As Frilly stress Lizzy out, did the SWs forget her heart defect? Will there be long term llama drama karma in The Archers?

[PseudoBadger]

@KitchenFloor My 8 year old asked if it was the Archers yesterday. It was the Today Programme. Gritty realism in the soap world can be confusing!

KitchenFloor - my middle child puts on iPlayer if he thinks I'm in a bad mood!

Is it just me that hopes Freddy goes to prison? Jill’s comments about no judge wanting to imprison someone from “a good family” really riled me.

I imagine Jill was simply echoing the sort of thing she would have heard her husband say decades ago. (Although, going back to the no archivist issue, none of the SWs seems to remember that Phil was a magistrate.)

Perhaps Russ was deliberately playing gauche to try and minimise his experience of life and hence his age?

Hello, long time lurker first time poster!

Buckingfrolicks - yes that's what I assumed too. I definitely assumed it was all a bit of an act.

But as Elizabeth knows he is deputy head at the college what would be the point of putting on an act?

I don't think it was an act from Russ. For a start most of the preparatory what to wear etc. was on the phone to Lily and so Elizabeth didn't get to hear any of it. Some of it I could relate to - e.g. I often hesitate about calling older adults by their first name. And I think his inability to talk about anything other than how lovely the house was and what a credit Lily was to her mum just showed how there was literally nothing else they had in common, no 'safe' topic that he could make small talk about.

I just wish Russ would get on with not leaving his wife IYSWIM. But we've got up to another 3-4 weeks till Manchester's freshers week and him being a no show.

Fink - your analysis sounds right to me. It was just underlining the whole awkwardness of the situation.

I daresay, in the absence of a need to move the plot forward, they might all have had a nice chat about art. That’s pretty neutral and wouldn’t need to involve Russ in awkward conversations about his domestic situation.

On another note, listening now to a clip of Patricia Greene on Broadcasting House, she really has the loveliest, dryest voice. And I’m thinking TA / Brookfield / her own character would be so much more powerful if she decided to use that (all the time) instead of the dovelike cooing she’s settled on for Jill.

Oh, and welcome Dresses, always good to hear new voices. I bet there are other lurkers out there reading this. Come out and play - we're a friendly bunch!

The thing with Russ & the wine - Elizabeth would have known that you don't have to drink the wine the guest brings with the meal, you can put it aside for another occasion. And would have had a bottle of the right wine ready to serve anyway. Even if Russ didn't know that. (My DH often makes this mistake!)

Also the people I know who live in stately homes never refer to them as such!

Lass what you and your friends do isn’t a universal standard. I doubt very much he was asking if he needed to put on a jacket - more something along the lines of would it be better not to wear jeans.

wurzelburga it’s a question for the mumsnet Etiquette board . I suppose I really meant the kind of upbringing that imparts the unshakeable confidence that one knows how to behave in any situation, and that if others are behaving differently it’s simply because they don’t know any better.

I’m a bit surprised that people think it especially unrealistic because he is the deputy principal of a state FE college. I don’t think dinners would have played a major part in his promotion route.

Oh, and nothing wrong with flowers and chocolates, but given the reaction I assumed it was a massive bouquet, and he had brought dessert, so chocolates as well sounded like he was trying a bit too hard.

No I am a bit confused about all the references to him being a deputy head. Being a deputy head is a good job, worthwhile, important etc but people are talking about him as if he is running a small country.

As deputy head he cannot be unaware of normal ethical, legal safeguarding, therefore he should get his comeuppance big style. It's not as if he is an NQT with only a few years difference between him and a student (not that that would be excusable at all)
Also, he would have to have handed in his notice months ago, I imagine at Easter, so there is no way at all that he intends to leave his job or his wife. Even within his world view, he has managed this badly- his intention was probably that the realtionship would end naturally once she left for university, he will need now to find a way to get Lily to dump him
....oh wait....

There was a scandal at my school many moons ago, when one of the teachers was found to be in a relationship with a 16 year old. Obviously teacher was very much fired and had to change career, but the relationship lasted, and they ended up married with a few kids and afaik are still together.
Personally I will always think that a teacher who hooks up with a teen is creepy as hell (power imbalance) but I suppose there is some sort of a grey area between 'perfectly professional' and 'outright predator' and it sounds to me like Russ is in it. His appeal for Lily is that he looks and sounds (fine if voice, accent, vocabulary) like a father figure, but he thinks like a teenager. All the fuss about what to take, what to wear, being overwhelmed by the house - is the stuff of a nervous 15 year old.

Incidentally, I wondered if Russ being so carried away by the size of the house was a jokey reference to that episode of More or Less, where they calculated that, going by the length of Nigel's scream, Lower Loxley is the height of York Minster.

*fine if = going by

Darn my inability / disinclination to proof read.

there really isn't a grey area! teachers should not have relationships with pupils- he IS a predator because he has used his position to gain access to Lily, and now he is using his position to gain influence with Lizzie, by writing the reference. Didn't he turn a blind eye to Freddie dealing?
He will never work again when this all comes out.
Maybe McDonalds will let him flip burgers.

I often hesitate about calling older adults by their first name.

Elizabeth is probably only about eight years older than D?

The requirement to give notice is a contractual one, they can't actually force him into college for another term. He wouldn't get a good reference, but in his fantasy future life he's going to "make art" so that doesn't matter. They could take him to court for breach of contract, but all they would be suing for would be the extra costs incurred from him leaving unexpectedly, which in reality wouldn't amount to much since they couldn't include costs which would have occurred anyway, like paying someone to do the job. And suing would draw the attention of local press, which they would probably rather avoid.

I don't think he will end up leaving his wife, but I imagine in his head he keeps his fantasy life and real life in two separate compartments, meaning that whilst he's with Lily he can believe the fantasy life to be true.

"My wife and I..."

Err... dude, you're sitting chatting to your new girlfriend's ma. Probably not that good an idea to mention your wife. Never mind the palaver over the colour of the wine it was that clanger that was the gauche bit. Where are they going with this guy? I can't think that Lily would be attracted to anyone this self conscious and unsophisticated.

The predatory thing is interesting. I don't think there is a grey area - it's categorically not ok because of his position. But that doesn't mean he is predatory in the sense of having deliberately targeted Lily, or repeated this behaviour with other students (I'm assuming we would have heard there were rumours about him if that were the case).

Years ago I worked with a man who had an affair with a much younger (20+ years) graduate trainee working on one of his projects. When it all blew up he swore blind that she had "groomed' him - that was literally the word he used - a man in his mid-40s. And what form had that "grooming" taken, you may wonder. Apparently she had been interested in him and asked him questions about his life, which was "manipulative" because he had enjoyed her company. She was a few years older than Lily but the dynamic sounds similar - which is partly why I'm finding this storyline so interesting. This man was obviously not the victim he believed himself to be, but I wouldn't have described him as predatory. I believe the Mumsnet phase is "he's had his head turned". Clearly if you're a teacher it's your responsibility to not act on that, but it's not uncommon in the general population and 'predator' doesn't describe it accurately.

I have a family member who got involved with a friend of her parents, she was in her teens, he was (I think) still married.
He married her, and they are still happily married probably 30 years later.
He wasn't her teacher, though, but a similar situation otherwise. I don't like the fact that he is still married and I don't like that he was a teacher and her a student, but if love does strike even with that age gap, what is the correct course of action? Wait for her to no longer be a student and start the relationship then? (ignoring the WIFE for the moment...)