SOC reveals he's a quitter whilst Keri sews up plot holes on Twitter about the wicked wife-sitter! Discuss the Archers here.

[PseudoBadger]

Not long until our thread's 3 year birthday!

I bet the latest idea will have been dictated by SOCLD. (S O'Connor's leaving date.)

Wouldn't a better acronym be formed from:
Sean O'Connor's Date Of Finally Finishing

SODOFF!

Not forgetting D50k, the date of the 50,000th post on these threads, which is looking increasingly likely to also be in May.

SODOFF - a work of genius DDD

I assumed that Henry's behaviour at school (pushing girls around and smirking when he got caught) was meant to be a reflection of what he saw going on around him at home, with Henry identifying with Rob.

Didn't Rob stop Helen from spending time with Emma after Keira came over and made a mess which inconvenienced Rob in some way?

I'm wondering if Johnny's new hero-worship if Rob means that he will blame Helen once All is Discovered.

The genius is the collective wit of this thread, it just got channelled through me for an inspired moment! [That's enough pretentious twaddle from me]

I thought all the Ambridge children went on a bus to Loxley Barrett.

I thought it was utterly chilling how Rob said that Henry was "more comfortable with his grandmother" - Henry only met Ursula for the first time about 3 weeks ago!

Not to mention that she isn't his grandmother, but I suppose if she and Rob were nice people we'd be urging her to treat him as such so can't really complain about that aspect.

It occurred to me too that we were presumably only hearing Ursula's version of events; who knows what really happened or what the teacher said. I don't agree Henry is pushing girls around and smirking when he gets caught because he's copying Rob's behaviour - as far as we know, Rob isn't pushing Helen around, and if he does get annoyed, he doesn't smirk - he sighs deeply and tragically and talks patronisingly. We have heard him get pissed off with Helen ("Why do I BOTHER?!" / aubergine-parmigiana-gate) but I'm not sure he's done that in front of Henry.

Helen clearly sounded irritated in this episode (before it got to the bit about Henry feeling more comfortable with Ursula). She needed space, she cut Rob off and said 'let's go downstairs' when he was banging on about mother's day, she said she didn't need help, that's why she left the shop, she reiterated more than once that she wasn't angry with Henry (daring to go a way towards contradicting Rob), and her tone was generally pissed off, I thought. She also referred to Ursula as "your mother" when talking about the teacher having a word with her.

She became wobbly of course when Rob did the whole thing about Henry being more settled with Ursula. I think that if I were in her shoes, even given how much she's been manipulated, I would be trying to have a chat with Henry by himself, ask how he's feeling, ask if he's having a nice time with Ursula etc. - dig a bit. I would have thought most people would recognise sudden recurrent bedwetting as a sign something's not right, and I'm not sure she would be so quick to accept it's because of her own "irrationality".

And with regards to Kirsty - I would think the best approach would have been to chattily say "So how is it being a lady of leisure? Do you mind not working? I think I'd go crazy at home all the time!" and see where it led. And if Helen went on about Rob just being over-protective because he adores her so much, she could have said something like "You're much more patient than me, I think I'd find all that over-protectiveness a bit suffocating!" She could have just very lightly put feelers out and guaged Helen's reaction - and then probed a little bit if she thought she could get away with it. That's what I would do in her shoes.

I wish TA could just stop for a week or two. I've had enough.

But have to add a for Sean O'Connor's Date Of Finally Finishing. Very excellent.

Margie - agreed, that's the kind of breezy, innocuous-sounding approach that I think might get under Helen's defences.

GADD, SODOFF - that's two acronyms I've come up with that will be dead ducks by June, so my glory will be short-lived!

DDD, there should be a special prize for the unsuspecting 50,000th poster. A lifetime's supply of Jill's Dundee cakes? A keg of Grundy gut rot cider? Or perhaps a hamper of black-pudding Scotch eggs. I'd say a truckle of Sterling Gold except H doesn't seem to be attending to her curds & whey at present.

Perhaps Helen is going to explode soon and find her anger.

