Follow the subtle trail towards the Christmas storyline climaxes in Ambridge - discuss The Archers here

[PseudoBadger]

So many possibilities.... A visit from the Titcheners Snr? Baby of the wrong gender? A ruined wedding? Re-housed Grundys? RuthRex?

Just caught up this morning on Fri and Sun episodes.. NEW ZEALAND???

Mind you I would be foaming if I was Ruth. She is on one side with David, Jill and Pip on the other side of the relationship. While they are deciding what to do about her trip and trying to fathom out the motivation for her dissatisfaction they are just reinforcing it further!
Is she even allowed a relationship with her husband that doesn't involve the rest of the family?? Grah.

Bertrand having now caught up with the thread it looks like it's just me on Team Ruth then!
(Can you have a team of 1 person?)

The cheek of David to be annoyed at Ruth deciding to o away at the drop of a hat without consulting him! It's ok to scupper the whole family's move North at the last minute but not to go on a farming trip, apparently.

The Brookfield Archers are doing my head right in. And don't get me started on Jill passive-aggressively dropping in a sad comment about lack of help on stir-up Sunday. Balls to the lot of them. I hope Rooth finds a hunky bungee-jumping instructor in NZ and never comes back.

If she does though, may I have a pound each way on Gina McKee being the replacement? She is the right age and an actual northeasterner (although not a Geordie)

Anyone been listening to the Zola dramas. Abbe Faujas in yesterday afternoon's episode could have been Knob's evil twin!

I really, really hope Ruth stays in NZ. She sounds like a spoilt brat throwing her toys out of the pram and I just can't bear it.

Ruth in one scene and Rob in the next - it's all too much.

I'm not the world's biggest Ruth fan, but I agree with you trevor on the rank hypocrisy of David's 'I would never spring something like that on her' ... and that in the middle of moaning to his dm about his wife, something which would not go down too well around here unless there was actual criminal behaviour going on.

ooh yes I thought that about Abbe Fuajas- how long before Rob tells her 'get away from me you disgust me'

Uh huh, I also listened to the Zola dramatization with my mouth open in horror. They really were speaking from exactly the same script.

And the poor young woman seemed quite lively at the start.

Fink yep DH would be in deep sh1t if I found he was sounding off to his DM and DCs rather than having it out with me - one-to-one, not two-or-three to one.

Thank you notdeadyet. Over a week ago now, but very much on our minds as the boulevard is now an enormous shrine of flowers and candles. David Cameron was there this morning. V moving (the flowers, not Dave). Still happy to be taking refuge in Ambridge. ROFL at idea of Ben rearranging cereal cupboard to make more room for himself. I think the fact that Ruth is only going to NZ for two weeks is a bit of a damp squib in view of her dramatic announcement. Presumably something will happen to detain her there otherwise she will be going away for less time than she was in Prudhoe.

well we know who will be sooooo busy he can't possibly make the interview...

that so isn't pat...

you can tell gender before 12 weeks these days through a blood test i believe - poor research sw!!

you know clarrie - you could put a single bed in the living room - no reason that because it is a living room it has to be a sofa bed

and again, who is that talking to helen and rob?

Or Clarrie and Eddie could sleep on the sofa bed and Joe could have the bedroom.

BYOS to be fair the pre-12 week tests (NIPT - Harmony, NIFTY, et al) are not available on the NHS and cost thousands. They're "next-generation sequencing" of (some particlar bits of) foetal DNA that circulates in maternal blood - relying on sequencing technology that has only been around in the last 10 years and thus will take a while to become mainstream. So to find out gender before the 20-week anomaly scan you'd have to do chorionic villus sampling or amniocentesis, both of which carry miscarriage risks, so I can't imagine Knob allowing them.

Sorry to go off thread, but just want to say that my daughter and I are visiting Paris next weekend. Maybe we'll pass by, LillianG?
When it all kicked off I thought first of my friend's niece, and then of LillG. TA is definitely a welcome diversion. Even if Ruth is getting on my nerves and I'm sick of the Grundys suffering.

I know it's been said again and again but what is Pat on? Surely she can see it's not normal that her daughter is not involved in decisions like going for an extra scan.

David was utterly despicable in Sunday's episode the way he was talking to Pip (and also to Jill) about Ruth. When If Ruth inevitably does bugger off for good and their marriage goes pfft he'd better not keep talking to his kids as if they're adults and his support network, no good ever comes of that. Ruth however is being a prize self-centred brat, her whole attitude to the dinner and the champagne was ridiculous and then the 'bombshell' (which actually turned out to be a none-shell on Sunday - curse you scriptwriters) about NZ that evening...

Perhaps Brookfield will burn down taking them all with them when Ben sets fire to the cereal boxes to send smoke signals to Lily and Freddie!

Glad you're still being diverted by all this LilG, I'll even try to bear more preposterousness from Ruth and David if it helps you .

So - the scan - a girl and it all unravels fast or a boy and we hunker down for another 5 and a bit months of this...?

magnificent - i know two people who found out by 12 weeks and there was no miscarriage risk - they said it was just a blood test for them. I know one of them well enough to know she would not do anything that would increase her miscarriage risk at all. I will have to ask them exactly what they had! I also don't believe either was bothered enough by gender to spend thousands although they would have had the test private

i am going to assume the early scan is to ensure rob gets angry so we have sufficient time to get the climax of the sl at xmas

did we ever determine if her dates added up to her getting pregnant the night he raped her?

Mystic Bore predicts:

The Special Scan for Special People will reveal not one but two occupants of the Special Womb.

And I hope they're both girls (the crystal ball grows murky here...)

wouldn't twins have shown at the 12 week scan?

maybe helen will be octomum mark 2

(have now read Lowfield and caught up) - let me just revise what i said above and say "or an ultrasound scan with a bloody good ultrasonographer if you're going to find out at 14 weeks using ultrasound" - you can often see if it's a boy by about 14 weeks, but you can't tell for sure if it's a girl until about 20 weeks and sometimes not even then.

They are MIRACLE BABES, though BYOS!

Couldn't one have been hiding behind the other or something at the first scan?

magnificent - having googled - you can have the harmony test for £500 from 10 weeks. they don't advertise it as a test to determine sex of baby but it is one of the things it can tell you

BYOS - the blood test carries no miscarriage risk. It's CVS or amniocentesis that carry miscarriage risks.

I haven't read guidelines for all the NHS trusts, some of them by now might offer the NIPT (blood test) under certain circumstances like previous miscarriages/ chromosomal abnormalities etc. The few trusts I checked a few months ago while thinking about getting such testing done myself (over this side of the world you have to organize and pay for it yourself, so I was trying to work out which particular NIPT to get done) didn't offer it but did offer CVS/amnio where indicated.

I didn't expect it would be available on the NHS - having done further research though it costs £500 for the blood test and £220 for a sexing scan (plus 25% if twins)

Given how Rob ploughs through money I would expect him to have strong armed her onto a train to London for the blood test!