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!

There was a song.
I do wonder what DF was thinking in giving me such a lumpy name, DM wanted something different that would have been far easier.
My name is one where I got 'That's my nan's name' a lot. It's popular again now.
I sometimes look at my 'Brenda Tucker' name and think it's ugly.

I can't think of a mawkish poem with a girl's name in it, but A Subaltern's Love Song - Poetry Archive came to mind.

It is very wrong to laugh at this, but that made me Google "mawkish poems" and the fourth item on the page was a link to What are Seamus Heaney's most important poems?

Oh dear....

Consider whether you remember an inn, and the brave new world that hath such wonders in it.

😄Got it!

My sympathies that is IMO a rubbish poem (but a lovely name). How do you feel about your Ambridge namesake?

@AskingQuestionsAllTheTime , thanks. I like it, justin case you are wondering, I like it elliot. It's quite a lot of name for a small child, and if you were like me, you stuck out when the others had shorter, pretty names like Sarah, Anna, Marie, Sharon, Julie, Mandy etc.
I'm not brave enough to reveal mine but the name DM wanted was a very popular name minus the h.
I don't have an Ambridge namesake but one of the actors had the name.

I stopped using that name back in the sixties because I had HAD ENOUGH. Several things contributed, which I won't go into, but I simply made the change to a short, ambisexterous name, told my bank so I had ID, and got a new passport on the back of that. Life was simpler then.

So these days I don't even notice it, to be honest. The only person who was still calling me by it within the past three decades was my mother, and she's been dead a while now. My father managed not to, but then he always did call me Kropotkin anyway.

I like the poem. I knew it off by heart at one point, possibly for a Brownie badge.

I get it @AskingQuestionsAllTheTime . My father seemed to delight in me not liking the name, and even after I legally removed the offending first name would tell people my birth name (something awful like Carol Muireann Singer always known as Muireann apart from when people didn't know me and would assume I was Carol) . By now I'm Mo, but wouldn't have chosen it, and Mo Singer is a bit 'Brenda Tucker' but at least it doesn't have people sniggering at me.

Not my real name, but definitely that bad. Nothing wrong with Carol but not with the surname.
Legally removed the unwanted 'Carol' aged 18.

You have my sympathy. It's sad stories like that which make me sigh a bit when friends call their offspring "cute" or "clever" names.

We did once hold a work colleague down and make bloodcurdling threats at him until he promised on his honour that he would not act on his notion to call his new-born son "Clifton". His surname was Downes and this was in Bristol.

I suspect you might have gone off it a bit if it was frequently aimed at you by giggling classmates.

A relative-by-marriage always found the fleas particularly unacceptable.

The 'Carol' was because of being born around Christmas, and the argument was that it would never be used without my middle, known as name.
Of course, anywhere where my full name would be used (medical etc), I'd be 'Carol Singer'.
And I was meant to be proud of my known as name and correct anyone if they got it wrong. You'd probably not get it right unless you knew it already so people got it wrong a lot.

The endless trying to persuade me to like my name was bullying, and only ended when Dad was trying to persuade me to use a family name for a DD, and I shut it down with 'It wasn't good enough to use for me and instead you gave me a ridiculous name that I hated.' (I'd have been willing to use the name but it wasn't an easy one)

Sorry about the rant, but Dad died many years ago but this blights the good memories.

The name wasn't chosen to be amusing or cute, but just an oversight by not considering how names work in real life.

I'll need a new username now.

Now that has cheered me up. Good old Brenda.
Poor Helen
And poor Natasha and Tom.

Arf, @FlyingFlapjack ... I have a first name I dislike, though it abbreviates okay-ish (if always mis-spelled). I used to like my middle name, and considered switching to it when I left home at 18, but realised that it would probably take me a while to answer to it and the opportunity never arose again. Some years later, when it became front page news most days and a lazy abbreviation was used, I was very glad I hadn't!

Yes, well done Brenda! I wonder if she's bought the house so that she can have the multiple pleasure of thwarting Natasha's plans, getting Roy and Hayley a good price and evicting Tom's sister? I would quite like her to be villainous.

Thank you. I wore a dress from Eponine. Black with huge painterly style flowers like the Dutch genre paintings.

The Eponine site has some beautiful clothes.

I'm still grinning after tonight's wonderful episode.
Natasha and Tom are so tactless.

But it's their choice not to have help on the farm, and they have two young healthy adults to work with them.

I noticed they did an awkward expository shoehorning in of a script-writing u-turn about Natasha deciding not to sell Summer Orchard.