Archers thread #167: Welcome to Ambridge, the world capital of loose ends! 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 like The Archers to be wall to wall election conversations for the next month, 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.)

Over to you!

undecided perhaps?
she doesn't owe him sex

Manipulating a man into offering you dinner and a night in an expensive hotel because they think you want to have sex with them when in fact you don't is nasty, and can I think reasonably be described as prick-teasing whether the tease is a man or a woman. It is an equal-opportunity activity.

@DeanElderberry i don’t quite agree with your summary of Denise (more to do with my opinions on the balance of power and the meaning of consent in male-female relationships) but do agree that if she’s on holiday with John then frankly, WTF.

i did though 100% enjoy your thoughts of what % of sympathy everyone gets and would like to have this as a recurring feature on this thread.

also I meant to ask this a few weeks ago, and I’m not asking anyone to out themselves, but is the poster that was previously something like 3weevils or 3ofweevils still here? They were a big part of this thread when I started lurking years ago and sometimes wonder if other more caustic posters either remember them or perhaps might be them in disguise 🤔

It’s an interesting one but to me Alastair is smitten and not acting rationally. Whereas Denise holds all the cards. The whole ‘every time I try and talk to John he leaves’ is pathetic and she is clearly not invested in the way she is telling Alastair she is. The whole not sleeping with him because Jim’s slippers were there. Fair enough but it then seemed an excuse to get Alastair to book the expensive hotel with pool. I don’t know if they would have done it if they had got to the hotel - and I would rather not think about it! - but it doesn’t feel like Denise’s feelings are that deep and probably stem more from boredom

so in this situation I think she is leading him on because she knows he has deep feelings for her and it’s probably a bit of an ego boost

If Alistair ever does get into Denise’s knickers, some time around the Greek kalends, how disturbed will she be to discover that he wants her to dress up in a cream cardigan?

Perhaps it was the band Fallon, Joy and Mick had been to see, before they got a ducking in the Am?

😆

Lily’s ‘job’ at GG was painted as industrial espionage at the time as far as I can recall.

The lack of chemistry between Pip and Stella is quite something isn’t it?

I was cheering Fallon on. I don’t think there’s any coming back from that is there?

LillianGish
I feel he's always been played as a bit of simpleton (apart from the time when he suddenly had enough money saved for them to buy a house)

Oh, but he didn't! His parents took out a second mortgage in order to give him the money to buy Woodbine Cottage. (I mean that actually did take out a second mortgage, not that it was expensive for them.)

leftshark
is the poster that was previously something like 3weevils or 3ofweevils still here? They were a big part of this thread when I started lurking years ago and sometimes wonder if other more caustic posters either remember them or perhaps might be them in disguise

I'm reasonably sure that the 3 of Weevils was banned for loss of temper in another part of the board (there was a lot of rather nasty clyping and running to teacher going on around about then, and we lost several good people to whingers), so if he or she is here under an alias, well, he or she will keep that under his or her hat.

Oh I didn’t know that. Do we ever hear from his parents?

I've been assuming @RegimentalSturgeon is Threeofweasels.

Weevils not weasels.

Bruisername
Oh I didn’t know that. Do we ever hear from his parents?

Nope. They existed entirely to make him a very generous donation, and to have another son of whom he was and probably is jealous because said son's wife has had two children. Fallon looking after Harrison's niece for a week while the second baby was born is what caused Harrison to become broody: all the pleasure of a child with none of the effort or expense. For him.

I certainly painted it as industrial espionage on these threads, but I have to eat my hat because it doesn't seem as though that's the route the SL has gone down. I thought at the time that she had no real intention of working for GG at all and was only looking to nose around. As it is, she seems to genuinely be trying to succeed at GG. There was the time she tried to interest Harrison in holding the police ball at LL and he quickly shut her down, but we've heard nothing else grossly inappropriate.

Eeyore had a caustic wit. Harrison is just a bore. I can't drum up any sympathy for him. He's so selfish.

Yes I would certainly prefer it if he was actually replaced with Eeyore!!

it’s interesting that gallons angle is that it happened to her etc etc - and whilst I don’t disagree I wonder why she hasn’t spelt out to him that she never saw it as a viable baby so she doesn’t believe there is anyone to grieve for

i like the fact Josh is doing his own thing and living away from his family who are always pretty mean to him!

If only he had not allowed Lily to move in and be mean to him instead.

Maybe he missed the constant abuse!!

Alistair is grown man responsible for his own decisions, but obviously smitten by Denise. Denise understands this and I think a little unkind, the way she is messing him about, but at the end of the day up to Alistair if the pain is worth dim hope.

Alan is so indiscreet blurting out about the potential service to Fallon (let alone in public) when it was obvious during his discussion with Harrison, that Fallison were on very different pages and were having difficulty communicating about this very sensitive matter.

Of course even the thought of a public service for something so deeply personal to her must be Fallons worst nightmare on so many levels. The thought Harrison was planning this behind her back horrifying.

But also feel sorry for Harrison who seems totally lost in his grief for what he sees as his lost child. I agree this has moved on from the accident and murder, to be fixated on the loss and unable to move away from that.

I don’t think his perception is biologically naive as has been suggested, given fertilisation is a very specific event that marks the casting of the die in creation of a genetically complete and separate pre child with its own heartbeat 3 weeks later. The very start of a human being. He is likely continually visualising that child and mourning its loss. It is just his emotional response as an individual. Many others have very different feelings or views, but that does not invalidate his feelings, which seem very heartfelt.

Perhaps lessons in how the coil cleans up its few fertilisation prevention failures by preventing implantation or even causing post implantation pregnancy loss would bring him down to earth a little and see things in the more practical realisation that this is possibly not the first time this has happened. The very many spontaneous losses of very early pregnancy obviously another factor.

Fallon has made it plain she does not really want to discuss this, and he also has started conversations then walked out. I don’t think this is necessarily petty or deliberately cruel on either side, but really both avoiding the elephant in the room on what is a major life issue on which they seem diametrically opposed but which has little compromise ground to support their future relationship without one side capitulating, which have we have seen is not necessarily a particularly good solution.

But last night she told him exactly how she felt and he could have done the same but instead he chose to runaway.

VoxPop
But also feel sorry for Harrison who seems totally lost in his grief for what he sees as his lost child. I agree this has moved on from the accident and murder,

FFS!!!! WHAT "murder"? No human being died.

Even Harrison is not stupid enough to have thought it was anything more than manslaughter, if only the death of an actual child which was viable separate from its mother had been involved, which it was not.

Or is he now mad enough to have decided that Alice, who knew no more than Fallon or Harrison himself that there was a non-viable cell-blob inside Fallon, set out deliberately and for no possible reason to kill that cell-blob, which she did not in fact do?

That would be because he is perfectly well aware that his feelz are melodramatic tosh and her actual righteous wrath is not something to which he has an acceptable reply to offer.

(If a woman had a phantom pregnancy and carried on the way he is at present, she would be deemed psychotic as a box of frogs.)

He did actually use the word 'murder' some time back. It was noted as being tosh at the time.