that the person who gets the blame from both Tony (who is already saying it) and the rest of the village will be not Ruth, who failed to check properly about the cattle she insisted on buying at about three days’ notice, nor Pip, who let them out into other people’s herds, but David.
Since he is the person least deserving of blame for the whole thing, it seems to me inevitable.
Pip will almost certainly get away with it, or at least, by the time her negligence and stupidity is discovered everyone will “know” that it was all David’s fault.
I just hope Ed hears the goss and says, “But hang on…” without saying “I put a lot of them in with some Home Farm cattle when Pip had let them out.”
I do hope you are wrong, Fanta. Poor old Dave, he’ll find it very hurtful if he gets the cold shoulder whereas Ruth who isn’t interested in people would care a great deal less.
And now, what about Adam? Just as Tony didn’t get a chance to get in early with vaccinating his herd because of Pip’s negligence and deceitfulness, Adam is also being kept in the dark that his cattle are at risk.
Ragged Robin commented elsewhere that Adam and Tony really ought to have got on and vaccinated their herds as soon as they heard about the IBR but … they didn’t … whereas they almost certainly would have got it done as soon as they heard of the outbreak at Brookfield if they had been already aware that Brookfield cattle had been mingling with theirs.
If it wasn’t for Pip, the IBR would have been contained at Brookfield and the Dopeys would have had all the sympathy of the village. She’s got a lot to answer for and she’s such a nasty little know-it-all that I will be jolly cross if she doesn’t get exposed.
After tonight’s nasty bit of behaviour from Toby (why is he doing this? What does he gain by it?) it is increasingly likely that the person who’ll be blamed in public will be David. Ruth never goes anywhere in the village and doesn’t Do socialising, and Pip is denying all responsibility, so only David is left to carry the can.
It’s his natural instinct to duck responsibility and he applies the same thinking to how Pip should act
If there’s trouble about this, it will give David and Jill the chance to say Pip is so distracted by him that she’s not doing her job. He doesn’t want anything to jeopardise his rent-free status at Rickyard.
I wonder, why did it not occur to Pip that the IBR could spread to Bridge Farm and Adam’s cattle the very second she heard the Brookfield cows has IBR? And if she was too stupid to think of that then, she surely ought to have thought about Adam when Tony’s Anguses went down with it.
A little nudge here and there and we could have a Helen on our hands. Parents who tip-toe around her, over-praised, always told nothing is her fault, favoured over her sibling, not expected to go out into the wide world and learn how to survive without Mum and Dad, has tantrums when she doesn’t get her own way … if we can just get Toby to top himself, job done.
“Nasty case, sergeant. The pathologist says he drank a whole bottle of his own gin.”
“Drowning his sorrows, sir?”
“Only if he was of unsound mind. An anosmic pig couldn’t have missed the methanol and esters in that batch.”
Pip, no matter how much I profess to loathe her and possibly even do, a bit, is not comparable with the waste of skin and organs that is Helen. No one could deny, surely, that she works hard most of the time. OK, she has form for letting stock die, damn her eyes, and is an arrogant little [I’d only have to mod meself, fill in epithet of choice, me darlings], but with all her shortcomings and revoltiingness she is worth 17 of Helen.
Just sit and think about 17 Helens for a moment. That’ll larn you. There was a rather entertaining band around at one point called The Seven Kevins, btw. Not the same kind of thing at all.