Badly done Helen, badly done - you're as stuffed as a Grundy turkey. Discuss The Archers here.

[PseudoBadger]

New thread in time for Friday's episode...

They've always had fun with the Rob and Helen music, I think! We'll know they're signposting too much when Rob's playing 'Every Breath You Take' as he cooks her up some tannis root in a few weeks' time.

And yes - the constant mithering over food at Ruth and David's is silly.

And also, Rob is clearly going to make sure Helen has no more chats with Kirsty. He will keep emphasising to H that she's gone all fragile and loopy since she spoke to her friend, how Kirsty left the shop in a mess, what a nutjob Kirsty is, how bitter, etc.

He will bump into Kirsty out and about while H is at home under virtual lock and key and tell her that Helen is being too polite to say that she'd really rather not see her any more, or cancel some pre-existing arrangement between them. Hellon has far too much on her plate, and has been overdoing it, trying to be superwoman, trying to 'have it all' by this crazy timetable of putting her feet up, occasionally taking her son to school, thinking about cheese, and sometimes talking to people other than him.

I do hope he falls into a culvert or something soon.

So agree, Gruntled - I know Ambridge is rural but one of the supermarkets must do home deliveries. Or one of them could just walk away from the milk yield spreadsheets for an hour and go to bloody Tesco!

Rob's motivation is control, pure and simple. He wants to control Helen and Henry and have things exactly the way he wants them. He's also a misogynist. He wasn't "impressed" by Helen when he first met her, he just thought of her as a slightly more difficult challenge to conquer.

He didn't lose Jess though. He was bored of her and replaced her. Although we don't know for certain why he decided he'd had enough of her

I I bet they could get a pack of pasta, jar of sauce, loaf of bread and some baked beans in the village shop for less than they spent in the bull and two meals sorted

Also, lento must be making bag fortune out of all these lazy buggers! Have we actually found out who is cooking these wonderful meals?

The nearest small supermarket from here is 20 mins away, larger ones are 40 mins away. DH needs constant care and going round with a trolley attached to a wheelchair is hard work so I now do an online order to one of 4 supermarkets that deliver to this remote hamlet.
I have managed to maintain a full freezer and larder for the past 6 months, cook varied meals and keep the house in good order whilst running a business and keeping up with his daily therapy.
The general fecklessness at Brookfield is really annoying me, as is the sws' lack of knowledge of rural living.

Enoch - your big mistake is not finding yourself an octogenarian to do the household chores. It's the obvious solution!!

The sw don't really live in the real world. I always wonder how David and Ruth managed to raise three children without any of them starving to death or being taken away by ss for being so grubby

I was hissing don't they know HOW to do an online shop at the radio yesterday? Utterly ridiculous.

Returning to Rob (again) - he is also ferociously competitive. He has to be the best at everything, and I think a part of this is his need for everyone to love/admire him more than they love/admire Helen.

Henry and hunting. I would imagine what Rob's done is get some young groom (probably female - most grooms seem to be) to lead Henry, having thrown out hints about how unreasonable/ill/useless his wife is. Or perhaps that she's anti hunt, which of course neither he nor the groom are, thereby neatly positioning his next victim by making her feel she's rescuing this poor man from his terrible situation.

Still do wonder how on earth he's funding all this.

And I wish the storyline would switch back to Charlie. I like Charlie. I miss him.

Me too, too. I hope we get some Charlie action this week.

Very disturbing to hear H starting to believe the narrative Rob's created for her: he's over-protective; I am tired etc etc

I lack an octogenarian unfortunately!

I can't imagine how Ruth would have coped with HP's care if neither she nor anyone else at Brookfield can run a 'normal' household.

Also, my DD is just a few months older than Pip. Whenever she comes home from uni she takes over the cooking and can do far, far more than a tuna bake. She's discovered a hitherto undetected talent for tidying up after herself too since her Dad's stroke.
Ruth has three offspring in the house yet it seems none of them lifts a finger.

Yes that's what makes the whole sl so ludicrous. HP had a lucky escape as she probably wouldn't have been fed!

The food stuff with david and ruth is just stupid. Perhaps Pip could spend less time using her amazing business acumen and just go to sainsburys with a list.

