15 January 1997

Clarrie’s banned William from helping at Home Farm, although Eddie thought a compromise would have been better. She did ring to apologise to Debbie though.
Joe’s picking lottery numbers, while Eddie is prepared to put more faith into the visit of James Miller, the rep from the Tenant Farmers Association, which was mainly positive. He thinks that they have a reasonable case (“more strength than you realise”). They discover that the grounds were that they
- lacked “good husbandry” (citing general untidiness of the farm, the car boot sales and the disrepair of the boundaries);
- bad “estate management”, with the aim to prove that the land would be more profitable if brought into the main estate; and
- “greater hardship”, referring to the estate rather than the Grundys, the implication that due to the lack of cover, Simon had suffered unnecessarily.
The latter caused Joe to call Simon a “jumped up engineer” and to storm off!
The conference at Lower Loxley was going very well, until Julia was heard playing her Flamenco CDs very loudly. While Nigel was berating her (with partial success) the electrics in the whole house went with no chance of a quick repair, Nigel was at the end of his tether ….

Summarised by: Chris Harrison