Archers thread #150: For whom the sausage rolls: George over a Berrow, Fallon & Harrison seek new lease on life, is it all a Fête Accompli? Discuss The Snivelling Simpletons, sorry, 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, and of course we are always delighted to welcome back former or occasional listeners/posters. We don't all agree on all points, although we do mostly try to be civil about it. Most of us are posting tongue in cheek a lot of the time, so don't worry about revealing that you think people frequently miss their own weddings because of a morning quickie while in a plaster cast, 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/4636789-the-archers-spoilers-thread-7-cant-wait-for-702pm-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 title suggestions. I basically took @OverArmour's excellent suggestion and managed to shoehorn in snivelling simpleton, gloriously coined by @Eastie77Returns to refer to Lee in the first instance.

@WitcheryDivine suggested Recharging, Red Kites and The Man They Call Ron, is Ambridge becoming an earthly paradise or a hell on earth? which seems as good a place as any to kick off our discussions! Ron = Rob, a fortuitous typo on a previous thread. It does feel a bit as if we're marking time before he turns up again. Odd to do what could be a high profile storyline over the summer holidays when a lot of people will be away, but depending on your point of view, maybe that's a blessing!

Whither George? Is he shaping up to be Andrew Tate mark 2?

Everybody looking forward to Ferret Fun at the Fête? Me neither.

Over to you!

Yes, and I can see him putting a condition on it, though I can’t think what. Maybe we’ll have to wait until Jack is 18 and he gets a letter or video or something from Knob.

Ha! Fifty grand for Jack. Only Jack. Which Pat and Tony will feel compelled to match for Henry. Do we hear Tom wailing and whining that the Starry Twins absolutely must be treated equally?

Kirsty isn't fat, she's got that kind of figure that gardeners have - so like tanned and sinewy. She never says no to a biscuit but all her spare time is spent clearing bracken or hiking up something or straining the Am with a sieve etc. I think she's outdoors pretty much all daylight hours given the choice. Plus now of course burning off calories with the vet's brother who I keep wanting to call Klaus.

I don't think Kirsty is fat either. She's outdoorsy, does wild swimming etc. I imagine her as being medium height medium build.

So at the moment Josh, Lily and the vet nurse guy are living at The Stables? And Freddie is doing whatever DJs do on luxury Summer coasts / islands? So Elizabeth has no offspring at home. Presumably she and Vince are taking full advantage of this new found privacy. Otherwise we’d surely be hearing all about her empty nest.

Ugh Lee is a twat! But also Helen is wrong IMO. She needs to tell Henry what's happening. I also think she should set up one contact for Rob and Jack. Lee is only thinking about things from a dad's point of view (because he's nice-but-dim) whereas Helen is only thinking from her own perspective. She's not thinking that her little boys will grow into adult men and will have questions for her. Being denied the opportunity to meet his father just once will probably be unforgivable for jack. Children don't tend to believe their mothers about domestic abuse (unless they have been subject to a campaign of influence about it over a long time, which Helen to her credit hasn't done) and even if he does believe her, he is most likely to think her wrong for not allowing him one meeting with him when he was helpless and dying.

This. Strong. Wholesome. Not fat.

@WilkinsonM
Children don't tend to believe their mothers about domestic abuse (unless they have been subject to a campaign of influence about it over a long time, which Helen to her credit hasn't done)

Um you sound like no mothers are ever to be believed on the subject?

Children who've experienced unsubtle abuse either when parents were together or post-separation) believe it

Children who've had really good education and possibly therapy around healthy boundaries (from their mums plus professionals) believe it

I think you mean that it's v hard for children to believe, especially if they still have some kind of functioning relationship with their dad, and that mothers have to be very careful to only tell their children objective facts and at an appropriate age.

As I've said before, Helen's in an impossible position.

She could really do with professional advice from a children's / YA therapist who has specialised in domestic abuse.

Do I? How remiss of me, I must have communicated my point very poorly!
as a social worker, I've worked with many families where mum left dad due to abuse but the kids gravitate back towards dad at a later point and either don't believe mum or minimise what she says because they are children/teens and they find it really hard to imagine nice dad being so awful to their mum. In Jack's case he never met his dad so the potential for building him up into a tragic misunderstood dad figure is real.
I do mean a variation of your last paragraph, yes. And when you add in dad being dead and never having had a chance to meet him because your mum didn't let you...it's a recipe for resentment.

