There is a slight Vladimir/Estragon energy radiating from Justin and Jim these days, as they grumpily volunteer in the village shop together. Jim has been drawing rather pompously on the Black Panthers and Gandhi for his programme of resistance against the proposed electric-car charging station on the land that Brookfield Farm recently sold; he staged a weird protest from the chintzy B&B bedroom of Brookfield itself (online videos, a banner hung out of the window, nothing achieved save a subtle advert for Leonard’s interior-design skills). The pros of the electric-car charging station are, broadly, saving the planet, the cons, that it might involve the arrival of “retail units” and, shiver, a Costa (unnamed, but surely implicit in the phrase “chain coffee shop”). The twist is that the secret purchaser of the land is, in fact, Justin, or rather his mysterious private-equity company Damara, Borsetshire-wide symbol of capitalism at its most devouring. Jim isn’t going to be pleased. At all.
