Helen is drowning in the Cow Pat of Destiny. Please SWs - when will it be curtains for Rob?

[PseudoBadger]

Come on Kirsty!

I agree, small. Helen needs to throw a rage. She would feel so much better for it and it might scare the cowardly Knob.

Jump on his hunting jacket or something. Throw his cricket bat out of the window.

*I think he is just doing what a lot of people do when faced with someone with an ED. They think if they will just eat they will be ok.

Option a) watch her eat
B) watch her starve
C) get to the root of what caused the ED and support them without controlling.

So option a) it is.*

Oh I agree, but it's his choice of food. Sugary snacks and butter and cream. It's exactly the kind of food that someone with an ED is likely to find particularly difficult psychologically (and indeed quite possibly physically- if you haven't been eating much then lots of rich food is hardly a great idea). I'm just not sure whether it's calculated on Rob's part or not.

Leaving aside the capers, his food for feeding her up is straight out of my mother's repertoire circa 1955.
I'm waiting for him to serve up stuffed heart and boiled cabbage, tripe perhaps.

Suet pudding and custard. That'll do the trick.

If Helen is confined to barracks, who is making the cheese?

spotted dick

I don't know why Rob is making out that working in the shop ("opening the till a couple of times darling" brilliant Lancelottie) is so arduous. Wasn't there an artfully almost-throw-away line the other day when Rob was in the tea room and he said that he needed to get back as he had left the shop unattended. Doesn't sound to me like he is rushed off his feet nor that the shop is doing very well!

It seems incredible that nobody challenges this 'doing too much' nonsense. Including women who have themselves been pregnant! 'Hellin is simply pushing herself far too hard, what with living in a house, the constant pressure to breathe in and then out again, using her kidneys 24/7, having to remember to make her heart beat and to make sure her nails and her hair continue to grow unless trimmed. No, Henry, mummy needs to rest, she can't possibly continue to inhale fucking air while you talk about a guinea pig at the same time!'

On balance, I think I agree with "the tea is just tea" camp. If it were a medical or crime drama, we might take the repeated attention given to tea, that there was something significant about the tea (or a misdirection from some other nefarious activity).

In TA, I think we'd need hear after drinking tea, Helen saying "I'm so tired, I don't know why" to signal something amiss. In fact, Helen keeps trying to assert "I'm fine, I can cope with work / Henry / etc" and Rob cuts her off and she fails to get stroppy.

YY seek. Especially farming folk.

And it's a YY seek from me too. Stretches credibility big time.

I am just off for a lie down. I've been breathing in and out all morning and have 'done too much'.

Want some creamed potatoes while you lie down, NotDead? Remember, you are FRAGILE.

And no, I don't think he's putting anything in the tea - not TA style at all.

And no, I don't think he's putting anything in the tea - not TA style at all.

Remember Carol?

What has happened to her? Not that I want her back.

But we always knew Carol's teas were mad, didn't we? Or have I forgotten some reveal?

Either way though - yes, I hope she doesn't come back!

I just think he's putting a shit-ton of sugar in, but he's not a Borgia or anything....

If Carol isn't coming back then there will have to be some movement with Glebe Cottage soon. It's been empty since Christmas.

Yes someone needs to live at Glebe. I take it Peep is back at Rickyard.

And Carol's teas wete always billed as 'one of my special teas'

I think that Helen doesn't get stroppy or stand up to him because of what happened when she made her own decision re Fallon taking over the tearoom. Knob got incredibly angry, it sounded like he might even hit her and she saved herself by revealing that she was pregnant. So she knows that causing conflict, (ie speaking her own mind / taking her own decisions) however reasonable her viewpoint, might trigger Rob into one of his icy towering rages and end who knows where. Also her own narrative is that he is brilliant, everyone else tells her how lucky she is to have such a wonderful caring husband that the cognitive dissonance going on is too huge for her to challenge.

Someone else needs to get preggo PDQ and show Ambridge that pregnant women aren't automatically special snowflakes. Fallon maybe, she's a grafter isn't she?

Pip?

It did occur to me while listening this morning (last night's podcast is my breakfast treat every day) - does Rob know how unacceptable his behaviour is? I wonder what his own understanding of their relationship is.

In my own situation, my ex will, I'm sure, believe to his dying day that there was nothing wrong with how he treated me. If anyone had told him to his face that he was abusive, I'm sure he would have laughed. I'll always remember reading his divorce petition (my solicitor and I persuaded him to divorce me so that he'd bear the brunt of the costs served him right) and marvelling at the little fantasy world he'd described. But I really do think he thought his behaviour was completely reasonable. So with Rob - does he actively want to control Helen, or does he just think his behaviour is normal and reasonable?

I posted a couple of weeks ago about how hard I was finding this storyline, as others are, and by god they've ratcheted up the pressure in the last week or so. The abandoned trip episode was horrifying, as was the force-feeding we've just had. I was so infested with this last couple of episodes that I had such a vivid memory - I remember feeling with perfect (and, I thought at the time, sane) clarity "I am never going to get out of this situation until I die. Oh well, maybe I should think about dying then". Thank the heavens I never went any further with that thought, but the same old feeling came back when listening this morning - it was chilling. I know it's easy to criticise and lord knows a lot of it is warranted, but it's moments like that that make me love TA so.

I thought Pip, but being an old fashioned sole my mind searched for someone 'settled' with a nice man .

Although an accidental pregnancy at Brookfield would be interesting. That would put the wind up the old pigeon wouldn't it? And it would add a frisson to the inevitable (if maybe years down the line) progression for Rex from firm Friendzone inhabitant to Love Of Pip's Life.

I'm perfectly happy for Rex to stay in Ambridge and end up with Pip. But Toby needs to fuck right off.

The more the SWs mock Toby for his "ladies man" ways the more convinced I become that he's supporting a wife/gf/ex and child in Brighton ...

If Pip was preggers she'd have to avoid the lambing, wouldn't she?
That would put a nice spoke in her infinite usefulness on the farm.

How about Phoebe, accidentally upduffed by Alex, and leaving him holding the baby while she trots off to Oxford?