I Am A Swede

That was absolutely delightful! I enjoyed it immensely. I just wish there were more scenes like this.

^^ I think it's more than disturbing. It's horrifying. World War II isn't that far away, there are still people around who lived through it, and still this is happening. Here in Sweden the nazis have, inexplicably, been granted permission to have a demonstration in Gothenburg. They will march right past a synagogue, and all this will take place on Yom Kippur! I mean, seriously?! The person who authorized this should be ashamed of himself/herself.

I'm almost past the point of not caring anymore what happens to this show. It's sad, because I have such an emotional bond to it. It was the first "grown-up" show I ever watched back in the late 70s when I was very young. My mother watched it, and I got to stay up to watch it with her before going to bed.

Today it's 80 years since "The Hobbit" was published.

It's such a waste of Mark Jordon. I liked him as Phil Bellamy on "Heartbeat", and I don't want to begrudge him employment, but his character here is so useless.

What about Martina Navratilova?

I can hardly contain my excitement....

I can't believe I didn't think of Alan! I am happy that Eric has a story again. I didn't think that would happen after Val's death, but did it really have to involve a Dingle? (Silly question I know. Practically everything on this show has to involve a Dingle..... ) I wonder how long Sandy and Pearl will be kept on. Pearl especially has been increasingly isolated after Betty's and Edna's departures. I'm sure there are some distant Dingle relatives standing in the wings, ready to join the rest of the pack.

For me the show feels hollow and empty. There are no real friendships and there's no sense of community anymore. It's just a bunch of, mostly immoral and selfish, people interacting. I do miss Ashley, but there are other characters who left in recent years that also left a void which seems hard to fill: Betty, Val and Edna. I miss Val more than I thought I would.

This show is so horrible right now that I'm going to take a break from it, for my own sanity's sake. I love Charlotte (Bellamy) but she's not enough to make my put myself through watching.

Oh, dear God no to the above conversation. I don't even want to think that they would go there. That would be too awful. It's clear that the show is going through a rough patch right now. But then again, when I really think about it it hasn't been good for a very long time. The Ashley story was the exception, and because it was so good and especially John and Charlotte gave such phenomenal performances I at least tended to overlook the multiple flaws that the show had. But with that story over, and with Gillian Kearney leaving, the sad state of the rest of the show has become glaringly obvious.

P.S. This music was written by Ernest Gold, not Henry Mancini

Not a big surprise perhaps, Andy Murray is pulling out of the US Open. http://www.bbc.com/sport/tennis/41063581

Frankly I don't think anyone can live up to Tates, but the problem is they will keep trying. It has become almost like an obsession on this show, just like the plane crash has become this iconic incident which they try to replicate on a regular basis. For that reason I wouldn't be completely heartbroken if they, at the very least, rested Home Farm for a while. I don't think I would want them to get rid of it completely, since it is, together with the Woolpack, the only place left from the beginning.