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Original poster

Call #111 for Archers advice: Is Hilda breathing? Should Joy be breathing? Could Nelson Gabriel be in cryogenic suspension? Discuss The Archers here.

977 replies

Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g · 23/10/2019 17:53

Archers Thank you, @PseudoBadger, for kicking off this long, long series of Archers threads.

Archers 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 Joy's best friend or other unusual views. Grin

Archers 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!

Archers 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 for all the input on title suggestions. I'd missed the significance of 111, but @R4 and DDD, our resident numerologist, were right on to it. Strongly tempted by Bore's suggestion but couldn't resist the chance to mention my favourite ever Archers character, Nelson Gabriel. Have not managed to incorporate a cricket reference, so you'll have to read up on that for yourselves. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nelson_(cricket)

I wonder if this thread will last till Joe's funeral.

OP posts:
CaptainMyCaptain · 04/11/2019 20:16

Definitely a cliff has
cliffhanger obviously.

StillWeRise · 04/11/2019 20:29

she went into the house and there he was, changing a baby's nappy

LizzieMizzy · 04/11/2019 20:39

Maybe the surprised response was coz she was so young, and it turns out, an ex student too. Lily discovers she's one of a string of students he's been with, and he moves on every couple of years when he gets bored.

MissBarbary · 04/11/2019 20:41

Why on earth would Rex want to go to whatshername's wedding? Is Toby really, really stupid?

Choccyp1g · 04/11/2019 20:45

Maybe Lara told her they were never married.

MissBarbary · 04/11/2019 20:46

Ooh very exciting. Lily really is such a silly young woman.

HelloYouTwo · 04/11/2019 20:58

Have the SWs stolen parts of the plot of An Education? Although Lily never seems to have actually had much fun with Russ.

birdsdestiny · 04/11/2019 21:14

Can't be a student as he wouldn't have still been working at the college. Pregnant is the most obvious.

MissBarbary · 04/11/2019 21:17

surely Freddie wouldn't have just said 'I'd be surprised'

That sounds more like she is either far younger or far older than expected.

The whole story line is such nonsense. I think we know CMR and Mrs CMR jointly own a house. CMR has no money beyond what Lizzie is now paying for the gallery work but for a long time he was broke. Mrs CMR however seems to be doing fine financially without him (there's been no mention of money)

It is incredible that Lily would have not asked questions/ done some googling about Mrs CMR.

MissBarbary · 04/11/2019 21:21

Surely the very first thing she would have done after her eyes met his over the Gwen John would be to devour the married couple’s FB stuff? By now she would knoweverythingabout his wife

Not everyone is on Facebook. I'm not but I would have assumed Mrs CMR was of similar work status as CMR so would have a professional online presence.

inkysplatter · 04/11/2019 21:45

So I suppose we are to assume that Russ isn't on Facebook, or if he is/was Lily doesn't know. Even people who don't use it much show up on other profiles. I hate the platform, but it's inconceivable that in 2019 that Lily would drive out to meet her before looking online.

MissBarbary · 04/11/2019 22:04

Even people who don't use it much show up on other profiles

I don't have a Facebook profile. People who know me know I don't want any photos of me on their profiles but I agree it's very odd Lily would not have checked for an online presence.

LizzieMizzy · 04/11/2019 22:18

She may have checked online but found nothing. To me it's inconceivable that she'd been with CMR all his time and not asked to see a pic of his 'wife'. I'd ask to see a pic out of curiosity. Why wouldn't you?!

StillWeRise · 04/11/2019 22:41

she could be really young but not have been his student
maybe she is....22? and has a baby
and tells her that she has been trying to get a divorce off him
and, she's black

C8H10N4O2 · 04/11/2019 23:15

he tells Lily she has been TRYING to divorce him but he keeps talking about 'wanting to give things another chance' and they've been going to Relate

Yes I'd have thought that or the fact that the wife turns out to be another ex student and not the first wife was more likely than pregnant. They have already done the "unreasonable ex wife actually turns out to be both reasonable and pregnant" with Rob.

SurpriseSparDay · 05/11/2019 02:06

There do seem to be similarities, HelloYouTwo!