I don't think Helen has ever made the slightest effort to help either of her sons come to terms with anything, or to explain anything to them, and when therapy for Henry (after the abuse by Rob, an attempted murder in his presence, and his mother's incarceration which meant he lived without her in the house that was the scene of that violence) was suggested Helen rejected the idea out of hand.

She has been too determined to be strong and in control really to consider the effect of anything on anyone else, over the years. One of her interpretations of "in control" is that if nobody else is told anything then she is the only one who is in control of whatever it it. Thus for instance not telling her parents or anyone else that she was going out with Greg until she moved in with him, and pretty-much everything she has done since. It seems as if secrets are control, to Helen.

(Has she yet told Henry about his paternity? We have never heard that she did, though she once claimed to Ian that she was going to.)

It's such a hard one. We had two bastards in our family and I was given the chance to meet one of them (when I was an adult) and not the other (who died when I was a child). I think it's difficult with Helen's sons though as they are still very young. TBH I find myself thinking - so what if they meet him and think he's ok as a person and then he dies? Less trauma for them, and if she wants to tell them about it when they're grown ups they'll be able to take it in. I'm more worried about Tony going round yelling seemingly to anyone he'll listen about Rob's sexual abuse/Helen being raped, which I certainly don't remember him doing before recently.

That doesn’t mean she’s fat. She may be one of those irritating people who seem to be able to eat what they like and never put on an ounce. It’s more likely to be the veering on overweight and desperately trying to keep it under control who will refuse a biscuit.

I was lolling at George finding his new bff/intellectual equal in a 12 year old boy...

Agreed @booksandbrooks - Lee is irritating but he is absolutely entitled to be upset about missing his child's birthday because she's thousands of miles away. Hellin was really callous about that - and imagine the wailing if she had miss Henwy's!

Diabetics too tend to refuse biscuits. That would be about five million of the population, at present.

We haven't heard that Kirsty is diabetic, though? I'm trying to demolish the argument put forward by a PP that Kirsty doesn't refuse biscuits and therefore is overweight.

No definitely not fat. Muscular and outdoorsy. She can eat biscuits because she's active and strong.

I bet she does live in fleeces in winter, but I don't see t-shirts or vest tops being a problem in summer. Her problem is more likely to be whether brambles and nettles make shorts impractical.

I expect she doesn't dress that differently from Pip/Ruth/Stella, except they might wear overalls some of the time. They probably wear wellies, or work boots whereas Kirsty will be in hiking boots most of the time.

No, we haven't. It's just that there are many reasons to refuse biscuits (none applying to Kirsty, because she doesn't) as well as trying not to put on weight; my mother for instance had whatever the opposite of a sweet tooth is, cheerfully ate lemons as if they were oranges, and loathed sweet biscuits, which are pretty-much the only sort you get offered as a rule.

Some irritating people can eat biscuits all day and stay at a BMI below 20, too, which I suppose is some sort of body-type thing.

Agree @JesusMaryAndJosephAndTheWeeDon - I think she'd wear vest tops without a bra and drive the elderly campers wild. Note that she was perfectly ready to have a first date with whats-he-called that involved stripping to a cossie and jumping in the Am!

Erik.

Some irritating people can eat biscuits all day and stay at a BMI below 20, too, which I suppose is some sort of body-type thing.
I doubt that. Biscuits tend to be highly calorific.
I'd probably refuse a biscuit or cake unless it was a particularly nice one. Most of them usually look a lot nicer than they are, so why bother.

I'm not following - why is there a discussion about the size of a radio character?

(I refuse biscuits - am not fat, on a "diet", diabetic.....)

Idle speculation only 😊

I quite enjoy hearing about how other people picture the characters differently, not usually their size but maybe their hair colour or taste in shoes.

@BadMotorhomeParent we’re discussing whether, according to our imagined characterisations of Kirsty, the SW’s scene of her borrowing a dress from Helen seems accurate or … cavalier and lacking in verisimilitude.

Yeah if she was overweight she'd be unlikely to be so keen to strip off with Erik. She's been into wild swimming since before it was fashionable.