FOLK MUSIC ECHOES
GUITAR PLAYS SOFTLY
SIGHS GENTLY
SHE GASPS Oh!
Agh!
PHONE PINGS
Oh, wow!
FOLK MUSIC PLAYS QUIETLY
Last night on that shitty mattress.
Oh...
Why is everything orange?
Oh, shit, it's a fire.
It's a fire!
FIRE!
This Saharan dust's a pain, innit?
Wh-where did you...?
S-Saharan dust?
What's that?
Dust - from the Sahara.
Gets blown over. Be gone soon.
Oh, right.
Oh, I'm glad you're here, actually.
Um...
Things haven't really worked out as I'd planned,
and so I'm thinking of moving on today.
I was wondering if I could maybe get my rent back.
No, you fucking can't! Oh, Jesus!
It's only been a couple of days.
It's £400! And it's already been allocated.
Ags is saving up for a drone camera.
Help her find her, ley lines.
Moving on to where, any road?
Oh, I-I don't know...
The Sargasso Sea?
To meet your destiny?
Not all eels go the fastest way, you know.
Some take a more circuitous route.
But they all end up back where they began.
Just like us.
Mm! Let's get them tables wiped.
Oh, by the way, third cousin Bernadette called.
She's on her way down to the town hall meeting, and she says
if she's not on the front row,
someone's going to lose their dick.
Oh, come on.
Kids!
KIDS!
HE SIGHS
Fuck's sake.
Bit tight, but might just be
my best town hall meeting outfit ever.
Morning. Morning.
SHE CLEARS THROAT
"Singing with nightingales." What a load of bloody rubbish.
Argh! Ugh!
HE EXCLAIMS
Dirty, lazy bastards!
Ugh! HE RETCHES
OTHERS RETCH
Ugh!
Where is he?
Now my shoe stinks!
Dirty bloody...
You touch it, you buy it, young lady.
Oh!
Oh, hello again! I'm sorry,
I didn't know there was anyone in here.
HE CHUCKLES
Now, we both know that's not true, don't we? Eh?
Oh, I don't blame you, Linda.
If I couldn't see this every day...
...I'd want a sneaky peek, too.
Honestly, I really wasn't trying to see... without... Well?
It might be a bit snug round... Snug round the ass? Yeah, yeah.
What's all this, then?
Date? Interview?
Court case?
Less of the cheek, young lady!
These are for the town meeting. Mm!
I gets new trousers every year for the town meeting.
It's a tradition.
Started years ago when they split during a meeting.
Now they have a sweepstake.
Forget that old Eel Festival, Linda, Tony's town hall trousers
are the highlight of the calendar year.
They even got their own Twitter account.
"Tony's trousers" will be trending tonight.
It's only a curtain, Tony - there's no need to shout.
So don't you tell no-one what you've seen here.
OK, I won't tell anyone about your trousers.
And I won't be going to the meeting anyway - it's nothing to do with me.
Well, it's your loss.
Well, I'm seeing your trousers now anyway, so...
"Few tasks are more similar to the torment of Sisyphus,
"than those of a housewife."
HER VOICE FADES "Day after day, I must wash dishes, dust furniture
"and mend clothes that were dirty, dusty..."
Linda-r!
Pick them up for us, will you, love? Me back's gone.
That dress - far too young for YOU.
Bonne chance!
BELL JANGLES Bloody joke.
HE'S annoying, isn't he?
I wouldn't kick him out of bed.
You men... Ugh!
You menopausal women and your bloody fans!
Joy, how do you turn this bloody fan off?
Joy?
Joy, can you help me turn this fan off, please?
Oh, Joy, can you turn it off?
Wait, it's just... Yeah.
This way, is it? Yeah, just...
I just...
I think I can do it now, Joy, thank you.
Thank you, Joy.
You're welcome.
Whew! CLEARS THROAT
Morning, Joy.
Morning! Sh! Sh! Sh-zzh!
Going live in three, two...
Coming to you raw, unfiltered
and white, like milk, it's the Verderer.
Good morning. Good morning. Good morning!
Forget International Women's Day, Pride Day
and Martin Luther King Day
because today is the day to beat all other days!
It's town hall meeting day!
I hope you've placed your bets on Tony's trousers.
MY money is on a pair of jeggings!
And I'll tell you why. Thanks.
So I've been betting 20 years...
I found my tree yesterday.
That was quick. I know!
I thought I'd take a few weeks at least. Yeah.
...began to emerge after his third pair.
So, anyway, what I was looking for wasn't there.
Oh, no. So I guess it's time to move on.
Oh... Nothing keeping me here.
Nothing here?
Everything is here.
Tony's trouser sweepstake...
...the Eel Festival,
cat speed dating.
