Archers thread #192: Village of the Dammed. Discuss the beavers here. Throw in the odd word about the Archers if you must.

[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 have Kate present as you give birth, 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.)

I'm more excited about the arrival of the beavers than anything else going on in Ambridge at the moment. I hope there will be a webcam.

Bets on how much of next week is set in the castle or on the way there/back? I'm bracing myself for at least 50%.

Could they have Carbon Monoxide poisoning? Though odd for Paul not to get it as well.

Does it give you diarrhoea?

Wel, when you die of it the sphincter probably relaxes as per.

They appear to be still alive.

So what did they eat that Paul didn't?

I wonder whether they're changing Lottie's (briefly) speaking role to a silent? Are any of the existing silents under 40, beyond the Button sisters?

I've been to Pakistan and if I were Zainab I wouldn't go. She wouldn't be able/safe to travel around hassle-free and solo on her scooter. She would also need to go to uni in the UK to improve her marriage prospects for rishta aunties 😅

Just listened and heard Azra describe Lottie as a “tall woman..black” which I think is the first time I’ve heard someone described by their ethnicity on TA!

I think the Stables is actually an hmo as Lily and Josh are not closely enough related to count as being part of the same household. In Oxford a licence is needed when three individual tenants live together in this sort of set-up. Am assuming Shula doesn’t have a mortgage on the property any more as that would really complicate matters.

Why did Paul keep saying ‘a jug of cocktail’. No one would ever say that. You might say a jug of margaritas (he was using tequila so that’s what I assumed he was mixing up) but the use of the generic word cocktail here was really odd. Presumably they have picked up norovirus- Azra’s advice over the phone was a very clunky pre-Xmas PSA.

And now no one will be able to do any cleaning…

First cousins renting from their aunt not closely related? Interesting. Paul should obviously be cast out into the snow as a notanArcher.

Did we know that Lottie was black?

@ExitPursuedByABare , I thought she was of mixed heritage.
@JoelenesParrot , I think the Stables is actually an hmo as Lily and Josh are not closely enough related to count as being part of the same household.
It's not because they rented it as a house, not as rooms.

@threshacreThat doesn’t matter- doesn’t have to be rented room-by-room to qualify as an hmo- joint tenancy is fine. But I’ll try not to get into the semantics of hmos on here!

I had to stop listening before the end of last night’s episode. The Maliks have got to take the trophy for most boring family. Their conversation is so prosaic.

Not that interested anyway. SWs make the Ambridge property rules.

I agree that the Maliks are dull.

Maybe someone can check the HMO licence requirements on the Borsetshire council website.

Seems to be down at the moment, oddly.

I don't mind the Maliks but when we were faced with the prospect that they might leave for Pakistan my first thought was 'And?' They've hardly been in the village five minutes. The SWs tried a few years ago to get us all worked up about the Brookfield Archers proposing to sell up and move to Northumberland, and were probably dismayed at the lack of angst from listeners. Most of us second guessed them and never believed it would happen, and lo and behold, Ye Great Fludde happened and David realised he could never leave the land of his fathers. Yawn.

If the Brookfield beef is responsible for the food poisoning, will they be able to sell any for Christmas?

I've read far too many Golden Age whodunnits and my first reaction to three people sharing a meal and only two becoming ill is to wonder how the third person did it. A shared meal or drink just before several people become ill but only one person dies is a staple of the genre. The best example that comes to mind is Strong Poison by Dorothy L. Sayers. (I won't explain further as it would be a massive spoiler.) However, unless Paul is a psychopath I can't see what he has to gain by trying to murder Lily and Josh, so I suppose there must be some more prosaic explanation, such as he didn't eat any beef, or only had the very well done bit at the end whereas they ate the very rare, i.e. more or less uncooked, meat from the middle.

George really is reading from the DV playbook.
I say all this regret is crocodile tears. It just keeps his victim on the hook.
Not Team George at all. The actor is doing a great job, but honestly he’s really unsettling me!

Perhaps a toxic mushroom beef Wellington event wouldn't be such a bad idea, kill off some of the now-silenced. Carol Tregorran's murder-suicide plot.

What actual meat dish did they prepare and eat? It's very rare to get food poisoning from beef that hasn't been processed (ie minced). You can literally eat beef raw. It's not like pork or chicken.

Whereas, if it involved other meat-based incredients, such as pate, that could be the culprit. I was so bored by the "some twenty-somethings attempt to cook" episode that I was only half listening.

Josh has been described as the "senior tenant" whom Shula allowed to sublet two other rooms so he could afford the rent she was asking.

Not sure what bearing that might have on anything, but it sounds like a recipe for disaster to me: what if one of Josh's tenants, as it might have been Beth, refused to leave?

I didn't.

Are we certain it is the same Lottie? I missed the explanation that this one was a friend of Pip's, though I'm entirely ready to be told that it was uttered.

I know she was changing jobs, but had missed that she was going to work at the surgery.

I think it was mentioned that Madison, Lottie's daughter, was mixed race. Seem to recall that Pip called Lottie Charlotte Surname.

Pip went to something school-related, and realised that she and Maddie's mother knew each other from their own school days.

There would have been no reason for Pip to mention that Lottie had a new job unless it is that same Lottie now working at the surgery. (If only I could remember exactly what Pip said about the job!)

The trouble is that so much of TA these days is for no reason. For instance the whole of scam week was without reason, really. And if this is, as the writer has apparently described it on social media, "a bubble week", then anything is possible.