🎭 Archers thread 125: Ambridge Mysteries! The Case Of The Missing Pandemic. Where Is Pat? What Is Lynda Snell's Kompromat? Follow the clues and discuss The Archers here.

[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’d love to be in the Mysteries, 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 for thread title ideas to @Roysnewshirt and @Witchwife. Apologies if I’ve forgotten anyone else.

Do we think the Mysteries replace the usual fun storylines around giving things up for Lent? Light relief while we wait to see if the SWs go for realism and tragedy when Alice’s baby is born, or bottle out (as it were) and go for everything being fine? Will Jazzer and Tracy get back together again? (No bookie in the land would take money for that, of course they will.)

Over to you!

Only the Grundys and their partners have had wanted pregnancies in Ambridge in my memory. And before that, David and Ruth. How many unintended pregnancies can we tot up in the last 30 years?

Wiwyum was unplanned, Ed wasn't.
George was unplanned, Keira wasn't.

Ruth had an unplanned pregnancy but miscarried. I think that Ben was an accident too.

Phoebe was AFAIK unplanned.

Adam was unplanned. Debbie, Kate and maybe Alice were planned. Ruairi was planned by his mother but not his father.

Jamie was unplanned
Bethany was unplanned.
Rosie was unplanned.
Magna the Chrysalis was unplanned.
Elizabeth had an unplanned pregnancy that was terminated.

Ambridge contaception isn't very reliable.

I forgot Kirsty and Annette.

And Helen's two sons.

Bethany wasn't so much unplanned as Vicky didn't think she could get pregnant.

And you have to add in all the planned babies: Lily and Freddie, Pip and Josh, Poppy, Daniel, Henry (and Jack).

In the UK currently according to Public Health England 1/3 of pregnancies are unplanned or welcomed ambivalently (I think Chris and Alice's baby would more comfortably fit in the ambivalent category). (some reports suggest it is 45%).

Please can posters stop calling Helen's Jack a planned pregnancy? He was the product of rape. We don't even know if Rob planned to get her pregnant, although this is sometimes a tactic of abusers - "barefoot and pregnant", unable to escape.

We don't even know if Rob planned to get her pregnant

Oh, I think we do.

I think we can be fairly sure that after living in Ambridge for a year or so Rob had absorbed whatever it is in Ambridge which makes all men there baby-besotted, and wanted a son. Didn't he at one point tell Helen that he was going to go on having unprotected sex with her until she conceived?

Any ideas for what the Carter baby will be called?

If they want a family connection, Susanna(h) might be a possibility, or even Peggy or some other variant of Margaret. Wasn't Susan's mum called Ivy? I gather that's having a renaissance. Jennifer for middle name? Brianna is probably a bit of a stretch. Has Neale been used as a girl's name? I can't imagine any other spelling of that has been.

Ivy Margaret would be very 'now'.

She's called Magna.

@theThreeofWeevils

fatherhood and pig farming insofar as a meaningful distinction can be drawn between the two... Gilts by association . Do we really need another Ambridge man besotted with blasted babies?

Gilts by association

And yes, we know the besottedness is the way of the Ambridge world. Resistance is futile.

@ILoveShula

She's called Magna.

I think that is one for the nicknames, if that would be ok?

I only just twigged re Magna. I am slow today. Doh.

I don't get "Magna", is it a booze joke?

@WitchWife

I don't get "Magna", is it a booze joke?

Magna Carta?

ohhh wow I did not get that and just thought Magners...

FAS could take years to diagnose. So we potentially have years of clunky incidental comments from the SWs “oooh little Magna has got Alice’s eyes but I wonder which side of the family she gets her thin lips from” etc...

In truth I can see Alice liking 'Maggie' as a name ...

(Though if the baby survives I guess it might mean the shuffling of Peggy - one in, one out style.)

I think ThreeofWeevils raised an interesting point - and that this thread is exactly the correct venue for the discussion of interesting points arising from the script and from our varied experience of issues surrounding the story.

"Does Magna Carter mean nothing to you? Did she die in vain?"

Little Magna will probably live but be forever shadowed by her half-cousin Dander, who as I type is writing his thesis on sustainable agriculture.

@PursuingProxemicExactitude

In truth I can see Alice liking 'Maggie' as a name ...

(Though if the baby survives I guess it might mean the shuffling of Peggy - one in, one out style.)

I think ThreeofWeevils raised an interesting point - and that this thread is exactly the correct venue for the discussion of interesting points arising from the script and from our varied experience of issues surrounding the story.

The overwhelming majority of midwives in TA since Lowfield started in 1996 have been female. I can think of Kate's "Morwena" (real name Maureen); Elizabeth's midwife for the twins was called "her" by Nigel; Amy Franks; Ruth's midwife with Ben was female but I don't think she had a name; Siobhán's was referred to as "she"; Emma's was described as "a clone of Bridget-the-Social-worker"; Hayley's was a woman who advised her to go into hospital even though it was too early for her to be in labour (it wasn't); Vicky was warned about the possibility of a Down's baby by a female midwife (called Natalie I think) who wanted her to see a consultant; Helen had the giggly girl who fancied Rob (played by Katie Redford, who is now Lily Pargetter) and then a female midwife in the mother-and-baby unit in prison; Pip's midwife was referred to as "she"; Alice's midwife was called Lauren when we met her, and played by Laura Rollins.

Lexi's midwife is the exception: he was called Brett and played by Sargon Yelda.

Emma’s vehement insistence that Chris not drive to Alice seemed really odd. It could have been totally the wrong thing to do.

@SparklingLime

Emma’s vehement insistence that Chris not drive to Alice seemed really odd. It could have been totally the wrong thing to do.

She said the ambulance was on it's way and they should meet at the hospital. It made sense to me, there was no point rushing to where she started off, she wasn't there any more.

I meant later when C & E were at the hospital and Emma insisted that they not drive to Jim’s car, @CaptainMyCaptain.

And Helen's two sons.

Henry was planned to the nth degree. And Jack was planned by his father.