Last week’s episodes prominently featured the Aldridge family and it was especially nice to hear so much from Debbie, stranded in Hungary by the coronavirus outbreak. The week kicked off with Brian delivering a monologue to young Xander - Jennifer had decided that Adam and Ian could do with a decent night’s sleep and so she offered to have her grandson over for a sleepover. However, as we learn, nobody explained to Xander exactly what a sleepover entails and Jenny was up and down all night looking after him.
Brian tells Xander that the Aldridges are “a funny old bunch, but somehow it seems to work.” He then goes off on a tangent about the various family members and tells his grandson that he really misses Debbie - he wishes the rest of the family were as sensible as her.
Adam appears to have spent most of the night worrying about the state of Home Farm the cherries are ready to harvest and he is desperately short of pickers, with none being available from Eastern Europe. No-one could ever accuse Adam of being a glass-half-full person and he gloomily reflects that they are in danger of losing half the cherry crop. He decides not to mention his problem to Brian, who would probably only blame his stepson.
Thinking of Brian leads Adam off on a tangent of his own and he thinks Brian could “show a bit more humility, the way he’s fouled things up over the years.” Adam adds: “I could have killed him over the Siobhan thing” and describes the way that Jennifer reacted and coped with all that as “amazing.”
Meanwhile, over in Hungary, Debbie is on the phone to Elaine, the wife of Roger Travers-Macy; her father and the man who brought Adam up when Roger married Jennifer. The marriage didn’t last and Jennifer and Roger split up, although Adam had taken the surname Macy. Roger, it appears, had contracted coronavirus and was recovering, but since then he has taken a turn for the worse. Debbie feels frustrated, as she is stuck in Hungary and unable to return to the UK because of the pandemic. Nevertheless, she feels that she ought to tell Adam.
Adam wonders what does Debbie expect him to do? He’s facing an acute labour shortage and he’s got a baby, so there’s no way that he can drop everything and shoot off to Scotland with so much on his plate. Privately, Debbie thinks he’s unfeeling, as Roger raised Adam as his own. “Why is it always me who has to sort these things out?” She ponders.
Debbie isn’t the only Aldridge female who has problems - incidentally, if you are wondering how come Debbie’s surname is Aldridge, instead of Travers-Macy, Brian wanted his stepchildren to take his surname, but Roger objected, so Adam and Debbie simply dropped the ‘Travers’. Later on, Debbie started to call herself ‘Aldridge’, but she has never formalised the change, as far as I’m aware - but back to the family.
Alice is not a happy bunny - she is working from home, but keeps getting nit-picking e-mails from Arun, her manager. What makes it worse is that both she and Arun were up for the manager’s job, but Alice was overlooked - something she feels very bitter about. Even worse, Alice has ordered a case of wine online and today is the scheduled delivery date, so where the hell is it? Calls and e-mails reveal that it is in transit, but that’s not quick enough for Alice, who needs it NOW!
I won’t say that Alice is obsessed with alcohol, but she contacts Adam and asks him if he has any rejected cherries that she can have in order to make some home-brewed cherry brandy. In answer, Adam tells her about his shortage of pickers and asks her if she can ring round local families and try to round up a team of pickers. Alice is not sympathetic and thinks that Adam has got it easy - he should try working for Price Baumann (her company).
However, blood (or even half blood) is thicker than water and she is so fed up that she does ring round as many people as she can think of. The result is uniformly disappointing, as everyone is too busy. Even Freddie cannot make it - we assume that he is still looking for parts to fix the toilet (see last week’s blog) or that he realises that, with no foreign workforce, there’s no-one to sell drugs to. That was unkind and I am ever-so-slightly sorry.
Emma Grundy was particularly sharp with Alice and, at the end of all these calls, Alice has managed to recruit the grand total of (drum roll) - one person. And that one person is Molly Button, who is probably not the best worker in the world; or even in Ambridge, come to that. Alice decides to concentrate on her paid employment and she receives and e-mail from her MD, who wants a video call at 3pm. However, it’s an ill wind, as they say and, shortly after getting this message, the wine turns up and Alice is so eager to get her hands on it that she practically leaps on the person delivering it, to the extent that he takes a couple of startled steps backward as this frenzied woman opens the front door and lunges at him. Whatever happened to social distancing?
