Archers thread #202: How are you finding your visits to Ambridge? Fill in your feedback forms 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 think working as a hotel receptionist is a perfectly reasonable career choice for a graduate from a family with a stately home, 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/4636789-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.)

Over to you!

nearly £800k in our village. Very typical 2/3 bed semi detached flint cottage witch kitchen extension. Beautifully decorated and home office over the single garage. Cottage garden. Pub (not that great, esp for the area) garden wraps round the ride and back. We are a bit closer to London though.

@Nopasswordresetemailsent , I looked on Rightmove within 10 miles of Worcester at 2-bed detached.
Is the witch extension a plus?

I laughed out loud tonight when Joy revealed that she had yet another area of expertise (jewellery mending).

Complete with state-of-the-art cauldron.

Complete with state-of-the-art cauldron.
Must be Glebe Cottage?

I laughed out loud tonight when Joy revealed that she had yet another area of expertise (jewellery mending).
She's probably made millions working as a merchant banker too.

I can see why Carol was upset over the watch. The rest of her attitude is horrible though and Anna should leave her be for a while.

Jolene is behaving like a toddler pirate. Harrison is too nice, I hope him and Lily have many babies and parade them round The Bull.

Joy 😴

The SW are deliberately making her character ridiculous.

So when is Wonder Woman supposed to have done her training as a jeweller? Was it before or after she learned how to be a chef and run a restaurant, trained as a mental health counsellor, and acquired her other talents which I can't remember? I expect she'll shortly be running the b&b as well as a couple of farms.

Yes, I too laughed out loud when her previously hidden but convenient talent was revealed!

Nice is not a word that comes to mind when thinking of Harrison.

It's cruel to condemn the 26 year old Lily to a life of being the brood mare for the dullest middle aged PC in the Midlands.

Dullest Sergeant! She should run for the hills after he heavily hinted things could be serious between them so soon.

Oh I do love 🔮

So mote it be.

Nice is not a word that comes to mind when thinking of Harrison.
He's got something creepy about him.

Lily's horrible and deserves what she'll get.

So did I.

Same here - I said Yeah, right!

Elizabeth is going to absolutely lose her mind over Lils and Harrison isn't she. He is not son-in-law material for this lady of the manor.

Next she’ll be telling us about having slept with John Prescott, half of Goldie Looking Chain and working for Mohamed Al Fayed.

Taking a piece of jewellery to be fixed by Tony and Leonard is pretty laughable. To then find out it has been handed over to the highly-qualified and multi-talented Joy is a bridge too far. This whole repair shop idea seems very ill-thought-through. Would you really take your precious brooch to be mended by Tony in his workshop rather than to a jeweller in Felpersham? And is it really wise to run such a service with no insurance? I can imagine Tony has a pencil and a ticket book like you get at the dry cleaners that he uses when people drop things off. They are then given chit and told to come back on, say Thursday. All very relaxed and pretty informal but how does that work when a valuable piece of jewellery goes missing…Hmmm…Bad plan if you ask me. I wonder if Dom has the same issues….

'Vera' Horville would find it.

Let’s not forget her own dalliance with Roy of the Rotas. I do feel a bit sorry for Harrison who seems to be getting the blame from all sides and is generally assumed to be the instigator when in fact it was Lily who made a move on him, but it’s his own fault for blurting everything out to Fallon.

It takes two to tango.

There are loads of busy repair shops around, so obviously people are happy to take their wordly goods to be replied by Tony/Leonard equivalents. I think they normally run on the basis of asking people to make a voluntary donation to cover running costs with any surplus going to charity. So if a T and L have set up anything like that, presumably donations could cover insurance costs.

i don't know - i agree with PP that Fallon was both reasonable and unreasonable to be angry - yes she turned him down but she's right to question the sincerity of his attempt at reconciliation (and whether he was angling at Lily all along before they separated).
i can well understand her lashing out.

i can also understand wanting him to feel the awkwardness of telling Jolene (and wanting to be able to discuss it with Jolene).

really enjoying the writing this week!

Jolene is giving me the creeps. She's sounding like the wronged woman. Wanting to cut up his shirts. Fallon did at least bring up the fact that Woodbine is a joint property and Harrison is paying the majority if the bills.

Come on, Harrison, lawyer up and get the estate agent in for a valuation.

Yes Joy can do and has done everything.
I wonder if she has also trained as an astronaut, as the sw have made her skills so unbelievable.
Jolene and Fallon are really boiling my kettle at the moment. Jolene acting as the wronged wife and Fallon living in a home paid for by husband she doesn't want, but doesn't want any one else to have. Also this shitty little job she has got is paying her a pittance,Why?. How much does she expect to be payed when everything is up and running in January?
I bet Elizabeth will not want to pay her very much at all.
Harrison needs to sort the house out, stop feeling guilty and get what he is entitled to. If that means Fallon out on her ear then so be it.
How hard working is Fallon if her new job is hardly part time.
Carol was horrible to my lovely Leonard but he should have asked about fixing the watch first. He has gone fixing stuff crazy!.

Elizabeth is an absolute piece of work paying Fallon a basic retainer and then, what, bonuses based on attendance? And Fallon is really moronic to leave a long-standing/presumably well-paid job for that, in the middle of a break-up - has she never heard that divorces are expensive? Even if amicable she needs somewhere to live. This job could take a decade to pay her anything worth her while and the SWs will probably have moved her on by then.

I’m finding it very difficult to maintain any true sympathy for Carol - cognitively I understand her position but she’s really not very likeable. I wonder if the ‘frail/dependent elderly’ storyline actually would have been better with Jim - Alistair could have found himself unable to move in/out with Denise (are they still together? Who knows) and that relationship and Jim in particular is much more familiar to us as listeners (and more realistic than him going interrailing). Maybe the actor himself want to for another big storyline though. It’s such a long time since we’ve heard Carol (and tbh she was quite weird and annoying in her Eleanor Bron iteration, I thought) that every time she’s rude to someone I just find myself hoping she’ll die soon and put us all out of our misery.

<public service announcement because I’m a GP - this is not how I feel about my patients, most of whom I’ve known a lot longer and better than Carol, and obviously I have a different relationship with them>

Agree that the watch-mending mistake was obvious to anyone who gave it a second’s thought, and Joy being a master jeweller must be a joke from the SWs. Love the idea of her being the Archers’ answer to Nessa!