Archers thread #191: Mulligan: stew made from odds and ends; second chance after poor shot. Both fit the bill. Discuss The Archers here.

[Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g]

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Mulligan mostly makes me think of John Finnemore's Souvenir Show. This is good, and tenuously connected to a recent TA storyline

Over to you!

Omg I had to listen back as I thought I was hallucinating!! “Let’s hope the farmer is on the case.” FFS Pip “the farmer” will be one of your relatives or neighbours. Any country person would be going to see the animal, check it’s ok (ie not hurt), and ringing round likely owners, surely? Just last year I found a loose cow and put off my errand to trundle right across the nearest farm to track down the farmer and tell him.

Even if Pip was just being lazy Josh would have done something.

Didn't they install some kind of magical self milking parlour concept years ago?

Anyway isn’t milking morning and evening and therefore completely unlikely to clash with going on a kids trip to pick pumpkins etc?!!

Exactly. I recall driving home from a horsey event and encountering loose sheep, and stopping at the next house to inform the (fed up, because they weren't hers) lady there. Or coos on the way to another venue, more than once on the same route (bloody farmer, bloody fence!). Or more sheep, different venue. It's just normal.

Ohh, one time I was on a bus along an A-road, and saw a cow acting what I thought was strangely in a corner of a field. I wasn't quite sure what to do, so called the SSPCA who got the police involved, and before the bus trip (about 2h?) was done, I got a call back telling me the farmer had been identified, and the cow (and calf) had been retrieved: her calf was stuck somehow in the corner, and she had stayed with it rather than return to the barn with the rest of the herd. So my spot from a bus passing at 70mph was completely right. In my experience, that's how this sort of thing gets spotted and resolved, by passers-by and very active social networks.

A loose cow sounds dangerous for the cow and traffic. Pip should have informed someone straight away. Im surprised the person( who shall not be named) who noticed it, didnt herd it to somewhere, as she seems to be able to do anything anyway.
Yes Kenton should have backed the pirate instead of being all apologetic to Eddie.
Milking parlour sounds so lovely and cosy, which is not what they are in real life. A load of cows attached to milking equipment.
I'm not surprised that Josh hasn't got a girlfriend he sounds really boring.
Esme is taking the pee, if you ask me. If the Maliks can learn to milk cows in 5 mins then why can't she instead of wringing her hands and making tea.

I can't bear the posh girl voice Pip adopts sometimes though it is amusing when it slips midsentence.

The failure to immediately follow up on the loose animal was bizarre - is this thing set in a rural community or not?

I said, a few threads ago, that the agricultural story editor was on gardening leave. Probably nurturing a windowbox in Catford for all the truth there is in current SLs.

Or tending his Peace Lily.

I had to eye-roll at Pip getting furious that anyone should think she was whingeing about Esme and the time everyone was devoting to her problems, when that’s EXACTLY what she’d been doing, at length.

Esme is taking the pee, if you ask me. If the Maliks can learn to milk cows in 5 mins then why can't she instead of wringing her hands and making tea.

but she has a job, she doesn't want to be a farmer, she never did by the sound of it. In her shoes i would be getting an administrator in and/or selling everything asap.

Coming late to this, but I so agree about the tendency on MN to blame everything on hormones. I really don't think women do themselves any favours when they do that - it's exactly the sort of reason misogynists give for not employing women, or for downplaying our genuine responses and reactions. If I'm angry or sad about something for good reason, there is nothing more exacerbating than having it attributed to "time of the month" or being peri or whatever. When you think of the number of women holding down heavy duty jobs that require full concentration and mental faculties who wouldn't dream of, say, cancelling the surgery/business presentation/complex court hearing/whatever that they were scheduled to do on the grounds that they were pre-menstrual or menopausal, you realise that we really are more than our hormones.

