🎄Archers thread #122: Deck the Hall with Eddie, Freddie 🎵 'Tis the Season to be jolly (but orange juice for you, Alice)

[Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g]

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

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 love Bert Fry’s poetry (as I do), 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/3853783--The-Archers-spoilers-thread-5-Cant-wait-for-7-02pm-Join-us-here, 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 @C8H10N4O2 for requesting an annoyingly cheerful thread title which might take us up to Christmas and to @Prestissimo for the title suggestion. I was strongly tempted by @LillianGish’s suggestion: Eddie’s turkeys, Freddie’s show, village green with lights aglow, Stir Up Sunday, Deck the Hall, Merry Christmas one and all - with apologies to Bert Fry and @R4’s suggestion Wassail to the Ambridge Not-A-Panto where Freddie gets nine LESSONS in directing from CAROLe Lynda. Top work, all!

Three days to go until we can return to Ambridge.

My list for Father Christmas

In the next few weeks I’d like:

• Freddie’s show to be a huge success

• Philip and Gavin to be driven out of the village with pitchforks into the waiting arms of the police, and the three ‘horses’ rescued and taken in by kind people who will help them turn their lives around

• Pip to take a perpetual vow of silence and leave for a nunnery

• a terrific Grundy Christmas (although the travails of Alice and Chris will overshadow things)

• Alice to lose the baby, as this seems the least grim option for us listeners; she leaves Chris and makes a fresh start of some kind

What do you all want for Christmas from The Archers?

A miscarriage would be a total cop-out. She could still choose to terminate (if she hurries). I want to hear her telling Christopher that she doesn't want a baby, and particularly not this accidentally conceived and potentially damaged baby, and that her decision to terminate does not need his approval. He seems to be thinking of her largely as an incubator for His Baby, one which has gone a bit on the fritz. But then like every man in Ambridge, he is madly broody. Never come across it (thank heaven) in real life.

@cheezy

Chris’ comment about how easily and convincingly she lied was sad, and spot on. I noticed it too.

But slightly odd that it comes as news to him. Surely he worked out that she'd been consistently lying to him for ages about how much she drank?

@theThreeofWeevils, IME, men are more broody than women. Women I know tended to be broody, and wanted a brood, or weren't that bothered.
It could just be the people I know though.

He did! That was what he was being sad about to Harrison: that he found it hard to care about her as he had done because he had discovered that she'd been lying to him for so long. He was conflicted because he knows he loves her (it's become a habit for him to think so) but he hates her for not just poisoning the baby but going on poisoning it, and for lying to him all along, and he doesn't see how he can do both.

The really sad thing will be when he notices that he stopped loving her a while ago but hadn't really taken it in because he "knows" that he does. I have watched this as a break-up starts; somehow the little things a person found charming and lovable about their partner start to appear to them as maddening tics, and the way they laugh is irritating, and nothing they do is endearing any more.

Astute observation, Asking. I've often detected that same thing from posts on the Relationships board here.

Halfway through the thread! I'm expecting to have to spring into action to start the next thread shortly before Christmas Day at this rate. Obviously, if Alice heads off to Lakey Hill on horseback tonight, things might accelerate a bit here ...

Surely only the mother can feel the baby's first movements?

Can Alive get Deliveroo in Ambridge? They happily pick up groceries and booze from local convenience stores round here.

So we know that Alice thinks nothing of going for a run (not that I've had a detox, but wouldn't she feel exhausted)!

I think we are being set up to have her jump in her car and head over to the stables this week....

I doubt they can get deliveroo in Abridge. I live in a similarly rural area and there's no chance!

how many weeks is she?

Anyone else get the feeling of impending doom re Kirsty? I had it pre Nigel's fall when he and Lizzie were so in love, he said lovely things to her and gave her a necklace which made me wonder what they were about to do. Same here 'you deserve your happy ending... at least you have Phillip, he's where home is etc)

StillWeRise
how many weeks is she?

Alice was "bang on twelve weeks" on 6th October, 2020, according to the midwife. So she is twenty-one weeks now.

Cutting it a bit fine for arranging a termination.

A termination at that stage would be really distressing.

too fine really
also very distressing to miscarry at that stage
(of course it is always awful to lose a baby, but this is fiction)

This one is going to be the Uplifting Story with the moral it is never too late to give up drink and save a baby.

This is not really true, because drink taken in the first three months is worst, but it is going to be the Uplifting Story even so.

(I am always wrong about prophecies, so I am saying this loud and clear.)

Yes it was utterly ridiculous that Chris would be able to feel kicks at that stage. Presumably therefore just a plot device, so that when she loses it/decides to secretly terminate "cos I need to be able to drink" / just descends into a catatonic mess again, he'll be even more aghast at what she's doing to their baby.

If babies mostly start to kick when they are between 16 and 24 weeks in utero, and Alice is 21 weeks pregnant, isn't it possible?

I felt #1 kick at 20 weeks and #2 at 15 weeks (#1 clearly ruined my body 😂)

When Alice arrived home I had expected Chris to mention her horse, about which/who Shula was so concerned.

When Shula first brought it up, I thought Chris might have given the treatment the go-ahead on Alice's behalf. He knows about horses (obv) and Alice would surely not mind him taking that decision.

When Shula first brought it up, I thought Chris might have given the treatment the go-ahead on Alice's behalf. He knows about horses (obv) and Alice would surely not mind him taking that decision.

Yes, I did also think that, then wondered if there was maybe some sort of professional conduct rule for vets that requires them only to take instructions from the animal’s owner unless the owner has given advance consent for others to act on her behalf?

Or the animal is in acute distress and the owner can’t be found.

Perhaps she'll take the horse out unaware of it's kissing spine thingy, which will lead to the expulsion of the poor little Chrisalis.

I don’t think a termination is on the cards any more. She seems to have moved passed that point and is happy pretending to herself that she wants the baby. Miscarriage must be imminent.

Chris is doing my head in so God knows what he’s doing to Alice. Would a husband really behave so stupidly? The gaoler act feels like a textbook lesson in what not to do. I would be texting Felix if I was Alice too.

I imagine Felix to be Byron-esque in looks, used to languidly lounging on sofas, smoking elegantly and leading ladies astray while he does the odd piece of freelance writing and his trust fund keeps him afloat.

If I was Chris I think I'd be in the same state. Desperate.

Obviously the right kind of time for mum to feel kicks, but it's several weeks later that someone external can feel those kicks, iirc.

Chris is doing my head in so God knows what he’s doing to Alice. Would a husband really behave so stupidly?

Probably. He's totally out of his depth. He's got no one supporting him - he's not going to go back to Harrison, because Alice is so determined that no one must know. He appears not to know about Al-Anon or any other groups. He doesn't know how he should behave or how best to support Alice. He understands he doesn't trust her, but doesn't know how to deal with it.

Alice thinks it only affects her, so doesn't really see where Chris is coming from. She wouldn't have told him anything about the clinic if she could have avoided it, but felt it was the only way to get him off her back. And she hasn't admitted she still has a real problem because she doesn't see herself as a "proper alcoholic" like others in the clinic so it doesn't really matter what Chris does until she is honest with herself, though she will turn it back on him, "you were on my back all the time, I had to have a drink because of the pressure, you made me do it, you didn't trust me anyway, so I might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb."