10 December 1997

Characters: Brian, John, Kathy, Kenton, Shula, Sid, Tony

• Kathy’s bending Sid’s ear over the Bull’s Christmas dinner plans. They’ve not had many bookings and she’d rather spend the time enjoying Jamie’s excitement than preparing food. He relents, but defers a decision for a few days.
• Tony and John are working and Tony starts to work around to the issue of being more open and wanting the children to be able to talk to their parents. That is until the mysterious woman with a clipboard wanders into the yard …..
• Kenton’s at Home Farm to take Debbie and/or Kate to lunch, mentioning the New Year’s Eve gathering to Brian, a happy conversation that’s interrupted by a furious Tony. He’d approached the woman, who works for Borchester water who are planning a possible route for a sewage pipe. A plan which Brian knew about for several weeks without telling Tony.
• Later Tony, full of “I knew Brian as a landlord would be like this” finally gets to talk properly to John. Full of empathy, he doesn’t just pile on the platitudes, but does tell John that time will heal it, she will come back if that was meant to be, but meanwhile get out and enjoy Christmas!
• After the Christingle service (a success), Shula finally collars Kenton about his surprise party. She agress to it and he promises that’ll he’ll get everything sorted out in the next three weeks ….

Summarised by: Chris Harrison