Archers thread #200: Trouble in Ambridge! (All 200 threads could have had this title.) 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 Brian's child or stepchild, or other unusual views.

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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!

I love Kirsty for not taking any of Tom's crap.

Kirsty did well this evening, didn't she! Wind your neck in Tom, this is absolutely none of your business.

Fallon told Harrison ages ago that she didn't want to have children. Unfortunately this was well after they got married. It was very clearly a big disappointment to him but he said Fallon was more important to him than anything else so it would be fine. Equally clearly in the years since it hasn't been fine, especially after he found that Fallon had had an unplanned pregnancy that ended in miscarriage after the crash. He's gone a bit doolally since.

I know people who chose not to have their own children who like interacting with other people's but are then able to go home to their child free lives. I don’t think that's odd.

I assume that Fallon's pregnancy wouldn't have proceeded anyway, given that she had an IUD.

@CaptainMyCaptain ... I am very much not one of those people! I will happily interact with all cats (and the majority of dogs), but please, I beg you, keep your children on a leash!

I haven’t listened for that long and don’t know her history...
She's been around since she was a teenager.

...but I found her unfeeling towards him about losing a baby that he wanted.
He didn't. He only knew about it because a dodgy doctor told them Fallon was pregnant. She had an IUD so the pregnancy was unlikely to have progressed, and she didn't want a baby.

You can like children without having any desire to have your own.

Wow. That told him.

New balls, please.

Susan was so wet around Anne Marie.

I don’t know anyone without children of their own who isn’t wholeheartedly involved in the wellbeing of at least a child or two. They may not have procreated but they don’t live entirely child free lives.

Anne Marie is ghastly (poor Susan!) and so is Tom. Good for Kirsty putting him in his place.

I wouldn't say I like Harrison particularly (wouldn't want to be married to him) but I'm firmly team "him" as regards the baby situation. It's bad enough to go through infertility problems but when both he and his wife have been proven to be fertile - for him, still not be able to have a baby is a tough one. It was so wrong of Fallon to spring it on him AFTER getting married that she did not want children.

This was me in my pre-DC "I'M NEVER HAVING KIDS" decades. Like children. Never interested in having my own. Until I unexpectedly did.

Tom was awful. Harrison is going to lose his nut.

Amber's mum was awful. But nice reveal of her character to Susan. She can now back Amber up when George tries to get in with the rich in-laws

ETA: to be fair perhaps Fällen only really settled on not wanting children later in life than some?

@BeatriceBatchelor , Susan was so wet around Anne Marie. Susan is like that with people who she thinks she is socially inferior to.

@MorningCoffeePlease ,I'm firmly team "him" as regards the baby situation. It's bad enough to go through infertility problems but when both he and his wife have been proven to be fertile - for him, still not be able to have a baby is a tough one. It was so wrong of Fallon to spring it on him AFTER getting married that she did not want children. they should have discussed it before they got married. They got together when she was 30 and got married nearly 4 years later. If you are in your mid-thirties and hope to be a parent one day then surely you'd bring up the subject.
If Fallon had said she wanted children then changed her mind, I might have some sympathy for him but I don't think that's the case here.

If Harrison desperately wanted children then he could have raised the subject before they got married too.

Harrison may have thought, in good faith, that he would rather have Fallon and no kids, than lose Fallon, and that love would prevail.

If he really can’t make the sacrifice, he needs to tell Fallon and leave. I sense that he’s already got one foot out the door.

Harrison probably thought that Fallon would knuckle under like a good policeman's wife and do as she was told. I was hoping he wouldn't come back.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jul/14/church-of-england-votes-against-rewild-land-2030

How much land surrounds St Stephen’s?

I dont understand Kirstys logic though. Yes her baby is nothing t do with Tom but she knows how she felt about hearing he was having twins with Natasha, and she accepted it when he said his first thought was to tell her, so why is it any different?He may be a knob , be he didnt know who else knew and I think he was just surprised. He hardly went in all guns blazing.

I think at one point Harrison actually said he’d be able to live without kids if it meant being with Fallon. But the point is he changed his mind , and then when the opportunity presented itself only thought about his feelings not Fallons.

He’s a total drip in my opinion though and I do hope this is the end for them finally cos the SW’s have given us false hope before…

Kirsty is probably still very upset about being literally left at the altar. That's a humiliation it would be very hard to come back from. I'm amazed she moved back to Ambridge.

It's not about the land directly surrounding the church, which is probably not very much, but about land owned by the church, potentially leased out to tenant farmers...a benefice, basically, is the income attached to a particular office or job within the church, so if you have a particular parish, you get the income from property owned by that parish. Historically, e.g. if you were hanging about a cathedral politicking and singing polyphony, you could then pay a vicar ("vicariously") to do the actual job for you, while you collected the rest of the cash. Getting assigned the best benefices was itself a reason for politicking, and e.g. in the 15th century, there was a guy in the papal chapel that it was very good to be friends with, especially if you were keen to have two benefices simultaneously, which wasn't really allowed...

I'm not sure how modern benefices are arranged within the CoE, but I can imagine that the re-wilding proposal would have represented a significant loss of income, and given how many places are struggling to e.g. maintain mediaeval buildings, I can imagine why the proposal wasn't accepted...I wish the Guardian article included more of the financial details, so we could know, rather than taking the "greedy priests vote against the environment" line with little information.

Kirsty seems to have appalling taste in men, what with Tom, Philip Moss and now Erik.

Well she also chooses Helen as a friend so not just men (why did she have to announce she was going in the loft specifically for baby clothes and then tell Tom Kristy’s news without letting Kirsty know she had)

Kirsty was the one carrying the baby. His news was to a woman with no children who had endured a very late miscarriage. Her news was to a father-of-two.

I don't understand how you could even think of suggesting the situations are comparable.

@Gonners , there was Sam the milkman too.

I don’t think you can really compare Tom having the twins and Kirsty being preg and impact each has on the other. Tom has messed Kirsty about so many times and so monumentally over the years he has no right to feel wounded about any of her actions, to be frank. What were the circumstances when he got all regretful and moony with her most recently? He seems to think he can pick her up and drop her at will. So entitled.

X-post!