Aldridges Assemble! Await the return of the prodigal daughter to Ambridge with the rest of The Archers audience

[PseudoBadger]

I can't resist alliteration

Debbie is a right little stirrer. Is she getting at Brian? - a case of revenge best served very cold.
It's a shame that she seems to have had a scene with everyone except JD, who was the one most looking forward to her visit.
She seems to have caught Aliceitis: she can take extra days off work and no-one will mind.

I'm sure they are shoehorning it in retrospectively - they can hardly have failed to hear the cries of listener outrage at the ease with which her African family were sloughed off.

However - had I been Kate I wouldn't exactly be broadcasting my DH's extra-marital shenanigans. Even if I were equally guilty.

They do all seem to have raised their game for Ms Greig's appearance, as nigelslaterfan suggested. SW and actors - so Kate does sound different and its a bit of a shock.

But I'm sticking with my BOOPs.

And I forgot this week's compare and contrast:
"I could do so much better if only the family believed in me, my dreams and plans. They are stuck in a timewarp and, for some unfathomable reason, won't treat me like the grownup I am," said Adam, Kate and Kenton.

If it was true, she would have said so at the start after Phoebe divulged that Nolly had spilled the beans about Kate's affair - there's not a chance that Kate would have failed to dob Lucas in if he'd been putting it about first.

So she's making it up retrospectively, I reckon

Phoebe will find out

I was quite pleased in yesterday's that Alice had only taken half a day off and had to get back to work.

I love Debbie. It struck me that unlike most of the people in Ambridge she actually has a sense of humour. She takes the piss, it's brilliant. And yet can be really moving, like when she was straight-talking Kate about appreciating her kids.

Was Kate's original justification for her affair not pretty much I tried to make a go of it but I was bored? (Teenager)

She did say she had to leave her kids because L threw her out and turned them against her so perhaps Nolly does only have one side of the story.

But I could quite believe that in Kate's head the story of what happened has grown arms and legs and turned into its not my fault. Like pretty much everything else she does. She's not big on mea culpa.

I'm sure she mentioned at the beginning that neither had been properly committed to the marriage after the affair that phoebe discovered.

She never mentioned her affair until phoebe did. Maybe she had an attack of conscience about the whole thing.

I preferred seeing Kate behaving like a human being rather than a caricature

Me too BYOS. Often family and friends being kind can actually help people be less twattish where yelling at them hasn't IMO.

Are the continuity announcers MNetters. Last night I was listening to a podcast about Letter from America. The announcer saiid it was trip through nostalgia,

A bit like The Archers with out the annoyance of Pip????

BYOS, I know it wasn't mentioned until Phoebe brought it up, but once it was out in the open, it's literally unbelievable that if Lucas had really had several affairs, Kate wouldn't have said so on the spot!

"Well Lucas had several affairs himself but he didn't tell Nolly about those, did he? It's not fair! It's not my fault!"

It was implied though as she did say they had both behaved badly

Maybe she realised that throwing Lucas cheating would not help in the argument with phoebe

Realising that not saying something might help in her dealings with Phoebe?

First & only time

Oh, come on, this is the woman who could see nothing wrong in moaning at her daughter for putting her AS level revision ahead of keeping her mother company on a pointless shopping trip. It's also the woman who has been endlessly bitching about Roy's activities to Phoebe whilst forgetting to acknowledge that her own are nothing to be proud of. Is that really the sort of woman who would be so self aware as to hold back about Lucas' alleged adultery if it would help to put her in a better light?

Oh god Pip's got good news! Please don't tell me she's staying

I've got a horrible feeling that now that Tobes has said he doesn't want her to go the silly bat will cancel everything.

She will not go because she will be upduffed by Toxic Tubby. Who will then do a runner

History repeating itself etc

Eventually, she will come to realise she lurves good old Reliable Rex and he lurves her and always has. They will settle down together and, in the fullness of time, take over Brokefailed.

I got the impression that Kate had suspiciouns but no proof? And that makes more sense. Kate is a dick, but that doesn't mean she should be a 2D character. It's much better to have her with reasonable motivations.

I have no problem with reasonable motivations, but I would like them also to be reasonably probable and consistent with previous storylines. Suddenly shoehorning in a major motivation that has never previously been mentioned doesn't come anywhere near achieving that.

Surely the most gaping hole in the plot at the moment is the apparent lack of washing machine Chez HeatherPet.... I get that Ruth has been busy looking at care homes and visiting the hospital but surely she could have stuck a load of washing on in an evening when she got in?

Arf, that's true. When you are staying in someone else's house there's not a lot to do, especially when there is only the one of you. She has probably done the full range of cleaning cupboards and chucking out-of-date spices. Ruth has plenty of time of an evening to do her washing - at this stage she should be so bored that she is reduced to ironing her underwear!

Ruth does not strike me as the sort of person to go through HP's cupboards and throw out old stuff. I think this storyline's a load of guff too. Ruth is not sentimental - she's a farmer. I've never met a farmer who doesn't deal with old people getting frail and needing more care than can reasonably be provided in their own home with a brisk practicality that at times verges on the brusque. Or perhaps that's just the ones I know!

Please Pip, go to Brazil. I hate your voice so much it makes me clench my teeth

Also I imagine Ruth is the sort of woman who buys her day to day clothes in bulk. 5 long sleeve black tops, 2 pairs of sensible trousers, and a wide array of fleeces, all worn interchangeably.

That's true, oddfodd. All the farmers I know have either kept parents at home until they die, or popped them in a home, no nonsense.

Tbf, David was saying something similar the other day: it's a rotten situation but man up and for goodness sake come to some sort of decision.