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

[Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g]

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 also confide only in your budgie, 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/5457344-the-archers-spoilers-thread-11-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.)

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 Given how out of date a lot of the other character pages are, this seems odd, but there we are.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.

I wasn't listening at the time Adam did that but it sounds reminiscent of Father Ted having some money "resting" in his account.

I think he did always intend to pay it back, but he never asked anyone or got their agreement, which is what made it bad. If he'd gone for a formal arrangement- Brian might have said no, but the others would probably have agreed, but also, if anyone did an audit, they would know what was going on, rather than just having a mysterious hole in the accounts.

That's how I remember it. It was a ridiculously implausible thing for Adam to do, but heigh ho, we're stuck with it now, along with all the other stupid things the SWs have made various people do over the years.

Decades ago a colleague and I spent a fortnight at the site of a small business auditing the accounts. Eventually she got the petty cash book and float and set to work to try to reconcile them. She kept coming up with a huge discrepancy (in the thousands, I think - they had a lot of cash sales) so went off to see the bookkeeper, who we'd been going to many times a day all through the audit with various queries. A long time later she returned looking very shaken. She'd explained she couldn't get the petty cash to balance, expecting to be told something like there was more cash in another safe, but instead he started blurting out that he'd only intended to borrow the money for a short time, but he'd not been able to pay it back before we arrived. Excruciating. Of course she had to report this to his superiors and our manager. I don't know what happened next. Many businesses in these circumstances don't report to the police, just sack without giving a reference, which must be awful. Adam was lucky to be family and sacked with a reference and no risk of prosecution.

Yes, I was.

Brian didn't even sack him: Adam flounced out because Brian refused to apologise to him for having been angry about the theft. He made it very clear that he resented Brian's attitude about being stolen from.

He claimed he had only borrowed the five thousand pounds, but he also stated to Lee (who was shocked by his dishonest behaviour) that he would return it when he felt like doing so and not because Brian said he must. Then he didn't return it for a while, and expected Brian to be grovellingly grateful when he finally did get round to it.

This was all the worse because when he first started to whinge about having to rewire Honeysuckle Cottage for the second time in six years (it had to be completely rewired after the flood in 2015, which was why Adam and Ian lived in the Grey Gables service flat for months), Brian instantly offered to lend him the money he needed, and Adam turned the offer down in a thoroughly insulted and insulting way. So he presumably thought it better to steal from Home Farm than to borrow from Brian.

The other thing that made it a great deal worse was that Adam took the money while Alice was working for Home Farm, and when Brian first realised it was missing he thought for several days that Alice had taken it, which was absolutely horrible for him, It wasn't until he voiced that suspicion to Adam that Adam got round to saying "oh, no, it wasn't actually Alice, it was me" – and was then surprised and angry when Brian blew up at him about it.

No: she also temps as the stand-in Idiot when nearby villages are short handed.

"Me and Kirsty..." I can't imagine Rex saying that.

Well, well, well … We’d guessed about Den and Sophe on the Spoilers thread, but still!

Wonder how Brad will feel about not being told until it’s done. Tracy obviously can’t justifiably feel upset as she re-married ages ago.

Sophie sounds a bit of a tyrant. Although maybe that’s just a consequence of her choice of bridegroom.