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!

Jim's been a long-term shop volunteer, so I assume he's already got a good idea of who has which regular magazine orders.

Is it the business of the shop to police what magazines its customers are allowed to buy? I would have thought that if they are happy to order a particular magazine for one of their customers, it would be frowned upon for one of the volunteer assistants to destroy that magazine because he or she disapproved of it, for whatever reason.

i don't need convincing.
I think pp have the wrong end of the stick. I assumed there was no farm because there is absolutely, and has been absolutely, zero speak of their own farm for yonks.
It is all about the contracting work.

I know I know, just daydreaming, Jim is far too restrained, but in the scheme of unlikely things to happen, I'd rather hear Jim and Oliver than the nonsense of Amber & No J*y.

It’s true there’s far more chemistry between Stella and Ruth … Which must be awkward for the producers. (I don’t mean they should be lovers, but it makes the relationship between Pip and Stella sound deeply unconvincing.

I love hearing farm work - but it always makes me hold my breath until they’re safely done.

Yes I keep remembering John Archer.

I keep hearing swifts in the soundtrack; in south Devon they had gone by 20 July, so three weeks ago. Anyone got any left? Still oodles of swallows and house martins.

Yup … (to @Captain)

Nice episode.

Not even John Archer, the well-regarded young local bloke, son and nephew of people I know, who got down to check the tyre of a huge machine, and never got back up. Huge funeral full of youngsters in tears. Some years back, but not forgotten.

Oh goodness, @DeanElderberry…

indeed

anyway, surely farmers, who are fairly astute about old men going dotty, particularly after the wives who tried to talk sense into them for years have died, and fully aware of just how many thousand pounds Stella made by completing the harvest, will be viewing her as more rather than less employable now?

Brian going a bit Tennessee Williams there at the end....

I wonder, does the social side of being a landowner in England still matter?

I’m think of Jenny, and the Home Farm house; all the entertaining they did, and all the invitations they would have had. That all seemed to fall away, inevitably, once they no longer had a big impressive house (with swimming pool) adjacent to the farm and the shoot. Even more so once Jenny wasn’t there as hostess.

So does Brian have much less influence now, amongst his peers? It hadn’t occurred to me before that he might now be seen as an ‘old man going dotty’ who carries little weight in the farming business.

I think both Brian and Justin may be perceived as omgd, and the other local landowners may be watching the ridiculous carry-on and doing calculations on the back of envelopes in advance of the sale when it all goes belly up.

Meanwhile Stella is a hard worker who doesn't waste resources.

Good point, @TottersBlanklyIntoThePhysicGarden. I don't know the answer, but he has long ceased to be central to "posh" social life, though the idea of Jennifer (or any of Peggy's children) being "posh" has always amused me as money ≠ posh ... whatever posh means! If it is money, then presumably Amber is posh? If it's snobbery, then Adam probably wins.

Well, posh in Ambridge used to mean making a regular appearance in Borchester Life magazine …

Or was it Borsetshire Life? Of course it was!

https://www.waterstones.com/book/borsetshire-life/9781902685144

It's only just occurred to me that Borchester/Borsetshire is patterned on Dorchester/Dorset ... formerly known as Dorsetshire.

Thomas Hardy country? The initials S O C spring to mind …

And peripherally connected to Barsetshire and Barchester in Trollope (and Thirkell).

That magazine was simultaneously so famous and important that everyone in Ambridge wanted to be seen in it, and read it cover to cover, but no-one noticed the regular pics of some idiot young woman's (Brenda? Amy?) fancy man with his posh wife.

They sound like good friends, which is probably because they're similar in age, or have I misremembered there being a huge age gap between Stella and pip? Also it's because the Pip actress just has terrible delivery, she doesn't seem natural to me when talking with her parents or brothers either.

Me too.

I really really wanted Brine to do a "Stellaaaaaaa" straight out of " A Streetcar Named Desire".

New thread now, in case people start getting chatty in the small hours.

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/radio_addicts/5388469-archers-thread-189-brian-reaps-what-he-sows-in-spite-of-himself-discuss-the-archers-here