...Bavarian lederhosen... Tempting.
But, nah,
I like to keep myself busy.
So I'm expecting a good turnout this year, fellers.
We need to nip this eel queen nonsense in the bud.
I mean, if they can pick a woman for this year's Eel Festival,
God knows what they'll pick for next.
It'll be a vegan leprechaun
or a pansexual ostrich
or a dyslexic dragon, won't it?
Peter Watkins will be turning in his grave if he could see
his daughters disrespecting centuries-old tradition
and our men in such a vulgar manner.
I've never heard of the like!
How can it be that...?
It CAN'T be.
HE GASPS
It's a nightingale.
A nightingale.
Well, I never!
Are you here to give me a message,
little bird?
OVER LOUDSPEAKER I can see you, little bird.
HE WHISTLES
HE SNIFFLES Thank you.
DOG BARKS
Dirty, lazy bastard.
Oh, sorry about that. A nightingale!
Um, anyway, now, I want to talk about something
that's causing a lot of division in the town.
And, no, I'm not talking about who gets
to keep Keith's cat cappuccino.
God rest Keith's soul.
What a terrible tragedy.
But let that be a lesson to us all.
Autoerotic asphyxiation is never a good idea,
especially if you live alone.
No cat should have to witness that.
Or have to eat the orange to stay alive.
No, today, I want to talk about the new redevelopment of the town.
The investment and prosperity it'll bring the area is undeniable,
but I will not sit by and watch
our wildlife and forest be destroyed.
Back after this.
So, are they building a road THROUGH the forest? Uh-huh.
I assume they'd been going around it.
No, right through the middle.
PHONE PINGS
Dick pic?
Could say that, yeah.
Pig Man!
Hello?
I've brought you a goodbye present.
Oh...
GENERAL CHATTER
VELCRO RIPS
TONY CHUCKLES You washed your hair, have you, Jan?
That looks clean enough for me to eat my dinner off of.
Well, I try not to wash it too often, Tony,
to let the natural oils come out.
You need all the lubrication you can get at your age.
RIPPLES OF LAUGHTER
Quiet, please.
Item one - The Eel Festival.
Eh?! EXCLAIMING AND MURMURING
Tony's trousers is ALWAYS item one on the agenda.
No, he's right. It's not just
the Eel sisters mixing things up this year,
Tony. And I won't be intimidated by third cousin Bernadette, neither.
It's my meeting, my rules.
Ooooh!
Tony's trousers reveal will be at the end.
Shame. GRUMBLING
Now, as you all know, the Eel sisters are planning some
controversial changes this year.
Since the passing of their faither.
Faither Watkins.
No-one gives a shit about the men in this town.
First they close the mines,
then Digger Land.
And now they're taking our Eel king.
Faither were a stickler for tradition.
He'd never allow a woman to take over the role.
SHOUTS OF AGREEMENT And I'm sure once the paperwork is
through on his succession plan,
we will see that I was his intended.
Yeah!
Well, we all know how long probate can take.
Until then, WE decide who it is.
Whether they be bore within the said 100 of Eel Lake,
or whether they have done deeds worthy to this community.
It's about finding the right person.
SHOUTS OF AGREEMENT
Eels don't have a gender
until they go back to the Sargasso Sea and reproduce.
Exactly. So there were no need for it to always be a man.
Yeah, it could be a woman. Or a man. Or neither.
Yeah. Or both.
Yeah! Should be me!
Next item - the coalface, Morris Men controversy.
Tony, you want to kick us off here?
Yeah, well, me and the boys blacking up -
it's not about black PEOPLE, is it?
It's about mining for coal.
Oh, it's not actually about coal,
Tony, the blacking up is a disguise.
Eh?
You know, used to black up as a disguise.
Eh?!
Well, isn't it? Well, either or,
it's about colour.
You know? I mean, these bloody snowflakes -
they'll be banning bloody night-time next. Yeah. Yeah!
And liquorice.
Yeah! Then, uh...
...tyres.
Tyres.
They MIGHT ban tyres.
We mined for an iron ore here before coal anyway, Tony.
Yeah, so you could paint your faces red.
Or orange.
But why do things have to change?
Yes! Yeah!
We must hold on to our British traditions.
Yeah. Yeah! Yeah!
We HAVE kept hold of our traditions - the good ones.
But the festival HAS to change and evolve to survive.
MURMURS OF AGREEMENT
The man with the longest willy used to put it through people's
letterboxes so children could feed the eel.
Better now we don't do THAT, innit?
It's a reflection of modern-day Britain.
It is about holding on to the core values
of being British. Yeah! Being proud to be British. Yeah!
I AM proud to be British,
just like I'm sure Cheddar Man was.
