Discuss The Archers here. There's hut construction, new teen arrivals, pastured eggs, pining Pip and other fun Spring-like stories to choose from.

[PseudoBadger]

Maybe if we don't look directly at the other storyline it will disappear?

Anyone watching the program about DA on BBC1 now?

Yes. This is the reality. I support the Hell rob storyline .

I'm watching Tattoo Fixers for some light relief after tonight.

But then I can never watch telly violence of any kind and won't watch it. Yet I find hellrob unsettling but real and important in that it sets out very clearly that this type of crime exists in very very many archers listening middle class households. And how it happens.

I think Hellin told the psych exactly what she told knob she did. She's so far gone into the fog of abuse, she actually believes knobs nonsense.

I'm really struggling to see how anyone can get her out of this mess as they all seem to be sidelined.

I absolutely agree that it happens in many middle class families which is why I want the story to be properly told and ended positively rather than turned into a pantomime.

Sadly I think another missed opportunity. Unless Helen has said far more than she made out.

C b t plus a d s seems to me wholly inadequate, but sadly predictable cash strapped n h s response.

Meanwhile knob can prove he did all he could to help his mad wife before .....

De-lurking - long time lurker, very rare poster! I feel like I know you all

I've been thinking for a while that where Knob might go wrong will be after the baby's born, and I think it may have been flagged up recently with David's comment at the Bull when he was complaining about Helen taking up all the bed "wait til the baby gets here!" or similar - plus this business with antidepressants and bf... Does Knob seem like the kind of man who will be able to deal with a baby inexplicably crying from 6pm- midnight every evening for weeks ... with the often tricky business of bf and all the support you need for that ... with a baby squirting yellow poo / milky sick all over him... I'm really worried that he is going to lose his temper and something terrible is going to happen to this baby. My other fear is Knob and Ursula not calling a MW when H goes into labour and forcing her to doing it alone without any medical help.

I am desperately hoping that H gets CBT ASAP and somehow someone spots what's happening to her before it's too late.

Helen missed a trick there. She should have told the psychiatrist that things seem to have got worse in the past four weeks or so ...
Get the psych to turf Ursula out for her. Rob couldn't disagree with that, could he, seeing that the psych was his idea.

Slice - welcome, I love to see a good de-lurk!

I think you have a point, I heard the scene in the pub, and Rob's "What do you mean?" in reply to David was fascinating (that was the question which David answered by explaining he meant that having a baby was going to be a lot worse than having a pregnant woman).

I'm with Booming. She is convinced that it's all her fault & is lapping up every word Rob tells her, because she can't comprehend that anyone could be so cruel as to tell her that she was verbally abusing her own child (rather than talking gibberish about lawn mowers).

I am actually hoping it doesn't resolve too quickly. It happens in lots of households and could drag on for years - better than a big dramatic soap-style resolution.

K.D. tweeted:

Of course. But who's truth? >>

In reply to so tell us, did she tell the perinatal wotsit the truth???

(Still debating whether to send this to Pedants' Corner ...)

That could have worked Barry but they've taken it too far now. It has been simmering for years now but they've spent too much time on it to not resolve it somehow.

Yes! That line! It made me think "he actually has no idea, and hasn't thought at all, about what looking after a newborn is really like" - it rang massive alarm bells. He's been so focused on having a son, I think he's expecting H to produce a strapping teenage lad already wielding a cricket bat...

And thank you for being so welcoming

Gruach - maybe he is being really deep

Does Mr K really not know the difference between who's and whose? faints

I'm prepared to give the benefit of the doubt. My own devices often feel the need to make me look illiterate.

(And sometimes I'm just careless.)

Gruach

I assumed that Knob would be instructing the new born on the art of obedience

You are right recyclingbag and it would be really awful if they did that archers thing of just sort of dropping it.

Hi SliceOfLime yep you are bang on the money there, he has no idea what life with a newborn is like at all. He probably thinks they just live in a Moses basket and you pop a bottle in its mouth every now and then. Mind you, its looking like Ursula will have the job of live-in-Granny at this rate so he won't have to get too involved after all and Helen won't even be allowed to care for her own baby

I could definitely imagine it being in character for him to lose his temper with a crying baby. I do hope they don't go down that road though.

I still think Kirsty won't give up on Helen. I'd love her to be the one who gets Helen out of this, mainly because she has always seen straight through Knob, she's like his nemesis

I don't think they will drop it.

I doubt Rob will be planning on looking after the baby, when he's got rid of Helen. He's far too busy running the shop his mother will be doing that for him.