🧦 Archers thread #133: Woolley socks it to them! Discuss The Archers and its Woolley thinking and plotting 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 would love to take part 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/4197199--The-Archers-spoilers-thread-6-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 @ButtonSister and @BorsetshireBanality for title suggestions. I went with their idea in the interests of keeping the title fairly short.

@LillianGish and @FoxgloveSummers made cracking but longer suggestions, which (mashed up) will do a great job of kicking off our new thread.

Evictions (Tom and Tash), depictions (Bridge Farm Christmas card), conniptions (entire cast and crew of the Mysteries), convictions (Philip) and addictions (Alice) - what are our predictions for 2022 in Ambridge? All sure to make this the Best Ambridge Christmas Evah!

This thread should take us through to early January unless something very exciting happens (ha ha, fat chance). My predictions: this is a bit left field, but I wonder if Peggy will offer to buy the shop and flat so Tom and Gnasher (great coinage, whose was it?) can stay put. I don't believe Hazel is sincere about wanting to live in/regularly visit Ambridge. She's always been utterly two-faced and rotten to the core, why would she change now?

The Mysteries will, of course be a triumph and briefly borrowing the🔮 (sorry, Bore!) I expect we are going to hear them at some point over the New Year period.

Over to you!

No one talking about the Bridge Farm news?

Tut!

@LiterallyKnowsBest

No one talking about the Bridge Farm news?

Tut!

No. I don't care.

Pat and Tone are going to need a considerably bigger cabinet.

TWINs!!!

Well, I was right - so I’m excited!

👶🏻👶🏻

I feel so awful for Kirsty. I remember the post-miscarriage irrational despair and she’s gone from that trauma to Philip and (I’m not sure how old she is) but she is probably getting to the end of her fertile years, without even factoring in the time required to meet and get together with someone long enough to know that they’re the right man to have a baby with. I just know that in her position my thoughts would be why does he get to have two when I couldn’t even have one. Hopefully she’s in a better place than that though.

@BeardieWeirdie

I feel so awful for Kirsty. I remember the post-miscarriage irrational despair and she’s gone from that trauma to Philip and (I’m not sure how old she is) but she is probably getting to the end of her fertile years, without even factoring in the time required to meet and get together with someone long enough to know that they’re the right man to have a baby with. I just know that in her position my thoughts would be why does he get to have two when I couldn’t even have one. Hopefully she’s in a better place than that though.

She has turkey baster Helen as a friend, if she wanted a child she could have tried sperm donation. The fact that she hasn't may indicate that she doesnt want to?

She is 40-almost 41.

I think this will be hard for Kirsty as well. I’m glad she didn’t have a Moss baby, but she would be a great mum.

It’s Bethany’s birthday on Sunday! Hope Mike doesn’t forget.

One might be tempted to feel sorry for Kirsty.

But, which living human woman, having been jilted at the altar by the scion of one of the most prominent families in a small village, would (after a period away) return to that exact village to manage the towels at the local hotel and lodge in the house of the jilter’s best man?

And … Nope, can’t be bothered to repeat with the Philip farrago - big house, job left, letting house, lodging, again, yoghurt …

(In fact, where was Kirsty during the Buyer Visitor Crisis at Bridge Farm? Is she no longer filling in at Bridge Farm?)

I resent having to repeatedly feels sorry for her. One would think some force field traps her in Ambridge - when there’s an entire world outside.

Kirsty lives in Ambridge. It’s her home. She has great friendships there. Why should she leave?

There is more to live than procreating. Why feel sorry for someone because she doesn't have children?

Tomtasha twins. They'll need a big house. Pat'n'Tony have a big house...

@Darker

Kirsty lives in Ambridge. It’s her home. She has great friendships there. Why should she leave?

She did leave and came back for no discernible reason.

@WhoppingBigBackside

There is more to live than procreating. Why feel sorry for someone because she doesn't have children?

Tomtasha twins. They'll need a big house. Pat'n'Tony have a big house...

Why feel sorry for her? Because she had a late term miscarriage. It’s not the same as sending unwanted pity to a happily successful child-free 40+ woman who is in the position she always wanted to be in.

I feel sorry for Kirsty because a late miscarriage must be a horrible thing to go through. Also, it's not clear that she's made a positive choice not to have children. Circumstances have been against her. Having said all of that, she's made some odd choices along the way, which haven't helped, and have put her in the position she is now.

Re Mike and his pre-diabetes diagnosis: this really shouldn't have been such a shock to Roy. I remember decades ago Mike was diagnosed with high cholesterol and Betty put him on a low-fat diet, which he hated. I assume he has a big beer belly.

(Of course, instead of killing Mike off with heart disease, the SWs did it to Betty because the actress wanted to retire and move to NZ.)

I feel sorry for Kirsty too! She’s had a shit run of things which unfortunately some people just do. She clearly wanted her baby and was gutted about losing it. Ambridge is the only home she has really known as an adult and what’s more she’s a huge countryside nut so sodding off to Birmingham or whatever would hardly appeal.

Tomtashtwins will OBVIOUSLY lead to even more attempted forcing out of Tony and Pat. Will they move in next to joy and Helen (buying another of the houses they could have built themselves)?

Twins. Oh dear. Natasha is going to run up a huge credit card bill kitting out the pair of them in Instagram worthy matching clothes and accessories. I’m sure she’d turn her nose down at any hand me downs from Helen.

Well I predicted Mike might be ill but Diabetes didn’t cross my mind. So he’s back in Ambridge so he can eat himself into a coma without Vicky interfering?

I do feel sorry for Kirsty, mainly because she has to live with dull Roy.

*turn her nose up, obviously!

@Darker

Kirsty lives in Ambridge. It’s her home. She has great friendships there. Why should she leave?

Before not-marrying Tom she had lived in Ambridge for a total of about four months. It is not her home. And with friends like Helen (who seems to have been the only reason she came back to a village where she had literally nothing but this person who had so comprehensively let her down: nowhere to live, no employment) who needs enemies?

It is not possible to have a great friendship with anyone as utterly mediocre as all the inhabitants of Ambridge anyway, but that one is particularly one-sided. Or would be if Kirsty were more of a person.

Given that the other twins are M/F, what will these ones be?

Names? Dennis and Geraldine are y first guess

Hopefully some girls as the Pat n Tone descendants are currently (I think) 4/5 male. But all the other twins in Ambridge are boy/girl.

Kirsty has been around for years! She and Tom were eco-warriors together in their youth.

She has a right to live among the people who are family to her - Roy, Helen, Pat, Patrick etc

@FoxgloveSummers

Hopefully some girls as the Pat n Tone descendants are currently (I think) 4/5 male. But all the other twins in Ambridge are boy/girl.

The Button twins are girls aren't they? Admittedly not first family and I would lay money on these being m/f.

Molly and Tilly Button aren't twins. There's a brother too I think

@WhoppingBigBackside

Molly and Tilly Button aren't twins. There's a brother too I think

OK. I don't know why I thought that.