Archers thread #182: The Shit hits the Am! 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 be delighted to oblige your employer by cleaning up sewage spills without proper training or equipment in place of your normal duties, 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.)

Credit for the title goes to @echt. Can't think of anything much to say about current storylines. Credulity is strained to its limit on many fronts, unfortunately, but there are a few nuggets in the slurry. I did enjoy hearing Natasha's outrage that Fallon is doing obvious, sensible things at The Bull even though it might hit Terum. I thought Natasha was supposed to be an entrepreneur!

Over to you!

I loved listening to Kirsty letting rip at Tom. Wish we'd heard the exchange between Natasha and Kirsty.

Now that Helen and the boys are ensconced in the farmhouse at BF, surely they won't bother moving back to Beechwood. Which will deprive us of some eagerly anticipated clashes between the sisters in law.

I had thought they were doing one of those same day spread over more than one episode things.

That was quite nice.

I don't like Emma, but, GO EMMA!!

Power to the people!

I love the sound of church bells at normal times, but on the other hand if they were ringing for 9 hours straight plus a bunch of other people walking around ringing handbells, I would be driven demented, so I do grudgingly have sympathy for Martin Gibson.
I'm thinking of all the people who work in offices or from home in Ambridge having that racket going all day long. My son and D in law both work from home and have hours of meetings on Teams, I imagine if that happened in their village they'd quickly run out of sympathy for the cause.

She was talking about the ‘sword of Damocles.’ I went back to the podcast transcript and it heard ‘sward’ too 😆

I once stayed at an absolutely beautiful B&B in Girona, within 100m of the cathedral. The bells chimed once on the quarter, twice on the half hour, three times on the third quarter and then chimed the hours. In chimed the hours twice, presumably in case you'd lost count the first time? Midnight was fun. But it was such a lovely place that I just bought earplugs and stayed for a week.

This week's writer was Nick Warburton. Didn't he also do the Justin-as-Scrooge stuff? I enjoyed hearing from Martyn, I must say. Rather an uneven week, but I was heartened to hear George again.

In the spirit of an MN parking/CF neighbour thread, I could really do with a diagram…

I was wondering about this whole thing: surely a really long peal or succession of peals would be months in the planning/rehearsing (viz: Dorothy Sayers: The Nine Taylors). Neil said that the three teams would be ringing "Quarters", i.e., a quarter peal each, so about 45 minutes. Assuming then that each team (3 teams in total) is on for 4x45 minutes (rotating in 4 times), that is a total of about 9 hours, as he said. So if the teams are used to ringing Quarters for special occasions, it actually seems quite realistic to do so four times each at short notice. For a composition I wrote 2 years ago, I read into bell ringing quite a bit, so it made sense to me. But I wish that they had used this opportunity for a proper PDA! Bell ringing, in terms of ringing changes, is such a peculiarly English thing, and it's well worth using the opportunity to talk about it. I hope we get to hear more of the bells: it's an astonishing sound.

That's right, they wouldn't really have had to put much planning into three bands ringing three quarter peals each, assuming reasonably competent ringers and people able to call the changes and keep each band right. There are varying degrees of difficulty in ringing methods, with Bob Major probably being the easiest one, so each band could choose the three easiest methods, or even do the same one three times.

Unless you have your windows open, which is not that likely in March, I don't see how the noise would be that intrusive. There aren't that many offices near the church in Ambridge, are there?

Surely the only explanation for the two unrelated sewage events in less than 48 hours is that they will turn out to be somehow related?
Maybe by something that happened in the Great Flood (not the biblical one)!

TA features in this week's "The Naked Week". Click on at 28 minutes.

Not bad.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p0ky72d3

More tedious cricket.

Who was Martyn Gibson talking to when he first appeared and where?

Where were Lily and Rex with that dreadful music?

Oh and who would have guessed Pa Malik has a "brilliant" idea.

Who were the 2 blokes talking about Lily having left the building? Edit 1 was Tom- I know that because the other one called him Tom.

I think it’s weird how long they’ve left the Lower Loxley story now, presumably the trustees must be doing some forward planning if they’re not confident in Freddie and he’s showing no interest at this point too? What would happen if Elizabeth died?

I also think it’s strange that there’s really very little romance on the scene. I mean, we have Lily, Freddie, Rex, Kirstie, Chelsea, Brad, Ben, Zainab etc all single with very little suggestion of anything except the odd hint or misunderstanding. Josh with an ‘off-air’ romance. It’s a bit odd.

100% agreement, @OverArmourer- on both questions.

Strange to think the last proper relationship we had on air amongst the young was Brad and Mia! Kirsty seems to have thrown - what was his name, Jakob’s brother, Erik?? - into the bin, and I’m tired of the SWs effectively dangling Kirsty + Rex over our heads when they each clearly need someone far more dynamic.

Give it another 12 and a half minutes, @IHaveAlwaysLivedintheCastle!

Rex.

Re romance, we have Pip (shudder) and Stella, who could have done so much better.

What was the name of the new recruit to the cricket team?

And was it meant to be Friday they were doing the ringing? If so, why was no one at work? I had in my head it was Saturday, in which case Martyn Gibson’s anger was misplaced.

I couldn't understand what Lily was yapping on about because the music in the background was weird, I thought they had gone back in time to the 1940s with the music on the radio, were they in the cafe , because there is always strange music in the background there.
Who does Martin Gibson think he is? His epiphany moment just before Christmas has gone out the window. Love Emma and the bicycle bell.

I also wondered what the name was!

With this paying Rex nonsense - I know nothing about cricket other than what I've learned listening to the Archers but I'm wondering if it's going to mean Ambridge get booted out of this new league they keep banging on about? Because perhaps it's for amateurs only and having paid players will disqualify them. Or is that not a thing 🤔

I did a Google and they are allowed to pay but they need to do it properly and it can’t be more than 10k a year

i think this will be more about the fallout when others find out and from all this dropping

Lily did say she'd checked the rules on payments.

That’s the thing … If they follow the rules then it seems nonsensical to keep the payment a secret from the other players. The sensible thing surely, would be to allow the players to elect a deserving soul for payment.

In fact it’s the opposite of the Bridge Farm dairy situation where it is absolutely outrageous that Helen tried to shift responsibility for the decision to her employees, and then, when they declined to do so, retaliated by throwing a whole load of unnecessary stress on them. It’s her decision - she could have made it quickly and clinically without making them suffer so much.