While Alice is getting into the wine, her husband Chris is contemplating getting into a possible new income stream; for Harrison’s and Fallon’s wedding, he made a wrought-iron garden ornament of a tree sculpture. One of their friends (Louis) was so taken by this that he commissioned a tree sculpture to mark the arrival of his new baby and Chris foresees the chance of branching out (pun intended) into a new business. But what type of tree? Eventually, he decides that an oak would be good, but Louis’s father-in-law (who is paying for the sculpture) thinks that a birch would be better, as it is a symbol of regeneration.
As Chris is pondering this, Alice rings and says “I’ve got some brilliant news!” What is it? A BOGOF at the wine bar? No; she’s packed in her job. In fact, as she tells us (while pouring a wine, naturally) “they can take their job and shove it where the sun don’t shine - I’m taking my qualifications, my expertise and my contacts elsewhere; I’m done.”
Chris remarks that she sounded happier than she has been for months (that’ll be the wine) and the pair celebrate with a bottle, or more, of bubbly. The following day, Alice is up bright and early and, in a call to Debbie, she tells her about jacking in the job, and asks her not to tell Brian or Jenny yet - she doesn’t want them to worry. Debbie notes that Alice is knocking back the vino and she wonders whether to have a word about it with Chris, or to keep out of it. Well, what do you reckon happens? Spot on - she calls Chris and he says that, yes, Alice enjoys a drink (a drink?) but so does he and he’s never seen her happier.
How much of this happiness is a façade, though? Alice is assailed by doubts - has she burned her boats? What if P-B won’t give her a reference, or they give her a bad one? Chris knows nothing of this and he is convinced she has done the right thing, as she looks peaceful and as happy as the girl he married 10 years ago. What? Is it really 10 years? Chris’s thoughts turn to his sculpture commission for Louis’s new baby and he wonders if he and Alice might be celebrating a birth of their own this time next year. “I won’t mention it; not yet” he says.
Good call, Chris, especially as you and Alice do not seem to have decided when, or in Alice’s case, even if, you want to start a family. Alice has always used the excuse that she wanted to establish her career first, but as she has just told her MD to stuff his job, this might not be a tenable excuse any longer. It might be worth remembering, too, that Alice will be 32 in this September. Having said that, I cannot really see her giving up the drink for the duration of a pregnancy.
Let’s go back, more or less, to where we started, with Adam’s worries about having no fruit pickers. Brian learns of this and wonders why didn’t Adam ask him to help? That’s recruiting pickers, not doing any picking himself, I should add. “Maybe I can rustle up a crew” he asks himself.
As it turns out, it’s not so much a crew, as a whole navy - Adam is apportioning jobs and, among the names mentioned are Kenton, Jolene, Fallon, Kirsty, Tracy and the entire Grundy family (Eddie, Will, Clarrie, Emma and even Ed, whom Adam sacked a few months ago - the two men shook hands when Ed arrived). Alice was there too, telling Adam and Brian that she was pulling a sickie from work. This turnout is little short of miraculous, given Alice’s conspicuous lack of success in recruiting workers, and I can only assume that Brian has left a few loaded shotguns ostentatiously on display. Even Ian is picking, which gives Adam the chance to spend a day with Xander. How thrilled everybody is to be given their orders and then to see the boss go off to play with his son, we aren’t told.
We are told that Adam and Xander have a wonderful time cooking and playing with edible paint, making a complete mess of the kitchen. When Ian returns from the polytunnels, he sees the mess and just laughs - I tell you, the man is a saint.
Debbie has had a long conversation with dad Roger, who told her that the Aldridges have always been chaotic. It was nice, she thinks to have someone ask her about her life and thoughts for a change and not expect her worry about others in the family. Adam, meanwhile, is undergoing a period of introspection and resolves to do more with Roger and to help Debbie with him.
Adam adds that Brian has really been a star today and he really came to Adam’s rescue. Adam is ashamed of his earlier thoughts when he blamed Brian for the affair with Siobhan “Cheating is cheating” Adam says, and admits that his behaviour with Pawel and then Charlie was as culpable as Brian’s with Siobhan. “If Ian hadn’t forgiven me, I wouldn’t have a marriage or a son.” Adam realises his family is unique - “a mad mix of parents, grandparents and children; but somehow, despite everything, it works.” And this note of self-realisation from a male member of the Aldridge family, dear reader, is where we came in…
No comments:
Post a Comment