Discuss The Archers #108: Has Ed & Emma’s ship sailed? Will Alice stick her oar into Kate's love life? Can Shula walk on water? Come and discuss whatever floats your boat in The Archers.

[Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g]

Thank you, @PseudoBadger, for kicking off this long, long series of Archers threads and @DadDadDad for being our resident statistician and keeping the ball rolling when Pseudo stepped back a bit.

All views on The Archers welcome here! New blood welcomed. We don't all agree on all points and most of us are posting tongue in cheek a lot of the time, so don't worry about revealing that you'd like to be Susan's best friend or other unusual views.

Spoilers: not on this thread, please. We don't wait for the omnibus to discuss the weeknight episodes, but we do try our best to avoid cross-contamination from www.mumsnet.com/Talk/radio_addicts/3439443-keep-it-to-yourself-the-archers-spoilers-thread-4, where spoilers are positively welcomed!

For newer listeners, lurkers or those who just have no idea what we're talking about, DadDadDad has created this useful thread: www.mumsnet.com/Talk/radio_addicts/3557323-For-Archers-fans-a-guide-to-acronyms-on-the-long-running-discussion-threads-and-any-other-meta-thread-questions-you-may-have BOOP point for him! (See thread for explanation.)

Thanks to @QuaterMiss for the title of this thread. For reasons of space had to cut out the bit speculating about Oliver and Tracy pairing off. Surely not!

Off now to give blood, something nobody in Ambridge ever does. See you all later.

I thought Jenny was completely OTT - it’s not even as if it’s her first grandchild (just as Lexi had to point out it’s not the first time she’s been pregnant - and somewhat more recently than Jenny). It was so OTT I wondered if there was some plot reason for it: “I didn’t agree to do this so you could hand over the baby to your mother Adam” - or something along those lines.

Jenny's fawning would have been hard to bear under any circumstances but did anyone else find her fulsome greetings, enthusiasm and concern, horribly distasteful?

Eeyore - I thought exactly this. It wasn't all that long ago that Lexi was sent to clean out a caravan at end of season almost literally the crap job nobody wants to do and JD came prancing along like the lady of the manor and behaved abominably to her, iirc.

It's no doubt very wrong of me to keep getting mental images of 'Rosemary's Baby'

Yes- Jenny was awful. And Ian and Adam were so fucking useless.

The JD thing was another trope of TA, to go with the talking-at-cross-purposes/not-listening thing. Nobody is ever called out for bad behaviour. For example, somebody should have had serious words with Will months ago but nobody did. Because of the trope.

Yes, they were useless weren't they Bert!

Mmm, yes I wonder LilianG... bet it will be something along those lines... especially as Adam is hardly the most enthusiastic of individuals at the best of times. I can imagine him handing over the baby to Jenny when Ian is unavailable!

Oh yes I'd forgotten that awful caravan cleaning incident 5000flapjacks! Jenny only feels Lexi is worth engaging with now she is carrying the golden grandchild.

Xpost R4 agree but in some ways I think that is quite true to life . How many times have we all wish we had corrected somebody's poor behaviour or retorted a rude comment at the time. So often I find myself saying to dh in the car on the way home, or in bed that same evening, "oh I wish I had said x, y or z".

have we all wished

So often I find myself saying to dh in the car on the way home, or in bed that same evening, "oh I wish I had said x, y or z"

It's called "l'esprit d'escalier", for that moment when your rapier-like wit could have been called into play with devastating effect. But wasn't.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%27esprit_de_l%27escalier

I think someone on here used to listen on iPlayer and fast forward all the parts with Pip in, I am going to have to do the same with the surrogacy storyline, it's unbearable.

We really need the radio equivalent of the asterisks Stella Gibbons helpfully provided in ' Cold Comfort Farm' to warn readers when the purple prose was incoming.

Perhaps a discreet 'ding' from a glockenspiel or something. Then two dings to signal the end of the surrogacy chat, and those of us who've tuned out can turn the radio back up.

Inter - “I’ve done the analysis you asked for. The most discussed characters on Mumsnet are Pip and Shula but...”

SW1 - (talking over the end of Inter’s sentence) - “ so we should continue to feature them or even increase their on air time.”

