Kirsty has always been good at picking up rubbish in Ambridge - Tom and Philip spring to mind. This week, she encourages others to do the same thing by organising a litter pick, which leads to a surprise discovery for one Ambridger and second thoughts for Kirsty.
While Kirsty and her crew bag up face masks and other detritus currently despoiling the Borsetshire hedgerows, the Pargetter twins scour the country in search of birthday fun.
Helen, meanwhile, is shocked by a request from one resident, another Ambridger makes a terrible mistake, and matters come to a head for Gavin.
All this will be as nothing, however, compared to the dark drama unfolding behind the closed doors and pulled blinds of Chris and Alice’s troubled home …
Thanks to Maggiesaes of ‘The Archers in Mustardland’
Not quite what I hope for. I want her to tell him straight that she doesn’t want a baby, any baby, and particularly not this probably defective baby, and that she is going to have a termination PDQ. And that he has no say in the matter.
A miscarriage would be such a cop-out all round.
I would have preferred that to happen at least two months ago. As things stand, at twenty weeks, it’s a bit too gruesome a story for my liking.
Totally agree about his having no say in the matter though it would have been kinder to all concerned if she’d had a termination as soon as she found out she was pregnant or failing that as soon as she found out she could not stop drinking and yes, not told him. He didn’t need to know.
I always thought Pip telling Toby that she was a) pregnant and b) going to have an abortion was totally selfish and unnecessary.
I am mightily hacked off with Starter-husband Carter.
Firstly, he must have known the conception was unplanned, but he still went straight into gonna-be-a-daddy mode without asking either how the hell it happened or how Alice really felt about it. Secondly, it was clear when Emmur came round spitting bile that, despite having a social life which seems to revolve mainly around moderate to heavy drinking, he regards alcoholism first and foremost as a moral failing. Thirdly, just how purblind and credulous and just plain thick is he, not to have noticed the heroic amounts of booze Alice was latterly written as shipping daily? And fourthly, he can feck right off with the Alice-as-uterus attitude so evident during the bathroom detox-lite and his whining to Plank about Alice poisoning HIS baby. And still it hasn’t occurred to the donkey-whacking dullard that the pregnancy is not entirely wecome: it will all be fine when the malfunctioning incubator is sorted out.
And that is why I want the specific outcome described in my previous post. That it will upset Susan and Jennifer is a wonderful bonus.
Emmur would secretly be delighted, but one cannot have everything, sadly
No, we can’t. Sorry not sorry. JD’s head will pretty much explode. Susan’s inner shrew will wax massive and shrill. Emmur will take an occasional break from badmouthing Aldridges in general and Alice in particular* to ‘support’ her brother, keeping the wound open and well salted to preclude any rapprochement with the evil alkie witch.
*“Poisoning their own land is one thing; destroying moi bruvver’s baybee is unforgivable: I told her not to - oops!”…
Agree with your firstly, secondly, thirdly and fourthly. I too am mightily hacked off with Chris. Oh, can I add a fifthly, for badgering Alice for permission to tell Emma just as he was about to drop her off at de-tox, from which she was on the verge of bolting? And sixthly, for telling the midwife (why was he there anyway) that the only important thing was the baby. Or the most important thing, something like that.
“Ooh, look at that big bump, you’re huge! Are you sure you don’t want a drink? Gosh, what a good liar you are, you wouldn’t lie to me again, would you? Even though I just lied to you about not telling anyone.”
Did you ever read a short story by Somerset Maughan called ‘The Alien Corn’? … No, sorry, that’s a different story, just looked it up. It’s ‘The Unconquered’.