Archers thread #200: Trouble in Ambridge! (All 200 threads could have had this title.) Discuss The Archers here.

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

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Over to you!

Because it was part of a massive "Poor me" whinge about everything in his past life and how hard it had been for him. I mean sure, his background isn't great, but he's part of a loving family with supportive (albeit divorced) parents who mostly still co-operated with each other, and two sets of very supportive grandparents, and he's really not as hard done by as he would like to think. Yes, he was slapped once by an overwrought and stressed-out Nic at a time when it was more the norm to smack children. There are people who have been through much worse who are not still complaining about it 20 years, let alone using it as a stick to hurt the father who never condoned it anyway; and let alone using it as an excuse for lying to the police and getting someone else arrested for their own crimes.

How well read is Amber?

‘Willa’ - as in Willa Cather - might be cool. Either used in full or with Billie as a diminutive.

Was it just me, or does anyone else feel as though Chris and Fallon were sort of on the verge of flirting in yesterday's episode?

Sitting in the garden with their iced cider sounded rather cosy...

Not just you, I noticed that too.

I've never heard Fallon mention Harrison's guns 🤔 !!

Something is afoot.

I've never quite believed in Harrison and Fallon as a couple - not even before all their troubles.

Yeah i reckon fallon fancies chris

DD is the same age as George (born 6 days apart!), and I don’t recall smacking being at all acceptable or ‘more the norm’ in her lifetime.

Didn’t George want to call the byby Brad?

My much younger sister is 67 and I don't recall smacking being a thing when she was young ... and if ever a child was smackable, well, what can I say? 🙄

Once again the creative team insist on being completely unreasonable. Chris owns a house - but he has been dragging Martha from pillar to post in one temporary residence after another. I am all for renters’ rights and security (no one is more so) but Jakob could live anywhere. Martha needs a secure, permanent home. It is not ok that Chris is packing up from Fallon’s house, to go to live with his parents, while he waits for a tiny flat above the shop to be ready to move back into. And doing this all with a child. When there is no need.

And Chris is supposed to be a sensible character. He’d have called social services on any other parent doing this when they already have a home of their own they could live in.

And Jakob isn’t stupid either. I seem to recall he questioned it before - but right now he would be insisting Chris takes back his house.

But then, unless I have got the locations of these various cottages confused, Chris would have to live next door to Alice (all together now: "But for 24 years I've been living next door to Alice").

He could sell it and buy somewhere else.

I assume vets are well paid( based on the cost of vet fees) so why hasn't Jakob bought somewhere of his own? Seems bizarre he's still renting.

She has one with Alice. She isn't with Chris all the time.

I don't think Jakob is 100% committed to Ambridge, though I do think he loves Kate and that she loves him (each in their own, unique way). He's very much a small-c conservative person, though, and unless Lovell James offers him a transfer to somewhere less incestuous (or Kate proposes a move to somewhere he can find a job) I can see him just putting up with the place.

My point, possibly not expressed well, is that recalling childhood anger and sadness is never a whinge. It's still an adult striking a child.

I was spanked as a child. It did me no harm.
Things were said to me - some were more than damaging.

This was a major whinge, though. It didn't suddenly stop being a whinge at the point he was talking about Nic. In fact, so far as I remember, it escalated into becoming some sort of deeply unpleasant expression of joy that she had died horribly of sepsis.

Why doesn't Kate live with Jakob? Very odd that an established, middle-aged couple live seperately on each others doorsteps. Kate is almost fifty and living in a house share..

Single people living alone don't have conversations at home.
Jakob has more sense than to live with Kate.

Not even a shared house. Kate is just a lodger in Kirsty’s house.

More unreasonableness from the writers.

Don't care what the baby Grundy name is.
I was smacked when I was young and I think it really stopped me going off the rails.
Don't think Chris or Fallon fancy each other. Its funny on here when two people talk its always oh I think there's an affair brewing. Two people can't get on without any hanky panky going on.

Why can you hit your child but not your wife?

Eta or your husband?

As I recall she tried to move in but he didn't want it

I don't think anyone is advocating either of those things but they were both more common up to the 90s. Marital rape wasn't an offence until the 90s and some LEAs still allowed smacking children in the 80s.

The law on smacking children - childlawadvice.org.uk