Tommy’s angry with Helen over the shop and Brookfield struggles on without Ruth.

Radio Times: Tommy is press-ganged.

Characters: Jack, Jennifer, Jill, Peggy, Siobhán, Tommy, Usha

• Tommy’s furious with Helen. She’d had words with one of the shop assistants, Peter. A clash of cultures which meant that Tommy is serving in the shop rather than dealing with his pigs. (It seems that Helen wants a hard-nosed modern outlook to the shop fighting the stereotyped organic operation, while Peter was much more laid-back, a trait that Siobhán for one appreciated.) Tommy is not pleased with his sister.
• While Jack’s in the garden practising his spile troshing (with a golf club, a garden rake and one of Peggy’s hanging baskets), a fête meeting is on-going. There will be plenty of things for everyone to do – including Lynda’s “chill-zone”, about which Peggy is not convinced, although seeing as how she’s already Feng Shui’ed the layout, one more piece of Snell idiocy isn’t going to hurt.
• Ruth is still feeling completely wiped out by the chemo, Jill’s looking after the kids during the day and she admits to Jennifer that it’s really putting a strain on family life – highlighting just how much Ruth did around the place. Jennifer agrees that the farming life is not easy at the moment, going on to say that Brian’s not enjoying business life either. He’s got a Borchester Land board meeting on Friday, where he’ll be facing up to a discussion probably advocating the eviction of the Grundys from estate land for a second time …