Archers thread #188: New Order, please! 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 spend time with Martyn Gibson, 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.)

In some haste as we are going out for the day. I was asked weeks ago to put I've Killed the Vicar in as the new title but I agree with more recent comments that Peggy's funeral feels like old news now. Great line, though. Sorry not to have used Markie Malarkey, though. I've settled on something that will only make sense to people who were also youngish in the late 1970s or early 1980s. Here's a clue. If a certain person appears in tomorrow's episode the title will be relevant.

Over to you!

Absurd scene. Do the SW not realise that Board meetings have, you know, papers and stuff? Even as the largest shareholder, you don't just keep your plans secret and reveal them in real time...

What on earth were Martyn and Justin blethering on about? Food storage?

Is Joy going to confront Markey and make him see The Error of his Ways?

Like Lynda with the Y and Lillian with the extra L. Ridiculous for radio characters. Though my best friend is married to a Martyn! I blame the parents...

I quite like the ridiculousness of Tortoise as a name for a cat.

And suddenly Joy is the most pivotal member of staff at the Bull. She’s obviously going to save the day in some way. Again. Sigh…

Vertical food made me imagine great towers looming over Ambridge with lettuce and herbs trailing down the sides. Not quite, it seems.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c51y7jd50d7o

The system does require a great deal of energy. Dr Clarke said this means vertical farming can only be commercially viable if it is built near a suitable energy source, such as a solar farm or an anaerobic digester.

I seem to recall some fuss about an anaerobic digester a while back, but can't remember which farm was going to have one and what the outcome was. Are there any fields in Ambridge used for solar farming? Another thing I can't remember.

As for food storage as a diversification option for farmers, I don't know anything about that, but while trying to Google came across this. Interesting. https://thefarmingforum.co.uk/index.php?threads/what-do-you-think-about-self-storage-as-a-farm-diversification-option.420906/

Reminds me of that ITV series with Martin Clunes where he played a farmer in a remote part of Wales being infiltrated by an organised crime gang looking for somewhere to manufacture and store drugs, and finding a struggling farm just the ticket. If fields and barns are now filling up with self-storage containers, with nobody asking questions about what's being stored as long as the rent's paid, and the police scarcely bothering to investigate most crimes short of murder, it must be bonanza time for criminals.

Surely food a storage facility will involve covering the land with large buildings one of which has a refrigeration unit making a noise. That won't go down well.

And how does Justin square that with rewilding?

Ambient and chilled food storage screams massive big warehouses. Hardly compatible with rewilding.

That's what I thought. Well, we did want farming storylines! Perhaps this is where UK farming is headed. I should really try to catch Farming Today sometimes.

Yes, big buildings and lots of trucks. Hard to get planning permission unless in an industrial park by the side of a motorway.

I think Justin knows that, but like Annabelle, he is happy to indulge Martin in order to get what he wants

Does the bull not have any cameras?

Quite.

He's not very bright and doesn't do joined-up thinking.

I imagine Joy's years of training as a ninja will come in handy in relation to Markie.

Is Joy secretly Liam Neeson?

are we going to end up with the archers becoming a revenge movie after markie slaughters everyone but Joy

Lynda is surely spelled with a y entirely so that she can correct people when they spell her with an i.

Lilian Bellamy has a single L in the cast-lists and the BBC characters page.... I hold no brief for people on this board spelling her with a double l in the middle.

We know from the previous story about Markie in the car-park that The Bull does have cameras, because they were not working when the electrics in the pub failed.

Have they beefed them up? Have they looked to see if they can see someone laying the poison? Or is that a job for Robert

I'm a bit younger than Lyndipops and was at school with a "Lynda", so maybe it was A Thing back then? I've never come across another. Perhaps there was a famous actress who spelled it like that?

Interesting about Lilian not being Lillian. I wonder if it's something to do with that i-l-i sequence tricking people's eyes, or a tendency to spell it like Gillian?

Lynda is a bit like Kathryn. There were plenty of those around when I was growing up, born late 1950s/early 1960s. Having a name with more than one common spelling must be a pain in the neck. If my second child had been a girl we would probably have called her Katherine, but hadn't settled on the spelling (other option was Katharine). Fortunately for said child, he turned out to be male and like his sister has a name that it would be hard to mis-spell. I am not a patient person and would not enjoy constantly having to spell my own or my children's names.

The poison was indoors, so the car-park cameras would be unlikely to pick up whoever planted it.

Yes but why wouldn’t they have more cameras inside as well given how worried they are

maybe Joy is a long term plant by Markie’s gang and we’ll have the big reveal where she suddenly mid sentence changes to a gravelly Black Country accent and admits to being the kingpin

On the whole I would prefer to drink in a pub that didn't video me.

True - so was it sprinkled by a customer in the main pub?

it’s a slightly random threat though as it seemed almost coincidence that they determined cat had been poisoned. Better threat to find the cat hanging from the front door (although that wouldn’t be nice to hear even if fictional)

i I wonder if Kenton will wake to find a horses head in his bed (now no nasty comments about Jolene here)