George Grundy – 17, full of ambition and lacking any kind of moral compass – is well on his way to becoming king of the world, aided and abetted by arch-capitalist Martyn Gibson. That’s despite being put to rights at Berrow Farm by the implacable Hannah, who’s had him cleaning out the pig pens (he certainly knows how to make a broom sound like it’s being wielded with maximum passive aggression).
Tracy Horrobin is no one’s fool and sees straight through George. So it was that things nearly got messy between her and George’s boastful mum, Emma, at the former’s hen do. I had visions of Tracy employing her Azerbaijani wrestling skills, developed but alas not used for the Ambridge Eurovision talent competition, to take out her niece once and for all. I wouldn’t put it past Tracy – after all, she used her considerable strength to fling Jazzer violently against the dresser during their rehearsals. After which he stormed off, had a few drinks, and rather bizarrely got himself run over by a person driving an electric car. Ambridge really is a road-traffic-accident hotspot when you think about it – Blake run over by Chelsea, Matt Crawford mown down by the late Nic Grundy, John Archer slain back in the day by an overturned tractor.
Star barrister Anna Tregorran is back! That’s because Helen seems about to get pulled into a gruelling battle with her ex, Evil Rob Titchener – whom she stabbed after suffering years of humiliating coercive control – over access to their child, Jack. My evil plan is that Anna settles into Ambridge now that she’s stopped practising at the bar and falls in love with Home Farm’s manager, Stella, whose sexuality is as yet unstated but who owns a dog called Weaver, named after Sigourney (enough to set anyone’s gaydar twitching, surely).
Rogation Sunday occurred, and we all know what that means. Oh, you don’t? Well, it’s a near obsolete, I mean ancient, church ritual in which villagers “beat the bounds”, that is walk round the parish borders. As Jim Lloyd would no doubt tell us, the word derives from the Latin rogare, meaning to ask, since part of the point is to ask God to spare parishioners from disasters – surely a lost cause in catastrophe-prone Ambridge. Kirsty got really into it, and declared herself ready to revive more ancient rituals. Morris dancing is hot right now, so there’s an idea – but she also wants to do some properly pagan festivals. I’m here for this: Ambridge celebrating beltane and samhain sounds a lot of fun. Stray virgins wandering Ambridge-wards had better watch out: I bet Clarrie and Susan, with their combined craft skills, could rustle up a terrific wicker man.
