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Private Notes
Mariette gives birth to a boy, John Blenheim, and, when the vicar, Reverend Candy, comes to see about the christening, he persuades the Larkins to have all their children baptised. Primrose takes an immediate shine to the young parson. Pop buys some jumble from elderly Mrs. Meredith and comes up against her nephew, Captain Broadbent, who accuses Pop of swindling his aunt when, in fact, Broadbent is the swindler, anxious to get his hands on his aunt's antique vase.
Pop comes across a fun-fair owned by his friend Fruity Pears, though it is losing money. Fruity tells off two teddy boys for causing trouble and they attack and hospitalize him, also injuring Pop. Mademoiselle Dupont arrives to be a godmother at the christenings and is initially upset to find that Pop is not a lord, but he apologizes and she ends up having an enjoyable stay. Pop buys the fun-fair and installs it in his yard where everyone celebrates after the church service.
Whilst Pop buys the adjacent quarry to stock as a trout farm and Charley considers buying a hop farm to supply the local brewery the main news in the village is the arrival of Pieter, a handsome Dane who endears himself to everyone - except perhaps Charley who is resentful of his wife's enthusiasm - with his willingness to work and his skill as a jack of all trades. Until, that is, Charley inadvertently exposes him as being a German, who pretends to be Danish to field hostility following the war.
Whilst the Larkins and John Candy shame some of the villagers into accepting Pieter for himself Charley and Mariette track him down and return him to the farm. They discover that he can stay in England if he marries an English girl and he does have a girlfriend, Eileen, but she feels tied to her selfish, supposedly invalid mother. However the Larkins persuade her to act for herself and she arrives at Home Farm to marry Pieter, now a village hero after rescuing one of the bigot's bullying son from falling in the quarry.
When ex-fighter pilot 'Honey' Honeyman crash lands in a field near Home Farm he asks Pop to deliver some boxes to his drinking club, the Ace of Clubs. He says they contain kitchen utensils but he has been smuggling drink over from France. The hop garden is Charley's if he can find the cash but ruthless property developer Marcus Cope tries to bribe him into letting him have it.
Pop and Ma go to an open day at their son Monty's Naval Training College, where Pop publicly humiliates a bullying instructor who has been making Monty's life a misery. Charley gets his gun to see off Cope's thugs when they try to destroy the hop-garden, for which he has now got his bank loan to purchase. They return when Cope learns that Pop has got the money from the burglary, which he bank-rolled.
Ma decides she and Pop should have a second honeymoon after she wins a competition prize of a weekend away in Paris.
