Archers thread #195: Run, Amber, run! Discuss The Archers here.

[Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g]

Thank you, @PseudoBadger, for kicking off this long, long series of Archers threads.

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Emma spoke sense to George and Amber tonight. Goodness only knows where this storyline is going. I can't see George being Father of the Year. Oh dear.

Over to you!

Well if its pound for pound they should get quite a bit for Fat Rosie

I suspect it’s They hope we’ve forgotten, because they can’t be bothered with all that ancient history, @Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g.

They should know better, though. They know TA listeners have lllooonnnggg memories and know the details. They just don't seem to care any more.

There was an article in the paper saying older listeners are turning off as it is too 'woke'. I don't think it is that at all, I agree it is because it is being plot lead not character lead and they keep making things up or forgetting/ignoring things.

And annoying things like not letting Jill just die in her sleep.

Is it that "woke"? They have a lesbian couple and a gay couple, and nobody in the programme ever seems either to notice or to comment, and nobody in the programme ever notices or comments on anyone else's colour (until the Maliks, when I think both the children assumed other people were picking on them for their colour and not because they were repulsive in and of themselves). But is it really "woke" not to bang on about other people's colour or sexuality? I thought that was just basic good manners.

Well quite. The article didn't actually say what listeners thought was 'woke', it was a waffly article devoid of facts.

Please can someone remind me what was previously said on-air about Glebe cottage, was it that Doris left it to Shula, but Jill was to live there, them Jill moved back into Brookfield and Shula let it to Carol Tregorran?

I think it went like this:
Lady Lawson-Hope (implausibly) left it to Doris because Doris had been in service with her decades earlier, before Doris left to marry Dan.
Doris and Dan lived there after they retired from Brookfield, so that Phil, Jill and children could live in the Brookfield farmhouse.
On their death Shula inherited the place and lived there with her husband Mark, then with their son Dan after Mark died and then with Alistair as well.
Shula, Alistair and Dan moved to the Stables and sold Glebe Cottage to Phil and Jill, who moved there so that David, Ruth and children could live in Brookfield farmhouse.
After Phil died Jill lived on her own there for a time but eventually moved back to Brookfield and rented it to Carol Tregorran, who is apparently still there, but silently.
In their wills, Phil and Jill provided that after their deaths Glebe Cottage should go to Shula and Elizabeth. Kenton gets nothing because his debts have been cleared many times. David and Ruth got the farm. S, K and E were fobbed off with the golden shares which give a share of the farm only if it D&R ever sell it.

Doris left Glebe Cottage to Shula and Shula lived there for quite a while, but when Christine retired from running The Stables Shula had to sell her house (and I think Alistair sold his at the same time) and sold Glebe Cottage to Phil and Jill for them to retire into. They left it in their wills, each of which left a life-time interest to whoever lived longer of the two of them, to be divided between Shula and Elizabeth when the surviving partner died. Jill let it to her friend Carol Tregorran when Ruth insisted that Jill ought to move to Brookfield and for the first time ever share a house with her son and daughter-in-law. (All the garbage Ruth spouts about how awful it was to share a house with Jill "for all those years" is just that, garbage; for one thing Jill only moved into Ruth's house quite recently, and for another Ruth insisted on it against David's misgivings.)

Glebe Cottage is not part of Brookfield and has never been part of Brookfield, so I don't think David and Ruth can leave it to anyone at all.

(edited to add: sorry: cross posted)

I’m pretty sure I remember Doris leaving Glebe to Shula. (I don’t recall anything about Elizabeth at that point.) I’m also pretty sure I remember Shula living there with Dan and Alistair - and its being a bit cramped. But then the whole division of spoils at Brookfield confused the scene. Not sure my brain has ever recovered …

Apols for slow cross posting …

Glebe Cottage has been (will have been) left to Shula twice, by different people, once for her sole use and once to share with her sister.

