🎭 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.

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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!

Anyone else think the blessing was a bit of solace as Martha won't make it? Horrible for Alice, I was visited in recovery by a clergyman who was a colleague of my husband, he was "just passing by and saw my name on the door ". It wasn't visiting time, I wasn't an Anglican, I didn't want to make small talk or be prayed for, with or over- I was so angry!

I woke up after an operation once and found our local vicar kneeling by the bed! He had intended to drop in before the op to have a chat, but they took me in early so he arrived after I'd been brought back to the ward.

It was something of a shock. I redirected him to the patient in the bed opposite who'd had a gangrenous leg amputated nearly at the thigh and was quite likely to die (and did that night), and so had greater need of his prayers than I did.

Alice was petrified and shocked at going into labour so early.
She gave up drinking very early on, i bet this baby will be fine.

Was tonight all about baby? I really don't care.

@Esse321

Alice was petrified and shocked at going into labour so early. She gave up drinking very early on, i bet this baby will be fine.

The risk to the baby because of heavy drinking is in the early weeks. Giving up at the stage she did won't undo the damage.

Martha Carter is truly awful name.

She gave up drinking quite late in the pregnancy by early foetal development standards (the first trimester is when alcohol does most damage) and she had been drinking heavily enough before that to have passed out beside the road. Her withdrawal horrors and hallucinating the dead baby in the bath were on 19th November, 2020, and she had been "bang on twelve weeks" according to both her and the midwife on 6th October.

I think post natal psychosis may be on the cards. I don't think they've done that one before and awareness does need raising, but it'll be a bit grim if they do.

Martha Carter sounds OK and is probably the least of her problems.

I have a lot to catch up on
I haven't listened since last week

I'm gate crashing so hate me but maybe someone will find kindness to indulge...

How did they choose the names?

Jasmine after Jazzer ok, I get that.
Martha is after...
People online were predicting Martha before it was announced, but I don't know why. What is the connection between Carters & "Martha"?

thanks in advance.

She was drinking a dangerous amount of alcohol for the first 10 weeks or so. Dangerous for her health, never mind the baby's.

Martha Carter is too similar to my much better suggestion. Martha makes me think of the scandinavian name Marta (nothing to do with Martha) so it seems a bit too similar to me.

Middle names are rarely used, so not that important.

Chris made an "Arthur or Martha" remark last week, and Alice said he seemed to like Martha. It definitely clashes with Jasmine, not the same idiom at all, and is terrible next to Carter!

Was it absence of love that made Alice refuse to hold the baby, or was it guilt and fear to touch something she had damaged?

Rough times ahead. Chris is picking a side I think. If it's Alice it the baby, the baby will win every time. Which is going to be tough for Alice as she really, really needs support and was clearly struggling to even be in the same space as the baby if she had to think about what might happen.

Ahh... ok, foreshadowing from last week. Do we know why Chris liked those names?

I mostly hang out on a Facebook group where we all have a love-hate relationship with TA. so I'm afraid I will feel glee if Alice suffers. The lovely Chris deserves better, too. But couldn't stand any storyline where a child suffers like FAS could make them unhappy. I will seriously stop most listening to TA is MJC has a lot of FAS issues.

@ILoveShula, I very much at 'Magna'. Ta for that.
Of course Chris will prioritise the infant over his wicked wife who drank and didn't really want a baby anyway. What decent addle-brained baby-rabid Ambridge bloke would do otherwise?
Plus I suppose someone needs to be on its side. I wonder how Alish will be punished.

Iwonder how Alish will be punished

Severely I hope.

She doesn’t want to hold her, doesn’t care what she’s called. If this were anywhere but Ambridge it needn't mean a thing. Not everyone has instant bonding. I didn't want to hold mine when he was offered to me as I surfaced from the GA - I really hope all the people in the recovery room weren't thinking "how horrible". Remember "Alice was petrified and shocked at going into labour so early.". But of course this is Ambridge, where every action or word is significant, so this probably will presage some sort of rejection of the baby.

Friend was exhausted after C-section after long labour. When they brought baby in, friend asked if the nurses could just look after him for a little while. Friend was quite put out to see "Mother disinterested" on her notes later on. But amused too.

That's real life, tbf. Things are supposed to be more meaningful in fiction.

@MereDintofPandiculation I’m sorry for upsetting you, I’m sure nobody thought any the worse of you and I intended no offence. My friend, in a similar position, told the midwife “no thank you, I’m ok” when coming around after GA and asked if she wanted to hold her (much wanted) baby. It didn’t feel like Alice was in shock or had PND - just that she didn’t want anything to do with her baby, a baby she had never wanted before or following conception. I was surprised at Chris having apparently washed his hands of Alice quite so quickly.

@BeardieWeirdie No need to apologise, I was being oversensitive. I guess we'll find out what they meant, it is probably going to be Alice with PND or Alice rejecting baby and not Alice in shock after early labour.

The nurses told me I had a beautiful baby, while not allowing me to touch him: they'd whipped him into a portable incubator and I was unable to walk because of the epidural. I looked at him dispassionately and said "I wouldn't say beautiful exactly: he looks like a wrinkled prune. A nice prune, but a prune." (He was very premature.) That was the last I saw of him for almost twelve hours: I was sent to a ward, he was whisked off to the SCBU, and until I'd got back the use of my legs I wasn't able to go and look for him. I did in the end, when I completely lost patience in the middle of the night, and found him, and with him I stayed, growling at anyone who tried to get me to leave; the doctor on ward rounds in the morning didn't know where I was and there was a panic.

This went on my notes as "rejected baby". Took my GP weeks to get that removed.

The only previous Martha I can think of is Martha Woodford who would decorate the phone box with hanging baskets. Whether she ever had anything do with Chris when he was little I don't remember.

Whether she ever had anything do with Chris when he was little I don't remember.

That was exactly my thought, EBear. Mollie Harris, who played Martha, died in 1995 - so Chris would presumably have been acquainted with her for at least the first seven years of his life. (I'm not sure exactly when Martha was officially killed off on the show.)

I like the Village Shop/Post Office thread from her, through Susan to the new baby. Though having a vicar hovering over your first few hours of life doesn't look ... hopeful.

Guess we'll see.

I know Alice didn’t want to get pregnant but hearing the absence of love for her daughter was horrible

I don't think it's an absence of love so much as sheer terror of the whole situation and guilt that she may have caused damage to the baby. Plus, quite conceivably, the lead-in to PND.

Anyone else think the blessing was a bit of solace as Martha won't make it?

Yes, @FlosCampi, sadly I think you are right. It felt more like the last rites...especially with Brian in the background excitedly tucking into his celebratory fry-up and proudly talking about his favourite daughter...