Archers thread #195: Run, Amber, run! 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 think 19 is an ideal age to have a baby with a convict, 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.)

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!

Nice take. From that perspective, an Aldridge would be good....

Those type of salons do exist. And have been successful and renovated horseboxes have been used for mobile coffee shops,/ beauty salons, dog grooming stations etc .
If Chelsea can secure enough funding I think it's a great idea and she could be very successful

Interesting that Chelsea has a Driving Licence. I know a lot of relatively affluent families who have been unable to afford driving lessons for their children. Did she just learn with Tracey? How did Tracey afford the astronomical insurance cost of giving lessons to a learner driver. I know rural families will often prioritise driving because of the lack of public transport but how did the Horro ins afford it? Who is the local driving teacher? Why did we never hear about the lessons.

Here is one
She learned to drive years ago. The first time we heard her in the Archers she was having a driving lesson and I think she crashed. I can't remember who was teaching her though.

Her first lessons were with Tracy

Yes, as a Willwriter there’s no need to do discretionary trusts in those circs. I’m on a Willwriters forum and am constantly shocked at how some WW advise discretionary trusts as a catch all foe virtually all their wills.

I suspect it’s partly because they can charge more and partly because they don’t want to put the effort in to actually tailor make the will for the individual

My dear mum was a hairdresser who went back to it after spending time at home when we were little. She just went to people’s homes (and sometimes they came to us, meaning I spent a lot of my childhood in the company of elderly ladies having perms and putting the world to rights over their coffee and biscuits as they waited to be combed out).

Mum had a hood hairdryer and obviously all the usual hairdressing accoutrements needed but not much else in the way of fancy stuff; she did however have a loyal clientele and was very busy, entirely through word of mouth. She only gave up well into her 60s because she needed a rest. She once did Claire Bloom’s hair (!) when she was visiting a friend in our village.

When, years later, I happened to see Philippa Lowthorpe’s documentary’Three Salons at the Seaside’, it was through a haze of mingled tears and laughter because it was my entire childhood miraculously brought back to life.

I can’t see why Chelsea - who’s supposed to be an absolute wizard at hairdressing - doesn’t just do something similar. Word would spread quickly if she’s that good. I’d give my right arm to have a brilliant hairdresser who came to me at home.

'I was sick of paying rent so I now cut hair in a horsebox'
Is this the world's most unusual horsebox conversion? - Horse & Hound

Business name Pony Tails?

@Ambridge, I was wondering about that. I really can't understand why Chelsea isn't either whizzing around the country lanes on a moped with the tools of her trade in a big bag she carries in and out of her clients' houses or plying her trade in a salon in Borchester where she rents a chair, or whatever the terminology is.

When my children were tiny and I was a SAHM, we had a hairdresser who came to the house and trimmed the two little ones and me one after the other in the kitchen. It was a godsend at the time.

My Mum's hairdresser has a salon but as my Mum is now housebound the hairdresser comes to her every so often. Her chiropodist does the same.

Could not agree more. We get the odd scene at the Cattle Market. I suppose the Farm Supplies shop is somewhere outside Ambridge, but we've been given no sense of where it is in relation to the village.

Nelson's Winebar in the centre of Borchester was absolutely pivotal to The Archers in the 1980s. Nelson's antiques shop was another useful place for people to meet/work. Debbie and Simon Gerrard lived in Borchester. Mark Hebden set up his practice there and took Usha into partnership.

In fact, didn't we have occasional scenes at the hairdresser in Borchester favoured by older Archer women? Fabian's, or similar? I think Hilda the cat came from there for reasons I've blotted from my memory.

Fabrice.

That's it! Did we in fact hear from him once or twice? I doubt he was actually French.

He was always Febreze in my head.

I really do wonder what malady has so affected all the SWs / creative team that they’ve lost all imagination and just can’t place Ambridge in the wider world any more. Can they really just not be bothered?

I missed a lot of the Nelson’s wine bar and antique shop era as I was either out of the country or stupidly preoccupied with other things - but for as long as I can remember, the tension between villagers’ town and country lives (Phil being a magistrate IIRC; deals done in Ambridge Organics, Grundys banished to Meadow Rise, unethical academics taking advantage of students) all of that and more was what made the drama. Half the conversations in the village carried a subtext of wider pressures elsewhere. It gave things depth.

Sorry! I know all my keening and moaning won’t bring those days back.

With so many young bachelors in Ambridge, I would have thought that a least a couple of them would hang out in a wine bar on a Thursday night; failing that they would resurrect the Health Club at Grey Gables. Equally it is puzzling that Chelsea hasn't managed to get a job there. Grey Gables and Lower Loxley rarely get a mention these days.

In my quest to find something more substantial than a barbers operating out of a horsebox, google directed me to a hairdressers operating out of a bit of spare space alongside a coffee shop (within a larger building that was once a cinema). Having a small hairdresser on the same site as the charging station would have been a stroke of genius; I hope that Borchester Land considers it.

Presumably Chelsea would need another £3-£5k to fit out, stock and insure the horsebox and her business?

I think Lower Loxley could do with a hair salon. GoldiLox.

Mobile dog groomers are a pretty standard thing, and you need vastly more water to wash a cockerpoo than to wash a head of human hair. There's a water tank, and you can use a generator or hook up to the client's electricity. So no, the mobile salon thing isn't madness. What's madness is going over budget to buy a vehicle that is already fully kitted out for one purpose, and then ripping everything out and converting it for another purpose. Just buy a used van and start from there!

The Mane Event?
Hairdressers tend to be right up there with fish & chip shops for pun-y names.

I thought Mane Event and Mane Attraction were too obvious. Well Groomed?

Should I rein it in?

Hay, Good Looking!?
Probably too generic

Ponytails?

Already suggested.

Ah Im sorry I missed that!