Iirc (and I quite possibly don't) didn't David and Ruth live with Phil and Jill in the farmhouse when they first got married? With various tensions?
Then the bungalow was built and D&R thought it was for P&J but it wasn't so D&R moved in.

It is really very hard to care, isn't it? Perhaps (in the increasingly bizarre world of Ambridge) the government will change the IHT rules by stages, starting with any farmer whose surname begins with an A having to pay the full 40% up-front before they're even dead?

Tonight I was mostly thinking about Ruairi. I used to quite like him, but have noticed for a while that he has been becoming increasingly unpleasant and very full of himself. But this evening he seemed to have gone Full Adam and become the world expert on everything.

Brian put him down very effectively though
(although not very convincingly, isn't he 80+ with a heart condition?)

what about George though??? they trailed this weeks shows with the promise of finding out who attacked him. I thought he sounded guilty as anything.

Although it's fun to speculate that George hit himself on the head, to make 'em all sorry, I suspect he would have missed.

I thought Amber sounded guilty. And panicking.

(I know she’s been suggested here before. I dismissed it. But now …)

But wasn't Amber occupied elsewhere, not having sex with Brad?

To be honest, though, I don't much care. Whoever it was made a rubbish job of it and I'd quite like it to be Jill, hyped-up on crisps, or perhaps one of the Button sisters.

The bungalow was definitely built for them, and they never thought anything else; there was also a suggestion of them having Woodbine Cottage, and none that Jill and Phil should move out of Brookfield, especially since David wasn't yet a partner in the farm. Before the bungalow was finished, they lived in Nightingale Farm in the flat Mrs Antrobus had made there. Ruth lived there when she was being a student on secondment (after lodging briefly with Martha Woodford, who nearly drove her crazy) because there wasn't room for her at Brookfield, and it was from that flat they were married.

(There was something about their wedding presents being stolen and turning up later in a shop Kenton was running, but I don't think he'd actually pinched them.)

Then David took the foreman's job at Home Farm, and that came with a house, which they lived in until Ruth's placement at Home Farm was completed. Then they had to move back to Nightingale Farm because the bungalow was not yet completed and Brian's new foreman needed the house.

Amber was very keen for George to believe that it was Markie’s mates wot done it.

Indeed …

But this evening he seemed to have gone Full Adam and become the world expert on everything. I think listening to Ruari made Brian realise just how much Adam does know and reflect on the changes he actually made when he was at Home Farm, regarding soil health for instance. Ruairi was going off just to look at a farm run by one of his posh mates - he wouldn’t be able to work on it (as Adam did when he left for Bridge Farm) - Ruari wasn’t even sure he could change the oil filter on his own! Couple this with Brian’s encounter with Josh - someone who set up his own business when he was younger than Ruairi and who Brian is sure could go it alone with 30 acres and make something of it. Pip and Josh have been farming since forever. No wonder he’s having doubts about Ruari who didn’t even really grow up on the farm since he was away at boarding school most of the time and then went to live in London. Ruari might think he wants it, but he hasn’t earned it and his glib batting away of inheritance tax worries only made him seem even more naive.

But but but ... Ruairi has a Degree from a Big University (presumably in Gigolo Studies-with-Sums) and therefore knows everything!

What facts do we know about Amber’s movement on NYE?

Despite only a week before having seemingly reconciled with George upon her return from Ireland and attempted to conceive a child with him she:

• was so horrified at the things he said to his family that she slapped him
• went directly (?) to see Brad, who comforted her and let her stay there, in a separate bedroom to his
• next morning (or was it not til the following day?) she drove with Eddie(?) to the hospital and did a very good show of concerned fiancée.

I might need to go back and LA.

Love the degree title Gonners!

I think this is also a return to type for Brian in playing his kids off against one another. He used to do it with Debbie and Adam - it looked like Ruari might be the chosen one purely on account of being Brian’s biological child, but now he’s back to his old ways which I think is much more realistic.