Archers thread #198: Josh sent to Patagonia, Pip stays put. Wrong way round! Discuss The Archers here.

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Not feeling greatly enthused about what's going on in Ambridge at the moment, tbh. I'm annoyed at Brian's hypocrisy about Ruairi given the furore over George's attempt to frame Alice as the cause of the accident. I do hope we don't have a slow drip drip drip now as one after another the members of the Aldridge/Archer clan find out what really happened and endlessly agonise over what to do. Frankly I don't care. There! I've said it.

Pip's OK. Well, good, but what was the point of that story, I wonder?

I suspect I'm in a minority of one in rather enjoying hearing (a) from Bert Horobin and (b) about Fletcher. I surmise Bert is here to stay for a while because the BBC has (amazingly) updated his character page: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/profiles/1wQP3mKR6yr9LVs05jddxcY/bert-horrobin (prominent actor photo warning). Given how out of date a lot of the other character pages are, this seems odd, but there we are.

That's all I can be bothered to say! Over to you.

and deer.

The partners get an income from the farm, which will continue.

I don’t really understand the Home Farm economics either. Presumably the partners own the company.

The deer are probably only a small part of it.
I'd be disgusted if I saw good agricultural land being used to store caravans

The caravans are a terrible idea.

It’s problematic for listeners to attempt to understand the finances of any Ambridge business when the SWs do not collectively understand any of them.

And the actors seemingly don’t listen to the programme, so never say Wait, that doesn’t make sense …

Farm profit per acre in the UK varies widely by farm type, averaging roughly£104 per acre for arable farms, ...

I realise that, just that caravan storage is very much a “thing” at the moment.

Is that profit per year?

According to the internet search wotsit, yes.

If Brian were my dad, I'd be saying sell the land and give me few million £. Please daddy.

If Brian were my dad, I'd be saying move in with Miranda and get yourself to be the sole beneficiary in her will, and give me the land. Please daddy.

I was thinking solar fields would be an option. But caravans are just so much more of an eyesore.

Can somebody update me (better than the SW) as, by my reckoning Home Farm has:
No farmhouse (sore point, for now)
A shoot and Keepers Cottage
Some derelict polytunnels (last used for aquaponics, or another of Adam’s schemes)
Hard standing and facilities for soft fruit picker caravans
Acres of arable
Spiritual Home
The Nest

With Rewilding and Kate’s business so close, Brian should be looking to flip some agricultural buildings into barn conversions/holiday lets.

Last time they did that he was able to rely on Jenny for interior design and general oversight. Now he’d have to employ people for those roles.

(I’m not really clear on the commercial separation between Home Farm and Spiritual Home. Did they ever spell that out? Does Kate pay rent to Home Farm? Could Brian sell the land beneath her yurts?)

The house has been de-jennified by the Gills and probably needs a lot of interior design. Jennifer would have done it gradually.

It probably looks like something out of Footballer's Wives.
John Terry slashes half a million off £5.5m asking price for his luxury Surrey mansion | Daily Mail Online

Brian will probably die before Miranda, what with having the dreaded Y chromosome. It would be amusing if he became so fed up with the lot of them that he left the land to her.

Jenny's kitchen (which ended up on a skip when the Silent Gills moved in) always made me think of a family I used to know who had an absolutely fantastic house on in a terrace Richmond Green (Surrey, not Yorkshire). It was allegedly a sort of annexe to the Palace - who knows? But it was huge, 4-storeys, including a basement which was entirely taken up by a beautiful wooden kitchen and a family dining room.

Readers, she ripped out the kitchen and replaced it with a Wedgwood monstrosity. I can't find any photos online, but It Was Hideous and we were expected to admire it. But (and this was pre-Gills at Home Farm) some years later they sold the house and when I happened to go past it there was the entire kitchen sitting, in pieces, waiting to be taken to the tip.

see Gonners' pp - similar property.

(I thought 'I know where Gonners means')

It's been ages since I've been to Richmond. Must do something about that.

How much space are a few caravans going to take up really though - I’d say 1-4 acres max and you could cram loads on, esp if storage rather than sites. How may caravans can one person need to store - even as a business? Choose your land carefully and I think Brian has a very sensible plan (though cut out the middle man and just provide caravan storage yourself. Selfish to use land near spiritual home - it’s the only business related to the farm which would actually be negatively affected by it.

edited due to fat fingers and deteriorating eyesight

@RuairiDonovan It was this house. rightmove.co.uk/house-prices/details/a33e5759-1850-46d8-bc8f-4ac4b3af0de1

I've deleted the www. to stop it popping up automatically and cluttering up the thread. It's the one with the red door. Quite what happened between Jan 2020 and Nov 2021 to drop the price from £4.2m to £885k doesn't bear thinking about. Bankruptcy or subsidence? There is sadly no price record pre-2020.

One of the most memorable things about that house was that there were several very small, windowless, claustrophobic cupboards containing bidets.. Not in the bedrooms, but in hallways and (memorably) in the main reception room. The photos of that room really don't do it justice. It was ballroom-sized and took up pretty much the whole of the first floor.

This is exactly what I thought…

boggles

That kind of thing doesn't happen in Ambridge.

Though we did have the modern slavery story.

Split into flats? Or ground floor flat sold off?

Ha! I don't think that would be allowed. Also, unless they're using old photos the kitchen appears to be where it always was (in the basement at the back of the house, where there's proper light from the garden) and the smaller bedrooms are on the top floor with the dormer windows.

Bankruptcy sale, maybe? Or some sort of internal family tax avoidance arrangement. 😉

Maybe. But he's late 40s/50s, financially solvent (we assume), he might like the idea of a Myson or daughter in England that he supports and sees occasionally but doesn't have to change his peripatetic life for. Although Kirsty not being able to fly out for a booty call so frequently might create a vacancy.

I don’t like Erik at all. I would say Kirsty could do better but, left to her own devices, she hasn’t managed that so far. She has appalling judgement when it comes to men. And female friends. She’s just too trusting. Some might say dopey…