Archers thread #201: Tempting fête in Ambridge? Free entry to 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'd love to administer Bert's mucus medicine, 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/5538836-the-archers-spoilers-thread-12-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.)

There's a fair amount of stuff going on at the moment but I don't feel inspired to say anything more about any of it for now. Over to you - I hope you all have more enthusiasm than I do!

Jolene was awful. Fallon is definitely doing the right thing there.

Well um… I’m not going to get involved in any squabbles about getting married in the 70s as I was still a twinkle in my mother’s eye at that point. But that same mother made sure I knew that there was all sorts of legal bollocks mostly long forgotten that she had to contend with.

Getting a mortgage for example, she would have needed her father to apply for a mortgage for/with her until she was nearly 30 when the law changed in 1975. Given he was a grade A shit that wasn’t on the cards for her so she just had to wait.

A bit earlier on she’d been unable to get a passport for the same reason, fathers had so much more control then.

Sorry @Nos4r2 if you’re still reading - didn’t mean to sound like we thought you were lying at all. I just wondered why you would have required paternal signature at that age and in that year.

Yes Jolene changed rather quickly from “supportive” didn’t she?

Belive what you like as obviously you think Im a liar so as far as im concerned you can think what you like and be as smug as you want. Miss know all. For the last time goodbye nasty mumsnet.

Blimey, that escalated. But hey ho, whatever, bye! 👋

Did I dream it, or did they fairly recently raise the minimum age for marriage from 16 to 18? I'm far too lazy to look it up because it makes zero difference to me. I do remember, though, going to visit my parents in Cyprus to celebrate my 21st and someone at an army party asking me what I wanted to drink. When I said that a gin and tonic would be great, he went over to my dad and asked if that was okay. My dad laughed and said "She's 21 - she can have whatever she likes!" I have a much younger sister who was 13 at the time and it turned out that my mother had been telling people I was 16 and home from boarding school for the summer holiday. I assume the bonkers motivation for this was to make herself seem younger?

And the Theo character was very nice looking, but in my head Harrison is quite ordinary!!

Lottie sounds as though she listened to Pip on the wireless and thought "wow! What an amazing radio actress she is - I'm going to emulate her if I ever get my big break!"

Poor Martha, looks as if she might end up not seeing so much (if at all) of her brand new friend Maddie. Chris is an idiot.

Whilst I agree that Chris is an idiot, I did think the 'When you know, you know' from Lottie was deliberately heavy handed. I can understand why Chris might have thought she meant their relationship, particularly when he's ruffled about Alice moving Rex in - but clearly she was referring to Alice and Rex, not Chris.

That is your interpretation.

In reality people have expressed surprise because even before that time other people didn't have that. And as we know at that time the universal age of majority was 18. (UK wide? Certainly in England)

It is the same all over mumsnet tho, you are right, anything other than 109% gushing agreement is seen by many as "an attack". I find it quite baffling, tbh.

Jolene sounded positively menacing!

Lottie was /is Rosie’s friend, wasn’t she? Are they Y1 and Martha Reception?

The effect of the current drought on farming is being discussed on R4 Today right now. One farmer from Berkshire, one from the Midlands.

Alice and Chris both need a good talking to about the rate of change in poor wee Martha's life right now.

On reflection about last night I'm wondering if Lottie was supposed to be in contrast to Alice? Alice has a let's talk and get it out in the open attitude, even if it's a bit embarrassing. Where as Lottie was portrayed as basically running off to hide in the kitchen to get away from the untimeliness of the suggestion. I feel Alice would have said something about it not being the right time, she valued here independence, didn't want to upset DC etc etc rather than ignoring it.

Agree! Poor kid!

I thought The Nest (is that where Alice lives?) only had one bedroom. Or did I make that up?

How close is it to the house Chris rents to Jacob?

As it was originally a holiday cottage I’d be surprised if it didn’t have two bedrooms. And presumably Alice and Martha currently occupy one each?

