I enjoyed Kirsty and Gavin's scene.

MereDintofPandiculation
Why would Kirsty accept an offer from Natasha when she's refused on offer from Helen? Is Natasha planning to slip into the gap between Kirsty's asking price and Helen's offer?

Kirsty didn't refuse an offer from Helen! Helen didn't actually make one, apart from claiming that Kirsty would have to drop the price for her because it would cost twenty thousand pounds to repair the damage to the house (the house being five years old at most and Helen having occupied it for three of those, any damage would have to have been caused by Helen and her boys, so why Kirsty should be expected to pay for it was a bit of a mystery). Then when Kirsty declined to drop the price below what she needed for Willow Farm House and said she needed to know NOW whether Helen wanted to buy, Helen said she was terribly sorry but she couldn't afford it.

Helen is on record as having said to Tony, before she started to mess Kirsty around, that "The real problem is that she's ambivalent about buying the house: it's just not where she pictured herself. They're lovely houses, but the estate still feels like suburbia to her."

Deleted because I see someone already pointed out that Natasha was talking to Kirsty, not Helen.

Kirsty to me sounds like a flump (although I have fond memories of flumps so...)

Does anyone else think that negotiating a house sale with Helen would be a walk in the park compared to negotiating with Natasha? It's going to be painful isn't it? Although it will nicely highlight Bridge Farm inheritance issues as Tom and Helen both refuse to sort themselves out so they can get the farmhouse.

Given her history with Tom, if I were Kirsty I would very much enjoy "negotiating" with Natasha. I would obviously insist on Tom being present.

That’s not Kirsty though. She’s a pushover!!

Which is why I dislike her so much. Well, that and the voice!

Can I just check without scrolling back - did we note that they made another beaver joke yesterday night?!

It's a very North German sort of thing. I adore it. But the kale isn't just thrown in there: it takes a lot of preparation. Notably, it should ideally have gone through at least one frost before being harvested (or come out of the freezer); kale stew is a winter food. You need onions and butter and broth and pork belly and/or gammon and allspice and a bit of sugar: the bit of sugar is key. And the right kind of sausage. You can also eat it with a fried egg on top. Total winter comfort food!

That's just wrong. That's not how a kale stew works. ARGH!

Oh, and kale stew has to cook for at least an hour.

Well, what do you expect from the mockney gobshite?

Oh, and talking of gobshites, Tom’s not going to be happy. Particularly when, after Kirsty has accepted the offer Natasha they put in, he discovers that Pat and Tony talked about downsizing while they were away and will now be planning for Helen to have the farmhouse as the others are buying.

I was thinking about that...I have ambiguous opinions about Natasha. On the one hand, she's rather a sharp operator and steamrollers rather unsensitively over a lot of situations: I found it infuriating how oblivious she is to Fallon. On the other hand, she's at least not as wet as e.g. Kirsty is being at the moment (or Fallon). I can see why she's a bit frustrated with Tom, and seemingly about to take matters into her own hands (or at least steamroller over Tom in their next conversation about the house, which I won't mind at all).

I think Helen would be a better fit for the farm house.

Mark was an only child.

I thought he had a sister - ClRissa, Cressing, something like that? I thought Daniel went to stay with her once. Did I dream it all up?