Archers thread #158: Te Rum? You numpty, numpty, Tom! Empty tearoom follows. Christmas coming, farmers’ stand up, will it make us LOL? No! 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 think Tom Archer is a great businessman, 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 @LillianGish for the title idea, which may plant an earworm if my scansion just about holds up. @BeatriceBatchelor wanted 'plebby coffee' inserted in reference to my Bolivian coffee anecdote on the last thread, so I'll mention it here instead. Here's hoping Fallon and Emma decamp to the charging station or Grey Gables, or both, to run the type of coffee shop/tearoom people actually enjoy spending time in. Tom's cauliflower eclairs and kale criossants approach sounds more likely to drive the casual trade away from the farm shop and cheese window as well as the Google Translate-named Te Rum.

Feeling very uninspired by TA at the moment, so I have nothing more to say for now. Over to you!

Yes, this! Such a hypocrite. 😡

And as for Joy. She is one of my favourite characters. I’m happy for the slow reveal. I reckon we have a few years yet.

Harry has potential wrong en-ness. Think of how he was introduced. Bolshy, hot headed, throwing his weight around.

It’s fine now, but potential for when things go wrong for it to be Really Not Fine.

I hope I’m wrong as I’d quite like some interesting storylines that DONT involve having to listen to people be awful to each other.

Ardil is an interesting case of this. Are we to believe he is a highly efficient businessman 11 months of the year, but every year for 31 days goes to pieces? It seems a little odd. I would have preferred it to have been a dodgy scheme and he legged it with the money.

Ah but consistently Susan so Boop there I reckon

Can someone remind who Chris has been with since him and Alice broke up please? I just listened to last night's episode feeling really sorry for him but clearly I need a reality check! 🤣

Wasn’t it Alan’s daughter but they didn’t take it any further because Alice took it badly?

Yes it was Amy. It was all very fraught for a while and we all thought she’d come back pregnant 😂

Yes and it was AGES ago wasn't it because we thought she'd be back pregnant last Christmas I believe, so must have been last summer or thereabouts.

God I'd forgotten Amy and her lugubrious voice.

Chris woke up in bed with the vicar’s daughter/burnt out nurse Amy Franks (Alan’s daughter).

I only heard Susan adopting a fairly pragmatic approach by telling Chris they all knew it was going to happen one day, he needs to just accept it, move on and focus on his child.

I didn’t think she was lamenting Alice’s new relationship at all. If anything, I imagine she’s extremely relieved. She has always worried they’d get back together which (in her mind) would be a disaster.

Re Amy, Chris was obviously quite upset so it’s unlikely the mother who dotes on him would have chosen that moment to comment “well you did sleep with her best friend love”.

It was all completely without reference to the fact he moved on first - so all of his ‘I feel so upset’ oh fuck off, imagine how Alice felt when she found out what he had been up to.

I don’t like Chris. I’ve got no patience for him. He’s behaving better now, but given how much he supposedly loved Alice, he was horrible to her when she needed him the most.

Did Susan know about Amy?

Josh probably assumed that Lily would spend the day with her mother and brother at Lower Loxley, and Paul would spend it with his mother and father in Borchester, leaving him with peace and quiet in their absence, which he must sorely long for every day, poor man. All he had to do was not accept an invitation to Brookfield.

He is going to get a horrible surprise.

I would agree if I thought that Susan knew about Amy's one night stand with Christopher, but I am almost certain that she didn't.

And Chris knows that he hadn't moved on and didn't in fact want to.

We aren't counting the men Alice dragged back to Amy's flat in Nottingham, a different one each night, then? Not in Ambridge, didn't happen?

Likewise the one she took home with her to Willow Cottage, whom Jennifer saw to the rightabout sharpish.

Susan definitely knew about Amy and was v pushy for them to be together and consoled her in the shop.

Yes I do feel Chris was hard done by there.

Amy hard done by worse perhaps

Or better, given what she wanted; not hard wouldn't have been much use to her....

Alice tried to sleep with Harrison.

She brought a random man back to the house and would have slept with him if Jennifer hadn’t intervened.

Was absolutely vile to Ed (mocked the fact he lived in a caravan and showed her true, snobbish colours) and then claimed he was in love with her.

I understand she was in the grips of an illness but Chris has forgiven/overlooked some truly awful behaviour. She could easily have killed his mother or Jim when she threw a brick into the shop. I do wonder if she would have gotten off so lightly if her surname was Grundy rather than Aldridge.

Almost dropped Martha whilst drunk at her christening.

She repeatedly told Chris their marriage was over. He was heartbroken. Sleeping with Amy was silly but all things considered, I don’t think he is the villain in all of this.

Re Chris and Amy it was my recollection that their one night stand was very clearly AFTER Alice said that their marriage was over and she'd left. Chris loved (still loves) Alice to bits and was in emotional turmoil which some might say was no excuse. But basically he had been told by Alice that it was over. Her decision. That was that. And she has clearly followed through with that.

In that sense, although they were still technically married Alice could have no complaint if he saw someone else. The main thing was that Amy had behaved badly because she had been Alice's best friend and confidente and had jumped into bed with the husband she'd just ditched.

@Eastie77Returns Sorry, yes I was just writing as you posted so didn't read what you said about not blaming Chris overmuch for his ONS with Amy with which I agree.

Since it was Amy's idea to turn up in Chris' flat, while I feel that he was a BF not to tell her to keep her clothes on and go home, I can't help feeling that he was a lot less responsible for them having sex than she was. He certainly didn't go looking for it: he was at home on his own and about to go to bed on his own when she showed up at his door asking to come in.

Agreed. And a ONS in the immediate aftermath of heartbreak cannot be deemed 'moving on' in the way that Alice's new relationship can.

Also "he was horrible to her when she needed him the most" - I thought the opposite. He seemed to do his very best, albeit with incomplete knowledge, e.g. the traumatic bathroom scene, and was willing to see the alcoholism through and out the other side.

Poor Chris 😢

@nameoftheday I agree. Chris had done all he could. He loved her and the whole thing was devastating. Emotionally he was on the floor. Alice seemed beyond any help he could give, despite his every effort for many months and hearing her tell him several times over that she did not want him as her husband any more. And then she simply walked away. Plus he had to protect their little daughter. What more could he have done?

I can’t remember that! What happened?