Oh, leave the Cheddar Man out of this, will you, Joy?
We don't mean YOU.
You're integrated, you know?
It's all the others. Who's the Cheddar Man?
Isn't he in Wallace And Gromit?
There wasn't a man made of cheddar in Wallace and Gromit.
It was a sheep.
I don't remember a cheese sheep.
No, it was the moon, Judith.
The moon was made of Wensleydale.
How dare you?!
Honestly, can't you women get some HRT or something?
No, we can't!
It's all run out!
There, there, third cousin Bernadette.
The Cheddar Man was a fossilised man
that they found in a cave in Cheddar.
Reckon he was the first Briton.
Used DNA to reconstruct his face,
and he had black skin and blue eyes.
SHOCKED MURMURING What?!
Our festivals are for everyone.
They're a celebration of what it means to be alive,
to be human. And that's ALL of us.
So if we start excluding people and making them feel bad,
then they're for none of us.
CAMERA CLICKS
ANGRY SHOUTING Please...
Please! Please!
Look, no-one, no-one will be heard if we're all shouting!
You've all got the printouts of the Phase One plans
of the development.
Yes, Verderer?
What I'm saying is it won't just be the beavers, habitats
destroyed if these proposed redevelopments go ahead.
Feck the beavers!
I want Starbucks! Yes! Or a Costa's.
Or Nero's.
You women and your bloody coffee!
How dare you?!
We understand your concerns, Verderer.
No, you don't. It's all about the money with you people.
You think you can plant a few new trees and that'll be it.
Well...
Well, we...
Ugh, we did.
We did make
best endeavours to find alternative routeing.
And to minimise the... No, you didn't!
It's a lie!
PROTESTING
Destroy ancient woodland...
...and thou will be cursed.
You finished those floors yet, Alan?
I'm just going to finish up here, Jan, and I'll pop off home.
The Eel cafe's been in the same spot since 1850.
It survived wars and plagues
and Veganuary.
Its foundations are rooted in the trees which surround it.
It CAN'T just be picked up and moved.
It won't survive.
SHOUTS OF AGREEMENT
Yeah, it's not just things above ground that need to be preserved.
It's what's underneath, too.
The mines have their own story to tell.
Yes, yes. Look, I've made a note of everyone's concerns,
and I will be feeding those back.
But we need to move on to the next item on the, um...
Oh, you know, the... the...
List? No, not list. There's a better word than list.
Running order?
No. Itinerary?
Definitely not.
Ugh...
Oh, you know, the... the...
Well, you know what I meant. The...
Agenda.
Agenda! Thank you, Joy!
Agenda. Next item.
Tony's trousers sweepstake.
CHEERING
Go on, Tony!
Ooh-ooh-oooooh!
WHOOPING
CHEERING, GROANING
It's jeggings! It's jeggings!
Jeggings!
It's jeggings! I knew it would be jeggings!
DRUMBEATS
SHE SQUEALS
And that concludes this year's business.
Well, we haven't finished about the redevelopments yet.
They can't proceed without tree felling orders or eviction notices, so...
Is this an eviction notice? Who's that? Where'd SHE come from?
I found it on Pig Man's door.
What? MURMURING
Pig Man says the forest paths are being closed off at Mallards Pike.
Mallards Pike? What's going on, Janet?
I'm not aware of any of this. Mallards Pike wasn't
part of the proposed route.
Let me just, um... Have a look! Check this.
I told you, I don't know anything about this.
The plans must have changed.
What?
Why are they closing off Mallards Pike?
And what's the point of this meeting if you're ploughing ahead anyway?
Well, to get you all in one place, I think,
so that they can get on with it.
MURMURING
Seems to me like this meeting has been called
under false pretences. Yeah! Yeah!
Keep us all away. Yeah! Yeah!
Including you, Janet.
I think I just said that.
Yes, she just said that. She just said that.
No, I...I'm sorry.
I didn't know.
There are ancient oaks in the path of that planned route, Janet.
Starlings - it's their home! I didn't know.
I'm sorry. I'm sorry.
That's enough!
Sorry, Janet, it's not your fault.
I'm so sorry.
Nice one, Linda.
♪ Oh, Sally, my dearest You, I'd be kissing
♪ Oh, Sally, my dear It's you I'd be kissing
♪ She smiled and replied "You don't know what you're missing"
♪ Oh, Sally, my dear I wish I could wed you
♪ Oh, Sally, my dear I wish I could bed you
♪ She smiled and replied "Then you'd say I misled you"
♪ If all you young men were hares on the mountain
♪ How many young girls would take guns and go hunting?
♪ If the young man could sing like blackbirds and thrushes
♪ If the young men could sing like blackbirds and thrushes
How many young girls would go beating the bushes? ♪