Come in to The Archers thread - we've redecorated! Take a seat in that distinctive yellow chair and discuss events in Ambridge.

[PseudoBadger]

New thread for tonight's episode.

Do you like the decor then? My 'personal' assistant did it.

No Lottie I don't reckon he's that intelligent , he's just a shit.

Topaz your carp writing reminds me that I've wondered occasionally why no one goes fishing in TA - given that Ambridge obviously has a river, Grey Gables and LL probably both have stretches of water and landowners like to exploit their assets just as the less financially well endowed like food for nothing. (I appreciate that the flood might have affected fishing possibilities but I don't remember it happening at all in recent years.)

During the Academic Archers conference there was mention of Ambridge residents' almost complete lack of interest in wider society The notes for this programme (totally unrelated to radio fiction - about someone working at the Calais migrant's camp) highlight the fact that two months later, plenty of time for hasty additions of a sentence or two, the SWs still aren't budging - absolutely no acknowledgement of life outside Ambridge or how the village might interact with the rest of the world. With all the extra listeners (or listeners-again) it does seem a pity that the Hel/Rob story is taking up so much time for so little benefit.

I don't mean intelligent as such I mean machiavellian (sp.)?

There is a fully stocked fishing lake at Home Farm. Gruach

But I never hear about anyone fishing! Have I not been listening properly?

Drat I did a long, now lost, post, about Kirsty. And my hopes for her. But I fail to see how getting Helen to kill herself meant he wanted her dead as she was carrying his child. Of course it's possible he doesn't need the baby now he's got Henry. Henry is more useful possibly as PnT do have a r'ship with him, so his loss/potential loss is greater for them. His desire to get H pregnant was all about control over her anyway. I think he lost control (night of stabbing) as he was so angry she was wanting to leave him. None of that was in his plan. Stabbed by a woman, and a weak heavily pregnant one at that. Just as well he has no friends to laugh at him!

Can Helen file for divorce and/or reverse PR whilst in prison? I don't believe she is ready for either, but wondered. Presumably she needs to give a reason or two for wanting to reverse PR. Despite his anger, i think it's not in Rob's interests to divorce her. Not yet anyway.

Did Rob want Henry to continue the 'great Dad and hero' myth and maintain his reputation in the village. He may not have factored in a court hearing and the village reaction to PatnTone's distress. Of course, being a great Dad for Henry strengthens his claim for SOK.

I think they used to talk of fishing at HF. maybe the focus has shifted too much to BF and BF (both!) they haven't had time, the deer rarely get a mention at HF either. it's all about the arable - when it gets a mention, and the power struggle between Brine and Adam. Jazzer could be employed as the fishing lake steward or whatever it's called. Does Brien have recorded view on Jazzer?

I was thinking about the PR thing last night ... Surely, in any rational world, where the original parent has allowed a new partner to acquire it, the fact of the original parent attempting to eviscerate the partner rather suggests they have withdrawn their support for the other's PR?

I don't think Rob expected Helen to do anything with the knife. I would say that he acted in the heat of the moment and grabbed that knife on impulse with minimal thought about what could go wrong.He was very angry because she was trying to escape him. He wanted to goad and taunt her with her powerlessness, and he decided to call her bluff. He pushed the knife into her hand and dared her to hurt herself with it. He was supremely confident that she wouldn't do it and it had never crossed his mind that this weak, puny, inferior possession of his might attack him.

By now Pat must have either paid or not paid the April salaries. Has she paid Rob?
Has she agonised over whether to pay either of their salaries into the joint account? Has she asked herself why he insisted on Helen's being paid into the joint account? Has she told Anna this and joined up other dots about his control over all aspects of Helen's life?

It's details like this that I find frustratingly absent from the script.

Also, how does anyone now exercise any oversight of what is actually Helen's money? Not to mention her personal possessions still at Blossom Hill.

