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

[Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g]

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 Given how out of date a lot of the other character pages are, this seems odd, but there we are.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

Admired Miranda… The Tempest.

Poor Debbie having to put up with Adam’s whining for god knows how long. Should I ring her and warn her?

And now we have the social downgrading of the Very Wealthy Miranda too! (The one who provided the dosh for Oligarch Justin Elliot to make a success of his business, remember?)

First we heard she was in a house purchase chain.

Then that she was ‘packing up’ her previous home. There was no indication that she had employed professional packers - as someone of her financial status clearly would have done.

Now we hear that, despite having employed an interior designer, she has moved into an un-refurbished house still bearing the imprint of the anonymous Gills.

And then Helen suggesting she could rent out Home Farm house to provide the income to live somewhere else!

Jesus Christ, can these SWs not get anything right? 😡

Didn’t I say that within weeks she’ll be clearing dirty plates in The Bull alongside Mrs Lilian Bellamy?

I've never known a Miranda either.

I know 2 Mirandas.

And then Helen suggesting she could rent out Home Farm house to provide the income to live somewhere else! It was Alice who suggested it, @TottersBlankly .

I really fancied Miranda as a name for one of our DDs but DH wasn't keen.

It was! But my point still applies.

I knew someone called Miranda. All you had to do to get things thrown at you was to say "do you remember an inn?"

She was also liable to break things by flinging if asked whether she had a fish-tail. Not everyone remembers the film "Miranda the Mermaid", but she certainly had no choice about knowing it existed.

Oh, and "O brave new world that has such people in it" was likely to lead to blasphemy from her.

I suppose having a name that is out of the ordinary leads everyone you meet to think they are the very first person in your life who could have made a connection with something they read once. A bit like anyone who owns a Dalmatian dog having heard every possible variation on "spotted dick" and "damnation carriage dog" more often than anyone needs to by the time they have had that dog for a year.

I thought your point was that Helen had been tactless, @TottersBlankly .

@AskingQuestionsAllTheTime , It doesn't even need to be unusual but unusual is probably worse.
Camilla and Miranda got 'Oh' in a 'far back' accent.

Erm, no. I was making a (possibly laboured and clearly incomprehensible!) point about the SWs either not understanding or retconning who Miranda is and how she lives.

The character we were first introduced to has enough money to never find herself in a chain situation. She would never do her own packing. She would have had Home Farm house completely refurbished before she moved in. She would not need rental income from it if she decided to live somewhere else.

Once again, some new regime at the Mailbox has decided to expunge all visible differences between financial classes. Which - as I have said repeatedly - renders TA pointless, as the whole driver of its drama is have and have not, and how residents move between the two. Generally through proximity to Archers.

Prospero’s daughter (The Tempest). I was at Uni with a Miranda (unsurprisingly her dad was a headmaster). I was surprised to encounter a young Harrison last year (but it could well be a popular name with millenials).

I wonder if we'll have the rare treat of a conversation including Debbie?

You mean she might come back in order to be nasty to Brian as usual? It seems possible, but on that case why does Adam need to go all the way to Hungary to see her?

I've known a couple of children called Harrison.

@TottersBlankly ,it's completely normal for a divorcee in her 70s to sell her beautiful cottage to buy the vast farmhouse that her 82 year old boyfriend and late wife used to own, solely for the purpose of him moving in with her.
Isn't it?

I also find that the thought of Helen moving to a former council house completely believable when she turned up her nose at the executive home.

An old council house built to Parker Morris measurements with a decent sized garden so the family can grow their own veg could be better than the new exec house.

I don't dispute that for a minute but ...

Helen wouldn't care about that. This place she's buying is a stopgap before she gets hold of the farmhouse( wishing her parents away). But despite that it would still have to come up to her standards, there's no way in reality that she would buy ex-council, let alone next door to Tracy, Jazzer et al, it would be beneath her.

Maybe maybe maybe she’s desperate having shared with tom’n’tash for so long… but who knows - certainly not us!!

I had one of those, bought from the family who’d lived in it since it was built in 1947. The first time my mother saw it (in an admittedly awful state) she said “you’ve managed to climb right back down to the bottom of the property ladder!” I renovated and four years later she bought it off me 😂

There's a Miranda who's a likeable character in the Antonia Forest Kingscote books.

One of my children had a classmate called Harrison who would be in his early 30s now. I know a Miranda who is in her 60s.

I agree with you in general, Totters, especially about the interior decorator, but I can cut the SWs a little slack and assume that when Miranda was described as 'packing for the move' or whatever it was they didn't mean she was frenziedly wrapping china in newspaper and shoving it into old boxes from the Co-op. She would undoubtedly have paid for packing (money well spent), but moving must be stressful even when you have the cash to pay others to do everything involved in a move.

Corrections:

,it's completely normal for a divorcee in her 70s to sell her beautiful cottage to buy the vast farmhouse that her 82 year old boyfriend and his late wife used to own, solely for the purpose of him moving in with her.
Isn't it?
I also find that the thought of Helen moving to a former council house completely unbelievable when she turned up her nose at the executive home.

Was it significant that Erik was unavailable and was dashing off to a meeting? Is he coming to Ambridge to dump Kursedy?

Yay, yay, frabjous day!!!!!

Debbie!