Archers thread #156: Fireworks in Ambridge! Helen gave Lee a rocket, but Grey Gables is a damp squib. Is the writing on the (church) wall?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, 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're irresistibly attracted to George Grundy, 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 to @OverArmour for the title suggestion, which I have tweaked a bit. I was strongly tempted by Less GGP (Grey Gables Peril) More GPP (Guinea Pig Plot), which was a plaintive cry from @PuppyPerson some days ago, but if Poppy has found new homes for the baby guinea pigs that may be the last we hear of them for some time, sadly.

Surely in the life of the next thread we must hear more from or of Rob, or Ron as some on this thread prefer to call him? <taps foot> Will Kirsty snap and tell Helen a few home truths? Will Pat's shotgun finally be brought into play? We can only hope ...

Also, will we ever find out who owns the other 60% of Grey Gables? Why is Adil AWOL (to use the other bit of OverArmour's title idea!)? Why aren't we hearing from Roy? Will GG ever re-open and will Emma get her Big Chance at last?

So many questions! Over to you.

Yes I think Helen has been retreating mentally from her relationship with Lee for a while.
Her breeziness with him when she said that he should just go to the US to be with his daughters was telling I think. She seemed to genuinely not mind if he went.
Rob turning up has clearly created a huge amount of angst and turmoil in Helen and I think at this point she just doesn't have the mental energy for any romantic relationship. It's like she can't bear to let him support her.
I'd LOVE an Esther Perel style spin off series where Helen finally commits to regular therapy and we get to listen in to each counselling session, she is a fascinating and realistic character imo!

Male piglets should be weaned and taken away from the mother and sisters at 3 weeks old, because they may be sexually mature by then and able to impregnate the others. Female piglets can stay until 4-5 weeks. It also depends on weight. And you need to check that they're able to feed properly independently. If there's an underweight boy, you can let it stay another few days as long as it's not displaying any sexual behaviour. It's helpful to the mother to leave the girls with her longer so that her milk dries up naturally - prevents infections.

I don't think the Button children or the other families were intending to take the pigs immediately, just choosing them for when they were ready. Unfortunately, it sounded as though they were being sold individually. I hope they're all going to families where they can be bonded with other pigs and aren't going to be alone!

I never got the feeling Helen was really into Lee. She's always found him a bit babyish and annoying but got kind of swept along with someone being interested in her.

I don't hate Helen as much as many people seem to (I find Lee a LOT more irritating, though even he doesn't piss me off as much as Pip, I can regularly be heard yelling "Oh fuck off Pip" in the kitchen) and I think her story has been done well - but poor Kirsty certainly has to do a ton of emotional heavy lifting!

My ex DH was a computer gamer and I thought it charming when we first met. and had no issue with it, even though it didn't interest me at all. By the end of our relationship, I fantasised about cutting the fecking phone wire which enabled the high speed internet he required for "live" gaming. I may also have run up to the en suite and flushed the loo every single time he was in the main shower once we'd split but were still living together because he was house hunting... 😬These things can creep up on you!

Checking in. Thanks Gasp0de

Thanks @Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g
Many good points made about Helen.

Oh we all marvelled at how incompatible Helen and Lee were when they first got together. I think I would have got the ick much sooner, but he made her feel safe. I wonder if Rob’s weakness due to illness has subconsciously led to the upping of the ick; she doesn’t need a physical protector now. Lee has shown he is not up to the task against Rob the master manipulator; he just doesn’t have the brains. Helen went way over the top at the bowling. She is such a crashing snob and she really is showing how much she looks down on him. I really hope he tells her some more home truths and then leaves. Poor Henry and Jack.

Sorry but this did make me laugh, I can totally picture you descending from loved up ignoring of the gaming to demonic chopping motions towards the wire. :)

The Guinea pig storyline is irritating and irresponsible (given that the BBC seem to love "educational storylines")... they should be selling the Guinea pig babies in pairs at a minimum (weren't there only 3, so at least one will be going on its own?), because they're social little creatures.

I’d completely forgotten about the equine hospital

Such education I’ve received about Guinea pigs from this thread! DH and I are both amazed at these facts.

You’ve said everything I was thinking.

Honestly @WitcheryDivine I remember standing over the wire with the scissors. Only my fear of being electrocuted saved it! 🤣🙈

😁

I would quite like to know what Alice did to keep the horses safe on bonfire night last year, when she had been in charge at The Stables for a couple of months. Whatever it was clearly worked, since there was no trouble with them, so why did she not just do the same thing when she was warned there would be fireworks being set off at one of the old people's sheltered housing bungalows in Manorfield Close?

Lee shouts an awful lot these days. I hope Helen holds her nerve and doesn’t capitulate to put an end to his whining and begging. She will be better off alone for some time to come. In fact, she should probably stop embarking on full-on relationships and stick to Tinder and looking after the boys for a few years.

They did that irritating thing again - Helen clearly about to dump Lee, move away to something else, come back and you’ve missed it.

If I were Lee I’d be asking when exactly did she mean to tell him? She told him then because he insisted on talking. How long was she planning on stringing him along?

He’ll be a lot better off with someone else. But he’s hurt and bewildered, and his faith in his understanding of the world will be shattered. He doesn’t deserve that

On another note, did I hear Ian talking about 'queer' being an insult when he was young? I was cooking at the time.

Place marking for when I catch up after my holiday!

It was an insult until relatively recently.

I haven't heard tonight's episode yet, saving it for my commute home shortly. But when I was an undergraduate about 20 years ago, when Ian would have been about 30, there was much debate in the LGB community about reclaiming the word queer. Some people still felt it was an insult, others wanted to own it. And it became increasingly useful as sexual and gender descriptors moved beyond straight/gay/ sometimes bi if you were lucky. I can imagine that even 10 years earlier, when Ian would have been reaching adulthood, it would still have been a full on insult along the lines of ponce.

Ian was born in September 1970, and in the seventies and eighties queer was certainly used as an insult, with queer-bashing going along with it; that became gay-bashing a little later. I agree with Ian: nasty difficult times for homosexual males, even if the act itself was theoretically legal for people over 21 in England from 1967 (but in NI not until 1982).

I think part of the Helen story arc at the moment is that bar her conversation with Kirsty, the audience has to piece together the signs, as it's all going on in her head too, so for us as amazing as it is to Lee, Ian and Adam.

I thought, and said on the last thread that Helen had got the ick and I suppose it's the constraints of the format and its being fiction, not RL so the SLs have to pile on a crapload of evidence, seemingly out of the blue.

Having said that I swore at my laptop this morning when Helen referred to "headspace". Blerurghhh. Jargon. I rather liked her dogged determination, not because it's good thing in itself, but because the whole scene could have just been a shouting match and there's not enough room, dramatically speaking, for two massively emoting characters. Of course now she has two men who refuse to stay out of her life. Not blaming Ian of course.

I think Lee’s fury and bewilderment are completely justified - if it hadn’t been for Helen he’d have put up more of a fight when his ex took his girls to San Francisco. He’s given up his flat and his kids for her. As usual everything is on Helen’s terms - nothing really changes for her, she’ll go back to her old life making cheese, turning down cake and being doggedly independent while living on her parents’ farm and being entirely surrounded by family. Everything has changed for Lee. There’s no going back for him. Helen really doesn’t give a toss - doesn’t even want to try. But more crucially she really doesn’t give a toss about Henry - born without a father to satisfy her own need for a child, forced to live with Knob and then with Knob’s horrific parents and then encouraged to form a relationship with Lee only to have the rug pulled from under him. It’s not going to end well.

Thanks.