SW2 “yes! I have a great idea for Pip, she could explore her spirituality with Shula, maybe just once or twice a week. I think people would really enjoy some in-depth Cristian reflections. I personally don’t know much about the church but how complicated can it be”

Intern - “as I was going to say they talk about them mostly to discuss ways they could die. That chemenger person wants Shula to be kicked in the head by a horse.”

SW2 - “they’re just joking, Shula and Pip are lovely. What else have you found out about Mumsnet?”

Intern- “I’ve only looked at a couple of other sections but they seem to talk about babies a lot”

SW1 -“there you go, Pip has a baby, they must love her”

SW2 - “Pip has a baby? Really? When did that happen?”

SW1 - “and there’s the surrogacy story, if they like babies they must love the idea of jolly Adam having a baby”

Intern- “......some of them do like Adam’s voice....”

How bad is it that, at 14:08, I am chortling over Chemenger's script in preference to listening to the repeat of TA.

I'm not great at dating babies, but if Lexi's babeh is due on 26 September, doesn't that suggest that the fertilisation clinic was busy over Christmas?

I wonder whether Grange Farm is going to be the Rewilding Project, thereby giving Ed a job for a couple of years. I can't see that Debbie/Adam/Brian would free up Home Farm land (unless getting shot of a few lambs has miraculously freed up 100 acres). The SWs have created quite a gordian knot with this one.

I still don’t understand why Lexi is doing this. She isn’t a really old friend of Adam and Ian’s. Or a relative. She won’t be (legally) paid and she will have lost the opportunity for paid work during her maternity leave. And her children must be somewhat puzzled by her taking this huge decision for people she doesn’t really know all that well, in a different country.

What have I missed in her motivation?

If Lexi's baby is due on 26th September, is that not exactly right for the day we know the AI was done, 8th January?

I thought the idea was that Adam and Ian are paying her some sort of allowance, or gift, which meant that she could afford to spend several months at home with her daughters, rather than having to come to the UK to earn money.

SW2 “yes! I have a great idea for Pip, she could explore her spirituality with Shula, maybe just once or twice a week. I think people would really enjoy some in-depth Cristian reflections. I personally don’t know much about the church but how complicated can it be”

I say this as a Christian who loves a good theological/spiritual discussion: PLEASE, GOD, NO.

If Lexi's baby is due on 26th September, is that not exactly right for the day we know the AI was done, 8th January?

That makes sense, if 26th September is 40 weeks, then conception (which is normally around week 2 - weird, but the clock starts from the last period) would have been around 3 Jan and presumably implantation is done a few days after that...

I think they only do the "counting from last period" thing because people tend not to be sure exactly when the fertilisation happened; in Lexi's case there would be a definite date for the implantation of the fertilised ovum, wouldn't there? And we know that was one week before 15th January when Adam said it was a week ago today and Ian was wondering why Lexi hadn't said anything yet.

I thought the idea was that Adam and Ian are paying her some sort of allowance, or gift,

The law says ‘reasonable expenses’ only, so I hope they consulted Usha!

Yes, but that's the point. The biology is that a full term pregnancy on average ends 38 weeks after fertilisation, so medicine uses the 40 week framework measured from the LMP on the assumption that conception took place two weeks after that.

You're a brave man, DDD! Most of us on this forum have actually been pregnant, and a fair few have been through IVF.

The surrogacy storyline makes me so cross I'm going to have to blank it out. Jennifer was unbearable.

Chemenger's dialogue is so much better than the real thing at the moment!

I do feel for the SWs in this one point - IRL, Brexit would be the all-consuming preoccupation of the various farmers and a good few of the business owners at present. But if they tried to reflect that at the moment they'd be rewriting and re-recording every day.

Cripes, I note that we're on 923 posts! Any thoughts about the next thread title? As ever, I'm happy to start the next one off unless anyone else fancies having a go. I don't think it will be necessary for a couple of days yet, though, unless something extraordinary happens tonight.

Sorry, you're right, I forgot I was on Mumsnet! I think it's a sign of how at home I feel on these threads that I did stop to think if I might be walking towards a mansplain moment.

Good spot that I've never been pregnant myself but I've been a close spectator to three of them - and with three premmies, I was quite conscious of how the 40-week timescale works. I think we found with previous Ambridge babies (Rosie and Jack) that the SWs seem to work fairly rigidly to the medical timescale.

*did NOT stop to think...