Wouldn’t it be extraordinary if, once the truth is revealed (whatever it is,) Lily turns on Elizabeth and blames her mother for everything: not protecting her from Russ, not dissuading her from moving to Manchester with him, not throwing him out when Manchester was a disaster, giving him a job at LL, being blinded by his ... well you couldn’t exactly call it charm.

Poor Elizabeth will be hot footing it back to her therapist.

StVincent · 05/11/2019 02:12

Ok different idea - a child? Either the “bus woman” is actually Russ’s adult/similar age to Lily child (can’t remember his age), or she is Mrs Russ but has a child in pushchair for example, or is holding the hand of one coming up the road. If she doesn’t know what his wife looks like, she could easily not know he has a kid (of any age).

SurpriseSparDay · 05/11/2019 02:20

That’s possible ... But it would make him so sinister. Hard to imagine that in his very early, presumably fairly lighthearted conversations with Lily he wouldn’t have mentioned a child, if he has one. It would be unreasonably ... calculated to develop a relationship with her while deliberately omitting such a thing.

Original poster
Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g · 05/11/2019 07:29

Hmmm.

I don't think the surprise was because she wasn't white. Ambridge/Borsetshire is a very tolerant place as we know from the visits of Kate's SA family so nobody would bat an eyelid at someone having a partner of a different ethnicity. (I don't live in the country so maybe I'm displaying a London-centric bias here, but I don't actually believe that's how it would be in the rural West Midlands. However, the BBC ticked the rural racism box with the Roy of the Racists incident decades ago and then hastily moved on.)

I'll be annoyed if she turns out to be pregnant because that's such a blatant copy of the Rob/Helen/whatshername storyline of a few years ago. Surely if she'd had a child with her or had a visible disability Lily and Freddie would have said so? Of course, I'm expecting realism here, which shows I'm a slow learner ...

My hunch is that she's much, much younger than Russ, not much older than Lily. Do we know how long Russ had been at Borchester College? He could have taken up with Lara at his previous place of employment, left in a hurry with Lara in tow, got bored, started looking for his next 16yo girl. Yeugh.

If Lara is also very young and gave up her academic hopes for Russ or elected to study at Felpersham University to be near him, she probably doesn't have much money, so has to travel on the bus.

This being TA, of course, we can't expect that Lily does what any sane person would do, viz, immediately seeks Russ out to confront him about what shes's learned. She'll stew over it for days so we can have a convenient cliffhanger on Friday.

OP posts:
chemenger · 05/11/2019 08:00

I’m going off piste with Lara being his mother, not his wife, and his whole marriage being a fantasy. Russ has no assets and has been living with his mum until he met Lily.

Original poster
Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g · 05/11/2019 08:06

Good one, chemenger!

OP posts:
R4 · 05/11/2019 08:07

Teachers are allowed to have a presence on FB but it must be on extreme lockdown precisely to prevent their students trying to snoop on them. CMR could easily invent some reason to start a brand new page when he left his wife teaching.
The weird thing is, like a lot of incomers to the sagaHmm, Russ doesn't seem to have any other family either. You would think by now that Lily would have met parents or siblings.

SurpriseSparDay · 05/11/2019 08:19

Russ apparently went to see his parents quite early on in his relationship with Lily - and reported, iirc, that they were somewhat displeased.

But neither we nor Lily have ever met them - so it’s possible they are not exactly as described by him.

R4 · 05/11/2019 08:26

Talking of relationships, did anybody else find it weird that, once Kate and Jakob were back together, the whole village seems to have gone into overdrive and not merely accepted them as "official" but as "they're practically married now".

LillianGish · 05/11/2019 08:43

I was just coming on to say I wondered if it was his mum, but Chemenger has beaten me to it. She could be pregnant I suppose, but that would be such a repeat of the Knob storyline and is he/isn’t he the father? We know his job was real though so it’s not the case that he was a total fantasist - no job, no wife. How long has he been with Lily? I find it hard to believe she has done no digging at all before this point - especially knowing the kind of resourceful person Lily is. All will be revealed tonight I suppose - and then Lily will burn down the stables.