My ex was not of the quiet manipulative type, he was of the angry shouty big bully variety but he did not like it if anyobe else dares raise their voice.
The Rob type - which is slso a definite recognisable type of quiet chipping away, underminung, pick pick pick but rarely raise their voice (I thought it was telling that he said Ursula is firm but calm). With that type if tye buctim blows up they are left looking and feeling like the irrational, volatile, unreasonable one.

I think there have been inducations that Hel's patience is wearing thin and she is becoming exasperated. I predict she'll lose it. He'll play the victim and she'll be left unable to explain exactly why she did it

Typos many.

More horrible is the fact that we HAVE heard Hell overreact with Henry , so we know she does do it sometimes. Inconsistency is hard for young children to deal with.

Rob has always sounded like a wrongun.

I know this because early on I texted my non-TAlistening friend to tell her her ex husband had just turned up in TA.

Later in the year, her mother text to ask her to ask me what I thought of Rob and 'she don't see that coming'

Well no, you wouldn't love. Which is why if ins Patbot so convincing.

"They also take huge risks, supremely confident in their abilities to survive anything."

Sorry if stating the obvious, but that'll be the home birth right? Knob being supremely confident in his/Arsula's ability to deliver the baby safely, utterly irrespective of all sane medical advice.

I don't think the SWs would let Hell die in the process, but if she ends up coming close, then maybe that would be the tipping point at which Patbot realises that Rob hasn't the faintest clue what is best for Helen.

Arsula will not leave BHC before Knob does. I think we're stuck with her.

[I have previously delurked, but not posted in ages. I don't know if a second delurking is now necessary, or if delurked, once achieved, is a permanent state of being. Clarification welcome ]

Finally... the excruciating SL, terrible loose ends/not making sense, sudden personality changes, the claustrophobia of having to spend so much time listening to HelRob and not hearing other characters for months on end... is this a 'meta' way of forcing listeners to empathise with some of the feelings that Helen is having?

It was good to hear a three way conversation between Jazzer, Johnnie & Tom this week. The natural progression would be for them all to go down to the Bull and meet up with Roy after work one day. Roy could pick up on Tom's doubts about Knob, say that Kirsty doesn't like him either and persuade Johnnie that Knob is only interested in himself.

Unfortunately though, I'm afraid that Knob will convince Johnnie that greater opportunities await back home (despite no job, no girlfriends, none of Pat's cooking & no Grandad cheering him on) and we'll soon see the back of him after a short talking reprisal.

I am voting in advance for SODOFF as a thread title when appropriate.

Henry was in trouble for hitting girls and bed wetting a while back before Helen was PG but after she moved in with Rob so it's not necessarily to do with jealousy of the new baby this time round.

I wonder if he's talking as patronisingly as Rob does to the girls at school and they simply won't take it so he's resorted to hitting.

IIRC Helen wasn't the soul of patience with Henry when she lived in that flat. She couldn't cope very well then and moved back to the farm.

ItchyArmpits (love the name) I'm impressed by your post-modern (is it?) take of there being a meta-level to the scripts. It's certainly the effect it's had on me!

Can I just permit myself a self-indulgent post to say I spent the day at the Salon d'Agriculture in Paris today (which featured in TA a couple of years ago!) Hundreds of cows, sheep and pigs - more breeds than I'd ever imagine. wall to wall farmers (one even handed me a spare ticket as I was queuing up to buy one (a gift from the Chambre d'Agriculture de Seine-et-Marne) so I got in for free. It reminded me of everything I love about TA, living in a totally urban environment, and I managed to astonish DH who pointed out how little French farmers were being paid for their milk by suggesting they needed to go over to a grass-based feeding system to cut costs (which might involve changing their herds). I was also quite astonished by the size of a combine harvester which required a ladder to reach the cab - I'd never seen one that close up and it gave me a new insight into Adam and Brian's discussions into farm machinery. Cutest stall where was an egg hatchery where you could watch chicks hatching out of their eggs. Saddest thing was the many many banners and posters farmers had erected around their stands saying things like "I am a farmer, I am dying" and posters advising what to do if you are "on the edge" and thinking of taking your own life .
As you were ....

At the moment (and I'm not listening as it's bedtime ) I'm leaning towards "psychopath scmychopath" as a title. Ridiculous.

oooh Rob how dare you fuck with johnny like that, is there no end to it??