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!

Keeping Roy alive makes sense in as much as he can be brought back with a new voice in time should it be desired.
I really have no idea why they haven't yet given Peggy a peaceful demise.

I’m assuming ‘Victory at Ambridge’ has been conceived as a celebration of Peggy in Ambridge - and to mark her death.

I imagine for Jill’s death the King himself will have to take up residence in the Brookfield barn for at least a week. Everyone in the village will have to sit around the fire, recalling all they know of her, all through the nights.

And every single BBC programme will feature her - for a month.

@gonners, I used to post as WrongSortOfListener. On here, I think.

TottersBlankly
Adam laboured at Home Farm for decades.

Adam returned to Home Farm (after a break-up with his boyfriend in Kenya) in March, 2003, and flounced out (having been caught stealing from the farm machinery account and finding it intolerable that Brian was not being sweet to him about his peculation) in June, 2021. So not actually decades, in cold fact; and he was the employee from hell, moaning, grousing, threatening to flounce, always having to be right about everything, and if necessary getting his mother to support him against her husband – which she invariably did. In a real job without the blackmail aspect he wouldn't have lasted a year. (When he did then get a real job more than two miles from his house and being employed by someone who was not under any obligation or undue pressure to do so, he couldn't hack the commute, picked a fight with his employer, and had to leave after less than two months.)

It was almost decades, Asking, and he was working through all those years. The nonsense with the flouncing and working elsewhere and whatever was definitely Plot, not him. (Not terribly effective plotting, either.)

I can understand Brian hedging while he prays for Ruairi to suddenly morph into a full-blown farmer - but the SWs really have been very cavalier with Adam.

The nonsense with the flouncing and working elsewhere after being caught stealing £5000 was entirely in character! Taking his inestimably important self away in a huff (and then Brian would be sorry) was what he had been threatening to do every time anything did not go just as he wanted it to and he felt his sense of grievance against Brian rise up yet again, for at least the previous fifteen years.

But the ‘stealing’ was ridiculous and would never have played out like that in real life. The money was a drop in the ocean relative to what passes through Home Farm - there would have been no problem at all if he’d asked to borrow it. It was all as unlikely as random Air BnB visitors snuggling up together in the Brookfield Barn.

Sorry, but taking five thousand pounds (without consultation and apparently with no plans to repay it any time soon) from your employer is a sacking offence even if your employer is a multi-national company with annual turnover greater than that of half a dozen or more small countries.

Adam didn't just not ask to borrow it: he turned it down when Brian offered to lend him the money to pay the rewiring bill for Honeysuckle Cottage.

And even then Brian didn't sack him: he just refused to apologise to Adam about it and Adam took himself off in a temper. Which was entirely in keeping: he had done it several times before in the full expectation that he would be implored to come back, only this time it didn't work.

I seem to remember ranting about the Adam theft SL at the time. The cottage had huge amounts of work done after “the flood” so it made no sense that it suddenly needed to be rewired.

Then there was that daft altercation when Ian though Adam was on a date, not an interview.

Was it all just so that Stella (somehow known to Justin) could be parachuted in as a sympathetic ear for Brian and a lesbian love interest for a newly bisexual Pip?

It’s all mad.

Could it be any less subtle:

”Do you have a floor plan?”
”So this is where the animals are kept”
”Can I do some work shadowing in bonage even though I’ve only been here 5 minutes”

I suppose it could have been, but it would have needed to try for a week with both hands.

Does Freddie need Rochelle to wear a PETA T-shirt🙄. Could she be more obvious

Still think the pub trade is a bit odd in ambridge

morris dancing experience🙄.

too much Rochelle and too much cricket

Freddie is suspicious of her, I think He just has the wrong thing he is being suspicious ABOUT.

a floor plan is a very odd thing to ask for

Does he think she wants a floor plan so she can sneak into Vince’s office

i know they like the audience to be be to pick things up but they’re not being subtle at all

I'm slightly surprised at Keri Davies being so very ham-fisted.

I know I know it’s the Archers… but wouldn’t abbatoirs have at least some kind of employee checks in place, even in packing, to be vigilant against activists and if Freddie is supposed to have some kind of management position would he not have had some kind of awareness training?

Rochelle presumably had no-one to provide a reference for her but can just rock up and start work there?

We need an Abbatoir Manager AMA!

Keri Davies experienced the Rainbow Ethical Vegan period on the BBC board. That may colour his attitude to animal activists.

Maybe if Freddie was able to hear the striking contrast between Rochelle's default surly 'what’s for tea? voice and her 'ooh Freddie man, I’m soooo excited to have this marvellous job, I can’t WAIT to do well so I can get a lovely home for me and the bairns, and can I have a plan of the abattoir and all the keys so I can wreak havoc, please?' it might just help him start to put two and two together?

What, made him think they are all really obvious and stupid? Rochelle couldn't have made it more clear that she was up to something if she had been carrying a hand-written placard saying "I am an animal rights activist as well as a vegan".

Ham-fisted Maybe he has a beef with the abattoir business.

The one who was adamant eggs were chicken's menstrual waste? She was an utter nutter if ever there was one.

Does Freddie know Rochelle is a vegan? I assume it's not something she mentioned at the interview for a job in an abattoir.