…where VL stands for Vet’s Liberation. The Eff you can decide for your sweet selves.
Al tumbled Ms Rafferty
Ripped off her taffeta
Snook-cocking to Shula
By having it Affata
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I regret his saying that he felt guilty. He ought not to feel guilty! He ought to stick to his original statement that it was none of Shula’s business.
I hope that Shula will now feel that she has to move out. The house is a major and important part of their joint property, and when Alistair moved out I groaned, because he absolutely ought not to give up his rights in it. But since the separation was entirely and exclusively Shula’s doing and Shula’s idea, it would be right for her not to benefit disproportionately from it.
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Yes, good for Alastair! I’ve been wholely behind Shula until now, she’s been getting too much rap, especially from her mother, for deciding not to stay in an unhappy marriage… but if she’s allowed to buy herself a sporty new number then surely Alastair is allowed to go after the local sporting number… I want to know more about Ms Rafferty! She sounds like she could be as fun as gin toting Lilian!
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I’m with you regarding the scolding from the dreadful Dan and Jill in particular. If Shula says the marriage is over, however suddenly, it’s not Dan’s business to demand she goes and once again tells Alistair she’s sorry she hurt him and it’s not Jill’s business to demand she tries again. Having said that, she’s been a miserable cow to Alistair, making him feel uncomfortable in his own home, leaving the room as soon as he enters, making him feel he has to knock on the kitchen door (though I hope he did that to annoy her) and so on. If his presence is so harrowing to her, let her move out.
And how dare she criticise him for spending the night elsewhere! If he feels it was a regretted one-night stand, fair enough, he might well feel that it was conduct unbecoming, but no need for him to tell her that and none of her business as she has said the marriage was over. Silly of him to say a) that he feels guilty and b) that she more or less made him do it.
Is this working up to Shula selling The Stables and moving away? I do hope so. Maybe Lavinia would like to buy the business …
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I couldn’t ever be wholly behind Shula because of the way she chose to do it: suddenly, out of the blue, telling her partner that their marriage was over, with no willingness to discuss anything at all with him, was mean.
She gave him no chance to alter whatever it was that had suddenly (as far as he could see) made him intolerable to her, did she?
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Even worse, she implied he had been barely tolerable ‘for years’ during which she nobly tried to save the marriage. And what was it she said last night about 19 years. I forge what exactly, but it gave the impression she had had one year of happiness during their 20 year marriage. Can’t get much meaner than that.
All of which still doesn’t give her mother and her son the right to lecture her or worse still in Jill’s case nag her to reverse her decision. However cruelly Shula delivered the news, she has the right to end her marriage if that’s what she’s decided. And take the consequences! The penny doesn’t seem to have dropped with her about that last bit.
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Among the consequences, surely, are their son being outraged and uncomprehending, and her mother being disappointed in her. Why should they not be allowed to feel and express things which are not pleasant for her? Shula is allowed to feel and express things which are not pleasant for Alistair or for them, after all.
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Express disappointment, yes, but Jill has no right to lobby her to reverse her decision and Dan ought to be quite able at his age to express disappointment without being a judgemental little twonk about his parents’ marriage. It wasn’t for him to assign all the blame to Shula which he did at first. No one knows everything about what goes on in a marriage except the two concerned.
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She’s been taking life lessons from Helen?
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He quite reasonably assumed that the person who had made the decision and issued the ultimatum was in fact the person who had made the decision.
It sure as unicorns wasn’t Alistair!
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At least she didn’t stab him.
Shula took the decision and Alistair is bafflingly baffled about it which is odd because for the ten years I have been listening they have sounded completely bored with and not even liking each other very much. It’s not as simple as saying the person who called a halt is entirely to blame for the failed marriage.
He ought to have been relieved but the plot deems otherwise.
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I think the blame lies mostly in not consulting him at all, just unilaterally deciding “that’s it” and presenting it as a done deal.
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…and then not having the guts to go through with it.
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I can see it was a bit cruel, and very sudden, but if she doesn’t love him, hasn’t for years so she says, there’s not a lot to discuss other than separating their finances. For all of her wittering, she does sound completely sure about the decision. It is one that can be made unilaterally. So I don’t see that she needed to consult him. Perhaps break it a bit more gently though I’m not sure how. Just do bit better than saying ‘I don’t love you any more’ and running off to The Bull.
And why doesn’t he realise the marriage is over? They did such a good job on the way this story built up slowly, it’s a shame the fell at the last hurdle as is so often the case.
And why does she insist the gambling had nothing to do with it? Losing all that money then always worrying (as I’m sure she did, she’s said so a couple of times) that he would relapse, had to take its toll. There’s a reason there are support groups for people with addictions. A lot of marriages fall apart over them. I think Shula can’t let go of her image of herself as the heroically supportive wife of the poor, troubled addict.
For all that, I can’t quite summon up as much dislike for her as for Helen - perhaps because people in The Archers can be quite hard on Shula unlike more privileged relative.
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It takes two to make a marriage, and takes two to break it. Shula really ought not to think that Alistair is the only one to blame for it not being to her liking any more.
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Yes, but one can decide it’s over without the other wanting it to be.
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One can, but if one does and then simply announces it as a done deal one can expect to be regarded as being brusque and unreasonable. Which Shula has been and was.
As for telling him that she has been regretting the marriage for nineteen years, that was a completely stinking thing to say. And what she regrets about it isn’t that it was a stinking thing to say, it is that it has tarnished her self-image as a lovely reasonable person who didn’t deserve to have Alistair take her at her word.
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Ain’t that the truth!
Doesn’t stop me wanting to boot the priggish and seemingly emotionally and intellectually retarded Captain Dan squarely in the lower portion of his dress uniform. Little twerp. Arrogant little twerp.
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Agreed. She has. The point I am is that scolding from Jill or complaining from Dan or begging from Alistair is not likely to make her alter her position. Edited to add: nor do the former two have any right to do try to do so nor badger her to go to counselling nor nag her to apologise again to Alistair.
Absolutely. That in my opinion is why she insists it wasn’t the gambling. Oh, and how ready she is to tell Alan that now, after she has ended the marriage it has suddenly become Alistair’s fault because he had a one-night stand. Oh, good, she is saying, it’s not my fault.
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We have been there before. Kathy kicked Kenton out and was then outraged because he had a one-night stand with a customer from Jaxx whose name I cba to discover.
The self-righteousness of some of the women in TA is disproportionate to their virtue.
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