I have a feeling HP would have been doing all the work with Ruth drinking a cuppa (made by HP) and saying 'aw, mam, I feel I've let you down. I feel so guilty but I just don't know what to do anymore'

I still haven't fully grasped the significance of the Knob/Jess conclusion. Jess had given Hellin some veiled warning about not knowing what she was getting herself into, we had the whole salmon incident at the party - possible hints that Knob had done this before. Then lots of furtive phone calls and sneaking off to see her, then the pregnancy. Knob claimed Jess was a mad vengeful woman, we thought we knew better, then the whole paternity test debacle which resulted in Knob being proved right and Jess being presented as a mad vengeful woman. Were we supposed to conclude that Knob's treatment of her had unhinged her and that this is what lies in wait for Hellin? Or is it that he, having been married to such an unreasonable person, has become controlling to avoid the same thing happening again? To my mind it would have been more logical for him to have been the father of her baby or to have just left that out of the plot entirely. Perhaps the SW changed their mind halfway through and decided it would be too complicated to shackle him to Jess. Either way it seems very unsatisfactory to me - his certainty at not being Ethan's father would have been more believable if he and Hellin had then struggled conceive, but it was quite the opposite. Not sure why I'm revisiting this - perhaps I just need to write it off as another ill thought out diversion in the same vein as the great North move and HP's TITTAT!

I am right with you, Lillian. I wonder if the SWs were plotting out the story with Rob being the father, but found it didn't go the way they wanted - maybe him being the father and being proved to be a liar was just too much for Helen to swallow, particularly as everyone else in the village/family would have known too.

So yes, I think there was a change of plan, but they milked the thing thoroughly in order to get listeners going.

The whole Brookfield domestic incompetence thing is similarly unbelievable. As Enoch points out they were going manage without Jill and look after HP for goodness sake.

"The food stuff with david and ruth is just stupid. Perhaps Pip could spend less time using her amazing business acumen and just go to sainsburys with a list."

Or bloody Josh could. He never appears to do anything else!

It fits in with the wholly unbelievable nature of the Brookfield family -children completely and utterly happy to up sticks and move away from everything they've ever known, and adults seemingly incapable of doing the most basic domestic task.

Surely one of them could do an online order. Didn't Ben do a vlog or something at some point? He could do the shop and vlog it as a haul.

Perhaps Jess will re-appear or Helen will contact her or maybe Kirsty will and do some digging.

Hellon has far too much on her plate, and has been overdoing it, trying to be superwoman, trying to 'have it all' by this crazy timetable of putting her feet up, occasionally taking her son to school, thinking about cheese, and sometimes talking to people other than him.

Lillian - I'm pretty certain that you're right - the SWs had a change of plan. The Rob story was going to come to a conclusion when we discovered he was the father (after all, they clearly signposted that he slept with her again after getting back together with H). He would have just been another in a long line of failed Helen relationships.

Then they realised that the EA story was gaining traction and could be played out for longer. I don't necessarily blame them for that but it was a bit of an abrupt handbrake turn.

It would be great it Kirsty could do some digging. Perhaps she and Charlie could team up?

Well I still haven't been able to let go of the DNA test.
Could he have paid someone to go and do that test for him?
I remember Helen offered to go with him, but he said not to - he didn't need his hand holding.
Was it with his usual GP? - I would think just a nurse and someone could go in his place.

I'm puzzled about what's happened to Rob's mother in amongst all this. She was interested enough to turn up at the house once, and she was apparently all set to be a doting grandmother to Ethan. I know his story is that they were bitterly estranged but that didn't seem to be her perception when she turned up, so far as I remember. I know that in real life it could well be that the explanation would be that she's contacting him direct and fobbing her off, but again it's a bit irritating that they've introduced her as a character and then cast her into outer darkness with no explanation whatsoever.

I am hoping Ursula will turn up soon. I can believe that Helen is now so cowed she won't raise the subject, and she's so unkeen on the idea of pregnancy she hasn't wanted to tell anyone, let alone someone she hardly knows.

I like the idea of Pat meeting Ursula, her discovering who she is, Ursula finding out H is pregnant, and then the whirring sound of many chickens coming home to roost.