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.

That’s what I mean about clarrie enabling him though - there are many times she could have left him to deal with the problems he caused himself but she is always in the background working and keeping the house. He completely takes her for granted but gets away with it by building a gazebo or other grand gestures

I’ve always hated the patronising view that the poor are all good as it in some way tries to justify keeping people poor and dehumanises them into a class that needs charity and the MC to represent them

Clarrie's father, Jethro Larkin, was much more like Neil than Eddie and Joe - a steady worker who kept on the right side of the law. Why she married Eddie is a mystery. She must have known what a feckless bunch the Grundys were, and had a good idea that she would be expected to do everything around the house and bring up the children while also probably having to earn the only steady income coming into the house while chancers Joe and Eddie messed about with endless scams and supposedly time- or money-saving shortcuts on the farm that usually went badly wrong. It would have been a good twist if Clarrie had left Eddie when he lost the farm through his own stupidity and inability to face awkward facts, and made a life for herself and the boys living in a rented place while still working at Bridge Farm and/or The Bull. Eddie and Joe could have languished in Meadow Rise, gazing in bafflement at the washing machine and the microwave. Latter day Steptoe and Son.

For once Helen is thinking clearly and
making sense about Jack seeing Rob and everyone is telling her she's wrong. Apart from Lee 🙄 I wish she would seek some sensible professional advice. Even speaking to the safeguarding lead at school would be better than her friends and family at this point.

Why she married Eddie is a mystery.
because William was on the way

Actually come to think of it wouldn't the safeguarding teams already be all over Jack and Henry?

And she loves him.
And she was plump - several hilarious storylines about this - and wasn't she afraid Jolene would take her man? Wasn't that half the point of Jolene?

The Grundy characters were written as country yokels by the then SWs (who were probably Oxbridge educated - posh, anyway). Joe replaced Walter Gabriel as the useless farmer to be contrasted with The Archer farming family. Partly because, I think, Walter had got too popular for the role. (I couldn't stand Walter myself, though.)

The original characters were defined by SWs and Editors in the last century. The current SWs have fleshed out the cardboard Grundy characters into real people.

IMHO

No, you're thinking of Neil and Susan. They got married because Emma was on the way. Clarrie and Eddie married in 1981 and William was born in 1983. IIRC, he was definitely named after Prince William.

You're right. I'd forgotten all the 'hilarious' storylines about Clarrie being on the hefty side. Wasn't there a wife carrying competition? Unthinkable now, I would hope. And yes, Jolene was for a long time the non-speaking femme fatale who sang C&W with Eddie while Clarrie cut Joe's toenails back in the Grange Farm kitchen.

In the 1950s and 60s it was often the case that "putting a ring on it" conferred certain (further) privileges on the newly accepted fiance. The ring in question had a diamond on it. The understanding was that if she got "caught", they would proceed to adding a gold hoop asap. (See also many mediaeval pictures of brides with rounded bellies - makes sense if marriage is for having children.) At the wedding, people would know - but not a word would be said, of course

Contraception was condoms. Or the fiance "being careful," ie withdrawal method.. Which the fiances doubtless found was often easier said than done!

Anyway, as @Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g says, Clarrie wasn't pregnant.

I remember hearing the start of Neil and Susan's first night of passion. I don't think they were engaged, mind you? But Neil is a good 'un, and always was

(As you know, I have a thing for Neil, and I definitely would have Wouldn't have wanted to marry him though)

The bride's bouquet was in proportion to the size of the bump.
No bump, just a little posy.
Someone I know had the most enormous bouquet, she managed to get engaged, married and have a baby in one month.

This was in the 1980s, when dads still had shotguns.

No, why would they? Helen is acting protectively. Rob hasn't been in their lives for years.

My mother had a huge bouquet of dark red carnations, trailing almost down to her feet. But they had to wait another 4 years for me. So the rule broke down there a little

Why is it that no matter what I post, someone seems to dismiss it?

@MereDintofPandiculation has confused correlation and causation. And what the word "rule" means.

@HumanWetWipe stated that the size of the bouquet correlated with the size of the bump it was hiding.

@MereDintofPandiculation's mother could choose what bouquet she wanted - big, little, whatever. And did so. She wasn't following a rule which stated "Bouquet must related to size of bump," presumably because she wasn't pregnant.

IMHO

You're taking my comment far too seriously

You've been accepted into the group. It took me years before anyone did anything other than ignore me. I'd have been delighted at a dismissal

It’s the nature of The Archers threads. It’s never actually personal from what I can tell. I like to think of it as persnickety, sort of benign.

And I have recently become a lone voice crying in the wilderness
I get by these days by taking things very seriously - in a reductio ad absurdum sort of a way. Sometimes it backfires!

all round, I think

And I have recently become a lone voice crying in the wilderness

Careful there, Emma will think you’re a ghost.

Speaking of which, I thought the Grundy Fright Night or whatever they called it sounded excellent. The Grundies really pulled together as a team - once Clarrie got it through to Eddie that she wanted to be the witch

There's something wonderfully pernickety, the word I grew up with, about taking issue with the word persnickety, which is clearly WRONG because I have never heard it before.

Id rather be dismissed than ignored.
But seriously, now you're here, please stay.
I often get more satisfaction reading this thread than I do listening to the show (at least in the current storyline climate).
And like life, some folk are more pernickety. It's their energy not yours that they're sapping by making the effort to do that.
Stay and play!

I haven't read the book Hags by Victoria Smith, but I think I would like to. I have a vague idea it's about the idea that middle-aged and older women are terrifying to men and young women because they often care far less about what other people will think of them and so can't be kept in line nearly so easily. So true, and I hope that's what's happening to Clarrie.

In fact I've just seen that someone took issue with a comment I made just a few posts back. I stand by my assertion that with the stuff that's gone on in Henry's life - mother wrongfully imprisoned and tried of the attempted murder of an abusive partner who has reappeared - the child might just be on the school's
Safeguarding radar.
But hey maybe my dismisser has better information and insight than me.