Archers thread #183: The Scorekeeper's Apprentice. 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 like to share a hot tub with Mucky Mick, 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 @TottersBlankly who suggested it and @BeatriceBatchelor who coined this lovely phrase. (It's led me to take a look at the Wikipedia page for The Sorcerer's Apprentice. I had not known before that the animation in Fantasia that goes with the Dukas symphonic tone poem is more or less unadulterated Goethe, and the story goes back to ancient times. You learn something every day.)

At the end of the last thread, there was an apocalyptic tone as we were all bemoaning the lack of continuity and farming storylines (especially lambing, which used to be a big theme at this time of year). Are there any reasons to be cheerful? (Not just Part 3 - another reference for the older listeners here. ) Over to you!

Exactly. It feels so wooden these days. At least half of the dialogue in TA used to be of the gossipy variety!

Yes, she came in and said something about Joy visiting a friend and Mick mentioned the Auntie and together they improvised about a visit to old friend Bella on the way to Auntie Winnie.

Yes but it sounded as if it were permanent. Eddie mentioned the Texels being weaned. Maybe Texels are terribly different but (a) lambs won't be weaned at this time and (b) there's no need to separate sheep and lambs (never seen it happen)

Agree that the lack of gossip makes it wooden

i I think that’s why the Jolene/fallon/lil conversation worked because there was a little bit of that (not sure why we needed reminding of the evil I though - I sometimes think the sw drop things in to try and convince us they do look at the archives)

astage as they shouldn’t have a box full of food to bin
Maybe it was a small box.

The WhatsApp group discussion round the adil wife/fiancee debacle would have been interesting
Maybe Adil was married but not legally married.

No he called her is wife and then fiancée and then they had a cringy clarification scene around how he hadn’t actually married her before she died but he considers her his wife

but then that didn’t explain why he also referred to her as fiancée

The Adil thing was explained that he felt calling her his fiancé somehow belittled or undermined their relationship and the depth of his grief.

my assumption was they are being separated prior sale? are Texels sold for the meat market? (seems very early to me, i live in a village and our final lot of sheep (we only have a few very small flocks) lambed about 2 weeks ago. Not Texels though.

Am looking forward to a Rochelle-Elizabeth-off over the odious Vince. May he and Rochelle (and her whiny voice and attitude) ride swiftly off into the sunset forever.

Cricket. No. I have played on many a sporting team over my life, school, army, post-army-for-fun and it isn't handled like that. You turn up for practice, and the night before the match the captain picks the team - people who miss practice pay a fine into the post-match-drinks-kitty first time, 2nd time they oil bats/clean equipment and are the drinks carrier for practice sessions. 3rd time? out. They don't get to play until they have consistently attended practice. (that's a sort of average of how it was all handled).

Yes. It made sense.

I got the impression the SWs think the lambs some of us eat at Easter are little babies.

Most males are sold foe meat. Seems very early though.

That makes sense.

Ian, Adam and Susan all bonded over gossip and became best friends. I would have thought she’d convene an emergency meeting for Rochelle or Joy. Though maybe Susan is holding back because of the business with George and not wanting to be a topic herself.

Adam, Ian, Will and possibly Ruth have disappeared down an Ambridge sink hole.

I may be quite wrong but I have always understood some farmers rear lambs which are then sold on to other farmers who keep them for the rest of their lives for meat or wool.

Also my butcher told me years ago that if you buy English lamb at Easter you are actually buying hogget as the lambs aren't big enough to eat yet unless you live in the far south west. So if you are eating actual lamb it is almost certainly from New Zealand. I've never checked if this is correct but he can tell you the detailed provenance of all his meat so I assumed he knew what he was talking about. I'd be interested to know if this is true.

lamb is a traditional easter meal here in Germany (probably elsewhere but i don't know).
I have usually assumed that they are year old lambs that have been slaughtered in the last two months or so, but i'm not an expert on lamb.

I just let most of this stuff wash over me these days. Previously The Archers gave us a good insight into the farming year etc. But not these days.

hogget is much nicer anyway, young enough to be tender, old enough to have flavour

I do miss Adam. The recent focus on Bridge Farm makes no sense at all without him. I guess we haven’t heard from Ian because he’s usually a disrupter and there have been too many others filling that role recently. (Hope it’s not because they’re both too busy elsewhere.)

Yes , year old. Not the ones currently frisking in fields.

I may be quite wrong but I have always understood some farmers rear lambs which are then sold on to other farmers who keep them for the rest of their lives for meat or wool.

It does happen but most wool and lamb meat producers keep and breed their own flocks. Male lambs will be slaughtered for meat. I would expect lambs here to be born February through April with peak activity in March to be sold around August / September.

A small number of exceptionally good males will be kept as rams There is value to a flock being hefted- meaning the flock is so attuned to the farm that little or no fencing is needed.

I grew upon a sheep farm and we had a staggered lambing season. if Easter was late, as it is this year, early lambs would be going to market.
Texels are big and reach market weight quickly. There's a demand for spring lamb.

Wool is usually sold at a loss.

Do they ever?

At the inquest on Nigel in 2011, David talked about it having been dark on the Lower Loxley Hall roof until the moon rose.

Moonrise on a given day has to be one of the most easily-checked things on the internet. Just feed the date you want, and the word "moonrise", into the search engine of your choice. You will find that on the night of Nigel's death, 2nd January, 2011, the moon rose at 06:45 am and set at 02:17 pm. There was no moon in the sky that night – and if there had been, the light it cast would have been negligible, since it would have been a waning crescent and casting 2% of the amount of light under a full moon.

Did Joanna Toye check? no, Watson, she did not. If she had, surely to goodness she would not have thrown that completely unnecessary inaccuracy into David''s testimony; he would not have forgotten that it was dark when Nigel fell.

When I was a child in the fifties we went to Italy during the Easter holidays one year. At the hotel where we were staying (a small, family one) there was a "sweet little thing" type pet lamb, which wandered about the place and was fed titbits by the children staying there. It formed the centrepiece of Easter Sunday lunch.

I went on a school trip and one day we went to a farm and some lucky girls got to cuddle a lamb etc etc

dinner that night was lamb chops - cue a dining room full of distraught ten year olds

The lambs on our farm weren't sent off this early. Scottish fields are full of lambs and ewes.