the grabby knows how Sharon felt when Johnny dumped her for something better.
Good. I hope she cries herself to sleep.
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They hardly ever mention Sharon or Eamon, do they? Not even Johnny. Has he learnt to be ‘above his raising’ as they say in the southern US? For all of that false humility …
Now I’m wondering who will do the work on the farm. Obviously not Helen and Tom seems rather averse to getting his hands dirty. And Pat and Tony are kept pretty busy raising Helen’s children when Pat’s not doing Helen’s other job, the paid one, for her.
I’m not sure though that Pat ‘grabbed’ Johnny. He seemed pretty set on living at Bridge Farm. And they can’t make him go home to Yorkshire or contact his parents more.
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They could have done at the very beginning if Pat had not wanted to have her just-like-john boy to bring up. But she grabbed him.
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I didn’t see it that way. Johnny was pretty determined to get his foot in the door and turning him down wouldn’t necessarily have made him go home.
I’ve just looked up how old he was when he landed on their doorstop three years ago almost to the day. He was sixteen. They made him call his Mum, Sharon came and picked him up. They discussed with her the possibility of Johnny attending college in Borchester while working on the farm. She thought about it, discussed it with Eamonn and agreed. She may not have been happy about it but she did agree as she probably realised it would be counterproductive to force Johnny to go back.
I don’t see that Pat snatched Johnny. All she and Tony did was make it clear he was welcome but they also made it clear he couldn’t stay unless Sharon agreed.
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P.S. What a good thing for him he did stay as Tom and Helen cured the dyslexia no one, not even his teachers, realised he had. A miracle!
P.P.S. Not, perhaps such a good thing for Tony as he did get squished by Otto, thanks to a combination of incompetence and carelessness on the part of Johnny and Hellqueen.
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You don’t remember Pat’s frenzied pursuit of Her Grandchild, John’s Son; her tears and hysterics and blackmail; Helen’s Mercy Dash to Leeds to plead for her and Tony; the whole dreadful melodramatic circus? The secret meeting at Leeds Market at which Pat was not allowed to say who she was to the patently bored-but-polite schoolboy…
Pat grabbed after Rich from the moment his being John’s son was mooted as a possibility, and her monomaniac chase was all over the programme for weeks! She wasn’t going to let go of him once he had foolishly handed himself to her.
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I remember it well! I very much enjoyed everyone at Bridge Farm except Tony behaving so badly.
It’s just I can’t see that Pat wanting to have Johnny around amounted to her snatching him. She and Tony did all the right things by getting Sharon’s agreement. It wasn’t Pat’s fault that Johnny had fallen out with Sharon. They were perhaps better apart at that point.
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Actually the person who turned bright, doing-well-at-school cricketer Rich into gawmless dyslexic cheat with a heavy Northern accent Johnny was Sean O’Connor.
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Yes indeed. It’s the sort of plotting that goes like this: let’s have Rich move to Bridge Farm. How are we going to accomplish it? Oh dear, the bright boy called Rich who met Pat and Tony doesn’t sound as though he’d want to become a farm labourer. Oh well, let’s just change his character completely and while we’re at it he might as well have a new name. Saves confusion.
Why did he come to Ambridge? Did they realise that after Tony’s heart attack that no one was doing any heavy labour any more except Jazzer with the pigs?
I do feel a bit cheated that Helen and Tom who were so against Pat contacting Sharon have not behaved badly to Johnny. You’d think they’d see him as a huge threat to the inheritance they feel they so richly (no pun intended) deserve. Perhaps they’re too stupid to have thought of that and are just happy to have him around to do the grunt work.
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Helen ought to feel it more than Tom (oh gawd, who was it who ‘felt it more’? We’ve done this, but brane is muzzy at the moment) as he is a near adult grandson whereas hers are still infants. Yes. Unable to speak (properly) = infant, which makes the cretinous little milksop Henwy an ‘infant’ by any reasonable measure.
Johnny is a tedious Stakhanovite serf. But he and Pip are the future of farming in Ambridge because it’s in their blood, don’t you see? They can’t help being farmers.
oh do fuck off (sorry, that was aimed at the prod team not valued friends)
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“We all acknowledged that we felt this something of a disappointment; but Mrs. Gummidge said she felt it more than we did, and shed tears again.”
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Except that if Pat and Tony’s will leaves everything to their three children and in the event of one of the children pre-deceasing them, that child’s offspring, then both Tom and Helen ought to be worried that they’ll get a third of a farm instead of the half each they are expecting. I don’t see how Helen’s brats come into the picture as she is still alive. Ah, there’s an idea … no, actually, Helen must live and continue to suffer.
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ass the one, Janie, ta. All brane would supply was Sairy Gamp, which was definitely Wrong.
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In so many ways, except possibly diet.
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Tony seems to get landed with everything. Eventually he’ll escape, possibly via massive heart attack.
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That always used to be the case but nowadays he’s too busy with his tractor and taking care of Jack to be forever pulling up leeks. Helen seems to be spending her time driving around inflicting samples of Mankwold on hapless retailers, Pat is kept busy either doing Helen’s job for her or taking care of at least one of the brats and Tom is forever travelling.
What will they do without Johnny? They won’t get anyone else as cheap.
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