Archers thread #164: AmbridgEnders! An Everyday Story of Soapy Folk. Discuss The Archers here.

[Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g]

Thank you, @PseudoBadger, for kicking off this long, long series of Archers threads.

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Thread thrown together in great haste in advance of tonight's episode. Who's in the Am? Is it George's fault? Is this the end for Alice? Over to you!

Crash was Sunday night and scan was wednesday

im not sure she would have done that

My local (centre of excellence, teaching) hospital has a website where I can log in and see all my test results, hospital appointments, letters etc.

If I have blood taken at my GP practice in the afternoon I can see most of the test results online later that evening. I think it’s amazing.

However, one test I had done last year took several weeks to come back. I can’t remember what it was for, but nothing that unusual and IIRC it was done at a different hospital. Perhaps that’s what happens in Ambridge?

Poor Harrison! Really? He's told Fallon several times that it's fine that she doesn't want to have children, she's all he needs. Now she knows he's been lying through his teeth. 'We're pregnant'!!! No, Harrison, you were never pregnant. Fallon was, very briefly, and from the sound of it the pregnancy was at such an early stage the chance of miscarriage was quite high even without Fallon being in a car accident. Will Alan spread the news far and wide, in the usual Ambridge way? Gah.

Re George - OK, message deleted, but as I said before, won't there be a placeholder message saying message deleted? Surely even Will would think that was odd?

Re the doctor, we weren't told that the doctor was from A&E. He might have been the on call obs & gynae doctor. Obviously in real life she'd never have seen anyone from obs & gynae, or seen the same doctor twice, but they presumably didn't want to pay two separate actors to do the medical stuff.

at what point would there be a heartbeat? I’m wondering how far along she was

this feels like a really horrible SL for a lot of people to listen to and I’m not sure it will be handled sensitively

He told Will he was going to reply to all the messages so, plausibly, he could delete them all after he'd replied and it wouldn't look odd.

Google says 5.5-6 weeks after conception. Given conception is assumed to be about 14 days after day 1 of last menstrual period, that would be well before the Grey Gables visit.

Also Will doesn’t understand his phone so probably wouldn’t notice anyway

Yes, good point. If George's phone has died as a result of being in the Am, I can't see how it can be used to prove where he was, unless the police have more luck reviving it than Will did.

Hmmm, I’m not suggesting we heard the conception but I find it hard to believe she was so far along

I was very ill about 5/6 weeks into pregnancy and they did a scan the next morning and found a very faint heartbeat. But now I think about it they said if they hadn’t found one I would have had to go back the following week

it also sounds like it was an external ultrasound which would be nearer 12 weeks?

this just seems a very sensitive SL to not have thoroughly researched

If this was an episode of Silent Witness there would be absolutely no problem getting information from George's phone - similarly from all the forensics in Alice's car. This being The Archers with the investigation being led by Harrison Burns (who will now be gunning for Alice regardless) or his boss, I'm not so sure.

I had an ivf pregnancy so had a 6 week scans. There was a heartbeat then. (Sorry to be a downer but there wasn’t one at 12 weeks)

Sorry to hear that. I hope this SL/discussion isn’t too upsetting for you

Oh, @OutOfTheHouse, it took me two goes to read that properly. So sorry!

Thank you but no. It was a terrible long time ago now. It still gets me sometimes but it’s part of me. Just to be a real downer that was the only pregnancy I had.

I wondered this too re doctor..

@OutOfTheHouse , I don't really know what to say as I don't know if I can be a bit clumsy sometimes, but it was generous of you to share something personal and poignant.

Alice was drinking in the car cos SL. If she had necked the vodka in The Nest then there wouldn't be all the drama, and we'd probably be listening to Harrison and Kristffur discussing cricket training.

Surely nobody says "We're pregnant."

I'm doing a Uriah Heep cringe!

I don’t tend to talk about it in RL as people don’t know what to say and I don’t like to put them in that position.

Back to the SL. On the Real CSI, or whatever it’s called, they can pull all sorts off people’s phones. But as no one died I wonder if they will go into it in such detail.

What clues were there in the broadcast as to whether it was an external or transvaginal ultrasound?

No one has died yet. But do not give way to despair: I have a couple of possibilities in mind.

I would say poor Harrison and poor Fallon, that must be absolute turmoil for both.

Despite how thrilled Harrison must have been he showed an absolute lack of empathy for Fallons feelings, given he openly knew her clear position and accepted their relationship on that basis.

Not impossible that in the circs she MAY have had conflicting feelings, but very far from Harrison’s right to assume that. However soaps love to present caricatures of people.

Not wanting a child and losing one however early are 2 different things, so although relief may be her main emotion it is quite possible her feelings will be more complex than that especially given Harrison’s feelings.

I also suppose Harrison agreeing not to have a child because their relationship is more important to him, is very different from the possibility of not proceeding with what he already sees as his child.

Of course the Dr should have spoken to her privately in the first place, but again would have spoiled their storyline.

Having said that, although of course it is the woman’s body and choice, I cannot help feeling sympathy for the absolute despair some men may feel at having no say in the future existence of what they already see as their child.

Hope I have not offended anyone in the above of course all our views emotions and experiences are different.

I don’t know - just not any discomfort somehow. I found them quite unpleasant

found the whole scene a bit odd somehow

i guess Alice finding out she ‘caused’ her best friends miscarriage is going to send her spiralling again. Not sure I can take all that drama

• Persistent poverty and recurrent threats of homelessness - others will know more than me and further back

doesn't apply to George until recently: his father was in full time work and with a house he could be sure they would not lose. Only Eddie deciding to deprive Will of work, house and livelihood during the year after Nic's death put any strain on that. And George wasn't an infant at that point and it had not been a pattern of his life: one at least of his parents was able to offer him security.

• Father plans a suicide attempt and is only saved by family intervention

For which read "father cleans gun; mother (father's ex-wife)assumes he is planning to kill himself and starts major panic about it, calling in his father and brother; brother attacks him savagely for having tried on a previous occasion to kiss ex-wife; and gun goes off injuring nobody so his father confiscates it and thus takes away his ability to do his job."

Incidentally, I don't remember who said somewhere upthread that George was nice to his sisters: not to Mia he isn't, he is vile to her. Perhaps Poppy and Keira are not yet a threat to his dubious masculinity because they are not pubescent, or Keira's case only recently so.

She goes to a different school