Archers thread #180: Burgeoning backstories! Continuity, what’s that? 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 think it's a great idea for Helen and the boys to lodge with Tom, Natasha, Seren and Dippity*, 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 www.mumsnet.com/talk/radio_addicts/5244480-the-archers-spoilers-thread-10-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.)

*Can't remember who coined this, but it's genius.

I was strongly tempted to use one or both of the posts suggested for the title of this thread on the last thread, but went for something a bit briefer. However, they're brilliant and will kickstart this thread very nicely, so here they are:

@Sidebeforeself: Beavers, bridge, bunny boilers and busybodies - it's all a load of bollocks!

(I couldn't agree more!)

@DeanElderberry: I don't usually speculate much on the appearance of characters, but do wonder what it is about Miranda that is bringing out the chest-thumping silverback in Brian and Justin? One little bridge game and the course of Ambridge rewilding is set. The face that launched a thousand beavers.

Over to you!

I am about a week behind this thread in terms of listening to TA. I apologise if the programme has explained this already. As several posters have already pointed out, it seems a bit strange that healthy, newborn baby Neil was never adopted. Foundlings are quite rare anyway, but I imagine they are almost always adopted. This might give Neil quite an unusual problem. How did he get a job, get married etc without a birth certificate or an adoption certificate?

At the time of the house being sold it was many tens of thousands of pounds'worth of almost new Albion kitchen. I would have expected it to be a selling point, on the whole.

There would be Archers who would refuse to put a foot in Home Farm if Vince bought it,.

And others, particularly among his children, who would take the same view if Miranda bought it and moved in with Brian.

This question led me to finding this, which is rather wonderful (though a difficult read).

(edited to add: I have no idea what happened there or why it posted without the link and then with it.)

This question led me to finding this, which is rather wonderful (though a difficult read).
https://freepages.rootsweb.com/~framland/genealogy/acts/1874Act.htm

And the actual answer to the question is that he didn't, because at the time at which he got a job, got married and so on, he was npopt a foundling and had a perfectly ordinary mother who will have registered his birth in the usual way.

Thank you very muchAsking QuestionsAllTheTime. So it would be the responsibility of Nellie's father to register the birth, assuming Nellie was too young to take this on. It is also possible that someone who was present at Neil's birth, or who owned the property in which he was born may have registered him.

I have further questions, but I need to be up to date with the programme before I ask them as it would be very annoying for you all of the answers are available just by listening. Thank you for the link.

If Vince buys Home Farm and the scenario @TottersBlankly foresees come to pass, that will be the end of listening to TA for me. I can barely remember why I do still listen anyway.

I can't stand Vince. He's an insensitive bully and no amount of retro-fitting of his character will change that for me. He was horrible when he first arrived in Ambridge; he was vile to Ben and David when the former broke up with Beth and he was far too involved in his daughter's life; and he has been quite unnecessarily aggressive to Joy over the pantomime. I have never understood what Elizabeth sees in him and I have never been able to believe in their relationship.

Like others, I see him as Warren Clarke. While that may make @BinaryDot think "sexy beast", I am afraid it does the exact opposite for me, but I have to assume Elizabeth's tastes run in that direction. It seems particularly unlikely to me that she would replace Nigel with Vince - but then I never thought "sexy beast" in connection with Nigel either.

I very much do NOT want to hear more of Vince or his family.

Hi all, new username as forgotten log in (again!)

I think you've all covered the week's shenanigans thoroughly so mainly dropping in to tell @Fink (IIRC it was you posting about shoes) about how great barefoot shoes are for us wider hoofed lot.

I actually wear insoles in mine as I hate the barefoot aspect - but the massive toe box idea life changing.

I did wonder if Joy's upset was going to be the start of her going off the rails but I still think Rochelle is going to transpire to be the more toxic of two.

Another thing annoying me this week is how incredibly wet Ben is. He's an absolute drip. I was very fond of him when he finally emerged from the cereal cupboard but he can get back there as far as I'm concerned.

I think it was.

