From: wilcox@vax.oxford.ac.uk
Newsgroups: soc.culture.british
Subject: The Borsetshire Echo
Date: 16 Dec 92 14:47:01 GMT
Organization: Oxford University VAX 6620

Since no-one else has done it recently and I'm suffering from trying to read a
whole week's backlog of s.c.b posts, here's a bit of news from Borsetshire.

Phil and Jill have had a couple of squatters (Craig and Lisa) in one of their
empty cottages. Jill and Ruth were all in favour of trying to sort out a legal
way of letting them stay (Craig has a job and they have a kid) but Phil and 
David were in favour of throwing them out on the streets. Eventually, after a
word from Robin (the vicar & vet) about his Christian duty, delivered while
they were looking at an exhibition about the CHurch Urban Fund's work with the
homeless, Phil agreed to let them stay for a few months on a market rent. This
they have managed to acheive because Pat gave Lisa a job at the dairy. Phil was
not too happy when he discovered that the minimum let is six months, but he's
resigned to it now.

Meanwhile Mike Tucker has been putting in his claim for damages. He'll get
17,000 or so by rights for partial loss of sight, but when Usha discovered that
he had fiddled his claim for loss of earnings she was not happy.

Lizzie is still pining for Nigel but otherwise is in good spirits: she has
begun to settle down and has become less flighty. She even looks as though
she's trying to get on with Shula.

The main love interest these days is Caroline Bone (ex-scarlet woman of
Ambridge) and Robin Stokes. After a spat when Brian told him that she had had
an affair with him and a beautiful reconciliation they've now had another
argument. She has been desperately wanting to go to bed with him for weeks, and
(you get the impression) so has he with her. She arranged a trip to Birmingham
to go to a concert and stay overnight afterwards, but once they arrived he got
cold feet and said he would feel happier if they had separate bedrooms, at
which point she stormed back to Ambridge in a huff saying she saw now why his
first wife left him. He is now desperately upset, trying to see her and talk 
to her to explain that it is his duty as the vicar to set a moral example and
to tell her he adores her, but she (stupid woman) refuses to see him, accusing
him of playing games with her affections. My feeling is that Shula (who now
goes to Grey Gables regularly to swim and is also Churchwarden) will eventually
make Caroline see sense and there will be an enormous reconciliation around
Christmas, when Robin's kids are coming to stay. I would guess on a wedding
next year.

By the way, the acting and the script-writing are getting better all the time.
Almost nobody is now a one-dimensional character: even Linda has her
sympathetic moments and even Phil and Jill have there arguments. Robin is just
about the best portrayal of a clergyperson I've seen anywhere in fiction [you
mean Ambridge doesn't exist?]: having grown up in a clergy household I know
that they are not the cardboard cutout god squad they are normally presented
as.
-- 

Stephen Wilcox             |   For Sale: Posts in British Government. Suit
wilcox@vax.oxford.ac.uk    |   outgoing American. Highest bids accepted.