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!

So did my Dad. I still don't think 15 year olds are little children to be protected from the realities of life.

And Ruth’s action got exactly the reaction she needed, it shook Khalil out of his denial.

Akram grew up on a farm in Pakistan FGS I’m sure he’d seen some livestock bloodbaths well before he was 15.

I remember seeing mauled sheep pics on fenceposts all over Scotland when I was a kid.

Ask any fifteen-year-old if he or she wants to be treated as a child and protected from every wind that blows, and then hold onto your hat while the adolescent tells you exactly what he or she thinks of that idea.

@UhOhRatPoo , good point but Akram's family's farm was a caring one for improving peace, harmony and mental-wellness not for producing food.
Agriculture in Pakistan - Wikipedia

Due to budget constraints at our school we had to share a rat between three. The worst bit was hammering the nails through its paws to attach it to the wooden board. I don’t suppose they do that now. I seem to remember my rat had a lot of fat round its kidneys.

Surely Azra and Akram would have been sent packing by any farmer in D and R’s position. Khalil’s ‘trauma’ is absurd.

Akram, the likely 6 foot+ delicate little flower of a teenager, will have been watching goodness knows what on Tik Tok, ever since he was stuck at home for months during the covid lockdowns. He'll be able to leave home and marry next year!

If he were my child, I'd have dragged him back round to Brookfield to apologise for his appalling behaviour (after I'd quizzed him to find out whether anything he had done contributed to this sorry affair).

This implausible storyline has been dragging on for weeks

Fortunately no sheep involved but the trending posts has this one that caught my eye: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5568907-airbnb-guest-let-her-dogs-loose-in-my-garden

A level zoology in the 80s had us dissecting a rat, a dogfish, a worm, which we "foraged" in our gardens for and then dropped in boiling water at school to dispatch it, an eye (maybe ox?) and a large beetle (some big cockroach I think).
We knew we'd have either a rat or a dogfish for exams.
DH said that they had a rat with various labels to identify the organs and one of his pals was quite smug that he'd used up all his labels unlike the others.
Two of the labels were "Ovary" and "Testis".

He was ahead of his time.

I don't think we dissected any whole creature in Ireland. Maybe a frog was used for demonstration. Maybe a fish?

Anyway, this nonsense about Khalil is putting me right off the Maliks.

When did butcher's shops stop having whole carcasses hung up behind the counter?

@JoelenesParrot , That's why I'm a vegetarian. The fat rat had what looked like lumps of lard in it.

Surely Azra and Akram would have been sent packing by any farmer in D and R’s position. Khalil’s ‘trauma’ is absurd. I agree.

If I were Ruth I would be wondering whether there was any recourse via the surgery manager and GMC.

Ruth is vile and vindictive so she might just do that.

She's neither.

When did butcher's shops stop having whole carcasses hung up behind the counter?

Probably when people (and regulations) started caring more about refrigeration and food safety.

I never did dissection at school, but we had cats, so... Also we had a whole pig at one point - some stolen pigs were recovered, and we no longer had pigs, so we could keep them until they were butchered. And we got all the most and offal.

At various points in high school we did a giant African grasshopper, a rat, a cow's eye, a sheep's brain, and the famous foetal pig. I took biology all the way through. I think maybe we did a worm, too.

Did Diane not sound like Ambers Mum

she was a real pain in the butside

Meant to add I love Lynda

Well done Lynda for kicking her out although she will leave a horrible TripAdvisor review.

Who complains about their breakfast being too hot? Surely you want it to arrive piping hot. Lukewarm breakfast would be disgusting.

I waitressed in an Italian restaurant as a teenager; I can remember two separate occasions when customers sent food back because it was too hot. We were baffled and amused.

Go Lynda!!

I wondered if Diane could be a journalist and got a sniff of a story from gossip in The Bull.
Perhaps the ridiculously critical behaviour was to wind R&L up so they'd blurt out some juicy quotes.
Lynda handled it beautifully.

"My husband's tea was cold, my baked beans were too hot and the hosts' dog savaged some sheep. I was not allowed to persist in bothering them for all the gory details when they were trying to serve breakfast to other guests."

Do B&Bs get the right of reply on TripAdvisor?

Ridiculously written scene

Absolute nonsense. Do people actually get paid for writing this drivel?

We cut up cows' eyes in the junior years of Biology, possibly 8 or 9. I remember a girl who lived on the same street as an abattoir bringing in a big plastic bag of eyes - presumably at the school's request.
It was really hard work cutting them as the scissors were all blunt.

I agree the B&B scene was silly, but Lynda's intervention was sublime.

Who's looking forward to George working for Dad of Amber?

No-one?