Archers thread #166: Choppy waters in Ambridge! Look out for the red flags and 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'd love to be married to Harrison, 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.)

Another thread started in great haste, mid-packing! Over to you.

Thanks, @Fink , I must remember aeblekage.

The man in the house was Rochelle's former partner who killed her ? I was going to suggest that. He killed Rochelle and kids in a car accident, may not even have been his fault, which is why he’s not serving a life sentence, but Joy has never forgiven him, and is pestering him by sending cards and presents as if everyone were still alive.

My feeling throughout is that Harrison has come unacceptably close to treating Fallon as merely the carrier of the baby he now realises he wants, and not a person with valid feelings of her own - a woman he says he loves, who nearly died, and who did actually go through a miscarriage. That fact doesn’t seem to have registered in his thinking at all, or perhaps only on the most minimal of levels.

Regarding Joy... I'm sure I remember her talking about making costumes for Rochelle as a child (baton twirling or something) did she help with panto/fete where this would have come up?

So in this sense I've always felt Rochelle was a child that Joy had with her but then who knows about adulthood?

I'm sorry for your loss @Gruffallowhydidntyouknow

People can and do grieve early pregnancy loss. I know I have, and I've supported a friend who was in a very dark place with failed rounds of IVF - her losses were so early that someone conceiving naturally wouldn't even have been able to test, but her pain was real. My problem with Harrison is not how far along the pregnancy was, but that he is utterly closed in on himself and his feelings which now bear only the most tenuous relation to reality. Fallon has to use some harsh words with him because he's just not listening to anything else. He does need to be brought to realise that what he's grieving is a future he'll never have (a child with Fallon) rather than what he actually lost (a pregnancy that likely wasn't ever viable). The SWs could do a story of early miscarriage grief well, but not with Harrison.

someone mentioned his obsession with Martha yet he doesn’t care if she loses her mother. I don’t think he sees a child as anything but a prop and I think he would actually make a dreadful father

That was me @Bruisername and you’re absolutely right. Harrison would (and I think did) say that Martha doesn’t need Alice as she has Chris. Very telling.

My feeling throughout is that Harrison is treating Fallon as merely the carrier of the baby.

For me he is already there, not just unacceptably close.

Reminiscent of Jill’s social justice battle flapjacks. And now I’m seeing Jill with beard, helmet, breastplate and axe which, frankly, is a great improvement.

I agree completely with this. And this:

My feeling throughout is that Harrison has come unacceptably close to treating Fallon as merely the carrier of the baby he now realises he wants, and not a person with valid feelings of her own.

Suddenly a baby is in the offing and that matters more than anything. More than Fallon’s near death experience and trauma, more than what Fallon wants, it’s just “baby at all costs and nothing else matters”.

I can tell you from experience that feeling like you’re just a baby-growing pod whose job is to provide a service, and not a sentient person who has a life of her own, is utterly soul destroying.

I can understand him wanting to grieve - the baby and perhaps his dreams of fatherhood - but he has no right to demand Fallon grieve too (maybe she just doesn’t feel the need to) or to say she’s in the wrong for wanting her life back the way it was.

I’m sorry for your loss @Gruffallowhydidntyouknow

#Gruffallowhydidntyouknow.
Sorry for your loss and that you were so very sad. 🌹

I’m slightly envious of dispute resolution in your world, @BeatriceBatchelor, if that’s what you’d expect from the story!

😂I'll tell DH that!

No obviously there would be a lot of angst before The Talk and separation. But the SL are handling it badly as they're making Harrison act like a loon etc. Wanting Alice charged with murder. And the actor isn't up to it - his voice has gone strange.

Humans can be very strange when it comes to owning other people’s grief. When my mum died multiple people told me I was in deep/delayed shock because I didn’t weep, wail or do whatever grieving daughters are meant to do. There were endless entreaties to “let it all out” and when I explained that I honestly felt ok one acquaintance told me I should book therapy because “no-one is ok when a parent dies”.

DM was ill for a long time, had a poor quality of life and had expressed a will to die for some time. By the time she passed me and my siblings were relived her suffering was over. If we’d behaved ‘as expected’ it would all have been performative nonsense.

@RegimentalSturgeon , at your service. Feel free to throw me at Harrison.

Well, I call that exceedingly selfless of you, @FlyingFlapjack. Just hold on a tick while I run up a quick risk assessment and oil the trebuchet

I said throw!

But trebuchets are fun!

http://menwithbeards.org.uk/builds/kasta/

(We gave it away in the end to someone whose need was clearly greater than ours: the fun was in the building.)

Finally!

I've been waiting for Fallon to say - WTF are you talking about Harrison - I don't want children - I'd have had a TOP if the miscarriage didn't happen.

Does he have no concept of a woman's rights over her own body?

His feelz trump her rights.

Oooh 😮

Love that film.

Can I just check…what did they need a trebuchet for?

<mind boggles>

I cannot quite believe I’ve just spent 15mins watching wotsit lookalikes go up in flames.

That said, that’s just the sort of thing the men with beards in my circle would spend an afternoon doing.

we used our much smaller trebuchet to lob cat treats at the cats

I reckon Rochelle has been given a new identity. Either because she’s in witness protection or because - like Mary Bell - the identity change is to protect her children from public backlash over whatever it was that she did.

It would explain why a) the person at her address didn’t know her (either he was someone from her old life who didn’t recognise the new name or vice versa) and b) no-one has ever seen Rochelle, for fear they’d go “Oh my god, it’s the woman who [insert terrible crime here]”.

Um... because they could? Because every home should have one? Probably because someone said you couldn't make a collapsible trebuchet that worked. (In this case "someone" is likely to have been Tom Holt, proud inventor of the Watermelon Cannon. He had a beard as well.)

My predictions 🔮

Harrison and Fallon split as she will insist if she fell pregnant again, she would terminate. He can’t accept this.

Rochelle will be estranged from Joy due to behaviour of Joy (perhaps when the children were born? Perhaps because of something her dad did? Where is Rochelle’s father?) she moved to Ambridge to be closer to her. She hopes for reconciliation. It will be a storyline about parental estrangement.

I agree it will be parental estrangement and all the gossip will be’ can you believe she did THAT. She seems so nice’