I always imagine the holiday cottages as being scattered across Home Farm land, but iirc they’re actually next door to each other.

Think I opined somewhere that if it had been Grundys, Social Services might have been invited to form an opinion on the number of places the poor child has been forced to live. I don’t know if the SWs have deliberately set up this peripatetic lifestyle as the basis for later mental health issues - or whether, in their eagerness to keep Chris interesting, they just haven’t noticed that he has a child who must really struggle to give her home address when asked.

It’s all so odd. So many parents in England are homeless and forced to go wherever they’re sent. But Chris owns a house. And instead of living in it and giving Martha a stable home, the SWs have him renting it out while he junkets around the village with a rucksack on one shoulder and his daughter dragging behind. It’s incredibly hard to believe.

When Amy decided that Usha was evil for having known before she did that Amy's boyfriend was married, she went to stay with Chris and Alice (much to Chris's distaste) and seemed to be occupying their living room and being a great nuisance as a result. It was strange to me at the time that they only had one bedroom, but that was presumably what the script required.

The three "Rookeries" (as they were called when they were turned into holiday cottages by Jennifer: there was no nonsense about Kate having called hers "The Hobbit" until 2022) were originally farm labourers' cottages, and it seems to me likely they'd have had more than one bedroom; or were farm labourers not allowed to have families under the Ambridge feudal system? Two were next to each other (the ones occupied by Alice and Jakob, previously by Kate) and the third was away off on its own somewhere. I have no idea who is living in the third one at the moment, and I have a feeling that the editorial team may have forgotten about it. I never really understood why Brian and Jennifer didn't simply go and live in it rather than renting anywhere, and I definitely don't know why Brian didn't move into it after Jennifer died rather than renting yet again.

Chris doesn't date 5-year olds.

Martha is 5, Fat Rosie and Maddie are 8, I think, and Lottie is the same age as Pip, 33.

Excellent detail as ever, @AskingQuestionsAllTheTime! I stayed in an Air BnB recently which was a 2-bedroom flat in a tenement building in Edinburgh. Apparently the flats were originally for retail workers at the local Co-op and most of them were built with one bedroom. One on each floor had two bedrooms and were allocated to managers and supervisors. Possibly the workers below that grade were expected to be single or to be childless couples. I also find it very hard to believe that purpose-built labourers' cottages would just have one bedroom but I suppose if I wanted to be charitable we could surmise that the second bedroom had been converted into a bathroom or other changes had been made to the configuration of rooms. There can't be a huge demand for one-bedroom holiday cottages, though, surely?

I suppose single people may want to take a break in the country just like families; in fact, maybe more because with no child or spouse needing entertaining they might feel they didn't need swimming-pools and night-clubs to make them happy. But I would have thought there were fewer of them than families.

I can't remember who asked but New law raises minimum marriage age to 18 in England and Wales - BBC News

@Nos4r2 , I don't think that anyone is accusing you of lying. I too find it hard to believe that you needed your father's permission to marry in the 1970s if you were under the age of 23. There doesn't appear to be anything to support your claim, unless your father's consent was a witness not as a parent.
It might have been a whim of the registrar's.

@Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g , workers' houses traditionally only had one bedroom. I was watching a programme on terraced houses the other evening. The ones they had on had the kitchen downstairs and that's where people cooked food, ate and sat, (and bathed,) and upstairs there was the bedroom.
The lavatories would have been shared with the rest of the terrace.

@Nos4r2 , I tried to help an OP who seemed to have a similar problem to one I'd had, and kind and knowledgeable MNers had pointed me clearly to the answer, saving me worry and possible legal fees etc.
I drew a diagram, dug out a legal document etc. explaining that I could only go by my experience but that if something then the problem could be resolved.

The OP told me to F off and some other choice stuff.
The thread has not been updated.

My house is nearly 200 years old, it's three single storey cottages that have been now knocked into one. Each cottage had two rooms, one of which had a fireplace. It was for workers in the nearby farm and quarry. And the rooms aren't very big.

Of course, thank you!