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 story on bbc about people booking a star watching igloo thing on an independent website that the local pub had to tell them was a scam

Arf! I saw that story - basically they turned up to find an empty field. And I thought, you know ... I could do that! We have empty fields with no light pollution less than 500m down the road.

The woman who turned up at Ruth’s said her 16 year old children were missing school in order to go on holiday. Who would take their children of that age out of school during an important period (either their GCSE year or first year at college/sixth form) to visit a random village in November?!

I’m quite impressed she even got them in the car to go tbh

I was objecting because your post seemed to be including all older people and not just a certain group of older people who were scriptwriters.

I realise there are scam listings on those sites, which means they would be equally good for the scam storyline. What I meant was from the holidaymakers' pov I find it very unlikely that people would, in large numbers, use a county-specific site when better-known alternatives are widely available.

I dunno. booking.com scams have been widely publicised, to the extent that I try to avoid booking through it.

Oh sorry i wasn’t clear

I was trying to say that they seem to want to target ‘the young’ and are doing a terrible job and alienating the older audience in the process

Yes me too. My friend was totally scammed in Rome with a non existent hotel and booking.com said they couldn’t give her a refund or compensation (only place she could book at which short notice was a lot more expensive) because the scammer had said she had called him up demanding a discount or she’d cancel etc etc and it was his word against hers

I always try and book direct with hotels

Bruisername
I always try and book direct with hotels

It's often cheaper, too.

Yes!

so asking- what’s your view of Faith having grown up in the village?

Not Asking, but I would say it's possible. If she is supposed to be in her 70s that takes us back to the very early days of the programme. There have always been plenty of silent characters in the village and presumably a fair number of people never even mentioned. That is possibly the least implausible element of this whole silly pointless scam storyline.

Thanks!

but would we expect older characters to remember her?

Older characters would definitely remember her as some of them would have gone to primary school with her or any siblings she had. Somewhere someone will have a school class photo with her on it. Or they would remember her parents. She can't have been there and absolutely noone remember her.

Faith says she left the village at the age of ten, and Glebelands had not been built then. Jack Woolley bought the land (no mention of any cottages on the banks of the flood-prone Am when he did) in 1978. So she cannot have been born later then 1968 and is at least the same age as Elizabeth Archer, 56. She and Chuck have been married for forty years come Friday (and she has not yet "accidentally" killed him) which makes it seem likely she was born at least sixty years ago, 1964. But she didn't contradict it when Kate announced that they were in their seventies, so probably that's how old they are, or at least she is. Older than the Archers children, of an age with Eddie and Clarrie.

I think Faith was saying that she lived wherever was replaced by Glebelands, not in Glebelands itself. Chuck is an utterly bizarre name for a random Texan alive in 2024. Maybe there are some, but I've not met any Americans actually named Chuck, and I lived there for a while (tbf, East and West Coast for me, although I travelled in the weird bits in the middle. Even Canadians find those bits weird, unless they're from Alberta, but other Canadians find Albertans weird.). Faith sounds rather young for a 70yo; not the character, the name. Maybe a Buffy fan wrote the storyline?

Nevertheless, I'm quite enjoying it! Jakob rings really true in this, and Kate (in her mellowed version) is coming across well. I used to find her the most obnoxious character ever, but she's seemingly relaxed into being far more reasonable, and I'm finding the development quite ok, actually.

I, like a PP (sorry, can't remember who, and have had a wee dram, so not looking it up), was wondering about the storyline being a "no room in the inn" sort of thing, but it seems a wee bit early in the season for that, seeing as Advent hasn't even started, and also a bit late, seeing as Faith must be well past the menopause!

It’s implausible that Kate would not have said: ‘You must have known my mum’. And gone on to talk about Tony and Lilian.

And during the conversation when Kenton was explaining about Mick’s camper van he would at some point probably have asked what brought them to Ambridge, leading to a ‘Do you remember so and so?’

I think if we were to post about the way TA is behaving towards us (loyal listeners) on any other MN thread we would be told that this is not a relationship in which we are loved or respected, that things are not going to get better, and that we should LTB.

I've been known for a holiday cottage in November. There's something wonderfully cosy about getting a roaring log fire going and snuggling up in front of it.

I am a Lancastrian and confirm it is good to be all cosy in front of a roaring fire. And then I remember going to work and coming home in the dark, getting soaked walking the dog etc etc.

I caught up with two episodes.

I am not sure it was worth my time.

So this is either continuity error, suspicious, or suspicion living on a permanent feast: When Kate and Jakob are discovering something afoot at the cottage, they see a car and Kate asks whose it is. The next day Chuck says that Faith “made the cab driver stop” when they got to the village green. I suppose they could have got to Ambridge and then picked up a rental car.

A car rental place, in Ambridge?

I knew that remark about the cab felt off, but paid it no attention. Thank you for clarifying why!

Hard to understand why there’d be a continuity error, though, when the same SW must have written Sunday and Monday? What is going on?

It’s Eddie in his limo!