Well, @Godesstobe … Men with big pockets have always been arriving in Ambridge as complete outsiders who buy up land and ruffle feathers and shuffle pieces on the chessboard …

Jack
Brian
Guy
Oliver
Tiger
Justin <spits>

Others I can’t immediately bring to mind. Vince would be just one more.

Not in Lowfield, not on air. The house was sold at Christmas 2018, and a search on "kitchen" in 2019 offers

Jan 8th 2019
the new owners have insisted on ripping out all the ‘awful décor.’ Ruth is suitably shocked, and hopes this won’t extend to Jennifer’s kitchen.

as the only mention of the matter.

I must have imagined it.

One of the many things unconvincing about Vince is that a man who is presumably fairly wealthy was ever bidding to move into Elizabeth's tiny flat as a cocklodger.

And anyway, if the Pargetter estate is so large (5 tenant farms! Why do we never hear about the management of them?) is she living in a tiny flat at LL anyway, unless she actually likes it? Was she living in the tiny flat with Nigel?

I do not understand.

Although - if Vince were to buy the actual farm - if the Home Farm partners wanted to sell - that would be a whole other thing!

Might you have it conflated with the destruction of the Clarrie's-pride-and-joy bathroom at Grange Farm when Oliver bought that? She did find her bath in a skip, I think.

Someone mentioned the words ‘land agent’ recently (yesterday?) and I realised with a jolt that the role had indeed completely disappeared from the village. (I wish that’s what Stella was, but she really isn’t.)

IIRC there used to be far more discussion of the management of land when Nigel was alive. Definitely before him as well on other large landed properties but I distinctly recall how LL felt like a cohesive whole - like land - in the past. I’m not sure Elizabeth ever mentions the land as a meaningful entity - maybe the view once in a while, but mostly just the discrete commercial entertainment enterprises.

Stella is a Farm Manager.

Shula was a land agent for Borchester Land, and then there was Graham Rider. And I think Charlie Thomas was a land agent for Damara, and Rob after him. But I don't think we have ever heard of a land agent for the Lower Loxley Estate

I don't think so. I thought it was Jenny crying over the destruction of her kitchen but i accept I was wrong.

And anyway, if the Pargetter estate is so large...is she living in a tiny flat at LL anyway, unless she actually likes it?

I believe it's not uncommon for the owners of country houses to live in a (relatively) few rooms or a self-contained flat. If the house is open to the public then you don't want everyone trailing through your sitting room when you've just sat down to watch TV, plus the cost of running those houses is exorbitant. Heating a small flat is much easier to afford when the houses cost so much just to keep them standing and water-tight these days.

Jenny crying over the destruction of her kitchen

Beside which Rachel weeping for her children would be a pattern of restraint 😂

I always understood that the present day Pargetters lived in part of a wing of the house - but it was substantial enough to require the energies of a housekeeper and I didn’t have the impression people were squeezed together. It seems to have become conceptually smaller to suit the SWs egalitarian principles.

It seems to have become conceptually smaller to suit the SWs egalitarian principles

While Lower Loxley as a whole has sprouted features and attractions to rival Blenheim or Chatsworth.

Russ used to live there - I didn’t get the impression he was squeezed into a box-bedroom with Lily and he had a studio for his art, not to mention Julia and Lewis and Julia wouldn’t have put up with sub-standard accommodation being the former châtelaine.

Maybe Elizabeth realises that if Vince moves in he has plenty of Casey relatives who would fancy stately-home living and tag along with him.

I definitely pictured the kitchen going but probably not because they said kitchen specifically, but because home farm is the kitchen. Jenny in her farmhouse kitchen is what I imagine back when we would hear about home farm.

But seriously why isn't Mick turfed out? He needs to go. He's a manure stirring incomer.
If he was kicked out of Ambridge would his complaint to the parish council be scrubbed?

Harking back to Neil's birth certificate for a moment; even as a foundling he would have one, because they are just a copy of what is held in the register of births, marriages and deaths for the individual, and he would have been registered; the police he is said to have been taken to would have made sure of that.