There's nothing to stop her filing for divorce whilst in prison, but it isn't in her power to reverse the granting of PR. She might be able to ask the court to remove it, I'm not sure, but she can't remove it herself.

Maybe. I just found the knife thing so implausible, so was seeking an explanation other than 'the SWs' device to get a knife in her hand'. I just wonder if he could have had an image of 'crazy woman brandishing knife' that seemed helpful ás a way to portray her as crazy.

Agree he's not strategic. He's reactive but he does have tactics.

"the fact of the original parent attempting to eviscerate the partner rather suggests they have withdrawn their support for the other's PR?"

So isn't it a relief that said child has a thoroughly respectable pillar of the community to look after him now the evicerater is rightly incarcerated......

Mmm ... Yes ... I know the granting of PR is not in Helen's gift and she cannot withdraw it - but I can't help feeling that the cause of her incarceration - hatred of the new partner - ought to weigh with the court.

I've been looking at some House of Commons research briefings on the procedure for grandparents applying for access to grandchildren - and recalling rather vividly how Helen dangled the possibility of not seeing Henry over her parents' heads when they questioned her relationship with Rob. No one (except R4) could fail to feel sorry for Helen - but she really has been bitten smartly on the behind by her own certainties.

...because, if she'd been able to leave with Henwee, it would have been plain to others that she was not happy with knob. So he had to ramp up his portrayal of her as crazy - as well as seeking to prevent her from going.

At last I've taken time to read up on PR and the revoking thereof. Yes, obviously she can't just decide to withdraw it like that, I didn't intend that. She would have to go through a lawyer and court hearing. Maybe though this SL will help some people to see how easy it is to sign PR to a partner but how very hard it is to get it revoked. V scary.

I expect nobody - except all of us, the listenership - can state that she did it under pressure. She did go off to vomit when Knob was telling Pat about it, but I can't see that being evidence as she did a lot of vomiting back then. It will be so very hard for Helen to prove she did it under coercion, unless it can be a part of the whole picture. Maybe Pat in her silence is having a good long think. Maybe she's gone to Prestatyn to do so. But ultimately Helen needs help from people other than her mum and Anna's mum ('m'lord, even my own mother has stated that Mr T was not her kind of man').

I've been wondering why Dominic couldn't give H a pen and paper at the outs etand get her to jot things down, much as a counsellor would do. Counsellor in the UK sense. Then a poster on here said that was an option, i think. Is that a real possibility in helping somebody to recall traumatic incidents whilst they are in prison on remand?

Does anyone remember when H and R were married? I think you can't normally get divorced till a year has gone by.

Hot off the press! (Well, Torygraph online ...) Praise for Family Court portrayal.

This sort of thing will just encourage them.

With regard to giving the knife to Helen being improbable - the thing is, if Rob is a psychopath, or has psychopathic traits, it's actually in character. Psychopaths tend to crave excitement and thrills. Part of the "fun" of all the manipulations he has been doing would be the risk of being found out.

I think it was his sheer propensity for cruelty that made him force the knife into her hand. He knew she wouldn't kill herself, or he could stop her if she tried, but he couldn't resist hurting her in her deepest core as punishment for wanting to leave so he said she shouldn't have been allowed to have Henry and reminded her of Greg's death.
He believed he could control the situation, as always, and take the knife off her when she had been totally crushed and humiliated.
It was when Henry arrived on the scene that I think he suddenly relaxed his force on her hand when she was still resisting so that the knife had forward momentum into his body.

She's blanking it all because to tell someone would mean exposing her deepest traumas from the past and she won't acknowledge that the music conjured up the memory of the rape.

Has there been any discussion at all about Brexit in the Archers? I live in a rural, agricultural community & there's lots of talk about it here ....

It's the beeeb. They have to be cautious about politics. A talented SW could manage it in a subtle and careful fashion. But .....

It could actually take her years to admit the deepest traumas. Sadly, she doesn't have years.

And she seems to have had a very superficial psychiatric assessment that she's fit to be questioned.