I'd read on here that people thought that Ruth and David treated Josh badly but I hadn't realised how badly until I heard Sunday's episode. Why was Ruth so horrible to him when he suggested spending time with Esme? Like she couldn't believe anyone would want to spend time with her own son, who is an adult with a life of his own. What a way to talk to your own children! And wasn't there talk of Josh having a girlfriend in a band? Or did I imagine that?

Didn't he tell Brad it was fine to let it slide, because he had other and better irons n the fire? I wonder what happened to those?

On the podcast, they were talking about who was the favourite child in the Brookfield family. There was general agreement that Ben was Roooth's favourite, and Pip was David's, and absolutely no-one was nominating Josh.

David's attitude to him has always seemed impatient and over-ready to blame him rather than support him, and Pip really plays up to that and encourages it. I'm surprised Josh hasn't emigrated, really.

I thought George was going to make coffins?

the nastiness to Josh is awful - real middle child syndrome!!! I really hope he ends up more successful than Pip!!

@BeatriceBatchelor I can't bear the posh girl voice Pip adopts sometimes though it is amusing when it slips midsentence.

@Istheworldmadorisitme , 'middle child syndrome'.
I can think of families where the mother has made an effort to be closer to the 'spare' possibly because they were aware of it, or because they had more in common (e.g. both musical or artistic), but in a family like Brookfield, I'd expect them to be treated like the DD, the heir and the baby.
That might seem a bit dated now but Pip is in her 30s, and the women I know that age were encouraged to have a career and not to stay on the farm.

Josh seems the better of the three IMO. Ben's nice but a bit wet, and Pip is completely unlikeable.

She's horrible to Josh.

@JudyCoolibar , thank you. You make a good point.
I can remember the PMT jokes from the 1980s, and it seems a different spin of the same, i.e. women are a mess a lot of the time because of their hormones.

I can only speak for myself, and might have had an easy time of it but all the hormone stuff was just part of being a woman and life went on. (I think part of why it was plain sailing was because I ate healthily and had lots of exercise).

@JudyCoolibar , wasn't it cardboard coffins or something. Esme mentioned cheap caskets.

It’s great if your hormones haven’t impacted you but to put it down to healthy eating and exercise is quite patronising. I’ve been lucky all my life with periods but I have friends with significant health issues because of them and the impact of the menopause on some women is really bad - I understand those years are the highest risk of suicide for women

I hate the way women are patronised for ‘being hormonal’ but I lots also used to shut women down and encourage ‘don’t talk about it because you’ll be judged’

perhaps a bit of understanding would be good

I don't think we ever heard any details about what George was actually doing.

On the subject of the loose cow: does Pip not remember the time she allowed a lot of cows to get loose because she was too idle to mend a fence, and about half the cows on the local farms had to be killed because the ones she allowed to invade their land were diseased? She should be a bit more concerned: what if the loose cow were diseased, got onto Brookfield land and the Brookfield herd had to be killed? The wretched girl-child has obviously still got no idea about bio-security.

And what’s more, she kept quiet for a looong time about it being her fault, iirc.

@Bruisername , I'm not patronising anyone. If someone genuinely does have problems, it should be treated seriously.

I hate the way that women seem to patronise themselves by blaming their hormones. Which was why I mentioned it in the first place.

@Trivium4all , well done, you were a good citizen unlike the hateful Pip.

Oh thanks @AskingQuestionsAllTheTime i had it nagging in my mind that Pip had been naughty with ignoring a broken fence.

Still not over the complete lack of curiosity let alone responsibility about the lost cow.

I know she dosnt want to be a farmer but she dosnt mind everyone else helping out and putting themselves out to milk her dad's cows whilst she is fannying about in the Kitchen not getting her hands dirty.
She is not exactly mucking in she can sort out the paper work in-between the milking.

I’m confused … Surely Esme and Mulligan’s story was timed to tie in with this:

https://www.nfuonline.com/updates-and-information/nfu-tenant-farmers-conference-2025/