Good Neighbors: The Thing in the Cellar

The "thing" Tom is building in the cellar is a generator. He will be using methane to run the generator, created from his animals... well, you know. I won't write the word here because I wouldn't want to offend Margo. *wink*

Quotes:

[Tom drinks a cup of coffee]
Tom: Ah. Beautiful.
[hands the cup to Barbara]
Barbara: You didn't save me any.
Tom: You said it was all for me.
Barbara: Well, you didn't have to believe me.
Tom: Is that you being incorrigibly feminine?
Barbara: Yes.

Barbara: You're a genius, you are.
Tom: Well, old Newton had his apple, Einstein had his relativity. I've got my thing in the cellar.
Barbara: How's it going?
Tom: I'm a genius. How should I know?

Margo: You look terribly tired and drawn, dear.
Barbara: Thank you.

[re: candles]
Barbara: Are you having your electricity cut off as well?
Margo: Hardly. No, I'm just laying in a stock to obviate being dictated to by those neo-Marxists at the power station.
Barbara: What did Horace say, Winnie?
Jerry: Annual event. Power strikes.

Margo: Barbara, now you know me, dear. I never speak out of turn... Don't you think it's time Tom saw a specialist?

Barbara: I had thought of giving Freud a ring, but I haven't got a telephone.

Tom (to Jerry): If you're not careful I'll make you drink all of my homemade wine.

Tom: This might look like an old diesel generator to you.
Jerry: Yes, it does.
Tom: That's because it is. Except that it's fueled by methane.
Jerry: Methane? Your inthane. [laughs at his own joke]

Tom: That was the overture. This is the symphony.
[turns the wheel of the generator]
Jerry: Just the one movement, eh?

Jerry: You do this on one load of... pigs'... doo-dahs?
Tom: Yep. Waste not, want not, pick it up and stoke it, it's what I say.

Tom: If I could develop an H2O tablet, the water board could go and drown itself as well.

Tom: If they developed an electric gas over, you'd have one of those.

Jerry: Tom, I can't help it if luxury and I are mutually attractive.

Tom (re: the deep freezer): When we do our pigs in, there'll be a year's supply of pork in there.
Jerry: Seems a bit ungrateful when they're providing the fuel to run the thing.
Tom: True, true. It's a dog's life, being a pig.

Barbara: It works, doesn't it? Your smile's got dimples.

Margo: If it will make everyone happy if I say, "Congratulations, Tom," then congratulations, Tom.
Barbara: You always were the one for the spontaneous outburst.

Margo: I'd sooner pay the electricity bills, personally.
Jerry: I sooner you pay the electricity bills personally.

Jerry: You'd have made a marvelous photographer, the way you enlarge everything.

Tom: It's Tom Good and his magic switch. On. Off. On. Off. On... Off.
Barbara: And his lovely assistant, Rita, who does it left-handed. On, off, on off. On... Off.
Tom: Thank you, Rita. For my next trick I shall make Margo smile.

Barbara: Dear old Margo. Why do we like her?
Tom: I don't know. Because she offers herself up for slaughter so readily, I suppose.

Barbara: Bread.
Tom: Bread? What are you having?

Jerry: You know, your back garden looks just as ridiculous as your front garden.

Jerry: You know, you're not as fun as you used to be, Tom.
Tom: Shouldn't have married me then, should you?

Tom (looks at Barbara's book): "Forgotten Foods." I can see why they call it that. There's a bit of jam on page 38.
Barbara: It's a library book. I got it the other day when I went to graze the goat on the common.
Tom: You didn't take the goat in the library, did you?
Barbara: Oh, no. It hasn't got a ticket. I left it in the bicycle racks.

Tom: I wonder what Surbiton snails taste like. [pause] Rabbits.
Barbara: No, they're not at all like rabbits.

Jerry: You don't half stink.
Barbara: Smoothie.
Jerry: What is it?
Tom: Fish cologne. We've been gutting all morning.
Jerry: Ah, the fun you have in this house.

Jerry: Off you go, my children. Watch for wolves.

Tom: I explained it all to you. It's simplicity itself.
Jerry: Well, you make it work. You're simple.

Tom: Come one, brain. Come one, brain. Don't let me down, just as I was getting to like you.

Jerry: Oh, Tom. Care to borrow a candle?

Good Neighbors: Pig's Lib

The Goods have purchased pigs, much to the chagrin of Margo, and she is forced to call in the big guns in the form of the chairman of the resident's association. Margo thinks Mr. Carter will simply tell Tom and Barbara that they can't have pigs in their backyard, but, unfortunately for her, that isn't quite the case. Tom and Barbara end up promising Margo that the pigs won't get into her garden because they can't jump the high fence. However, they find out too late that pigs can go under a fence.

Quotes:

Customer at Store: I don't have any eggs on me. Do you accept cash?

Margo: What is that?
Tom: Two dustbins on a trolley.
Margo: I know it's two dustbins on a trolley, Tom. And when I asked you the question, it was a rhetorical one which does not need a direct answer, as you knew in the first place.
Tom: You make me hold my breath when do long sentences, Margo.
Margo: What is it?
Tom: It's two rhetorical dustbins on a rhetorical trolley.

Tom: Go in peace, dear Gerald, but tell thy sovereign lady this, if she doth bite her thumbs at us, e'en do we back unto her our thumbs be-bite.
Jerry: Don't call us, we'll call you.

Mr. Carter: Evening, Mr. Good.
Tom: Good evening, Mr. Carter. Right. That's got the poncy* formalities over. I'm a busy man, if you just make your threats, I'll ignore them, and you can clear off.

Margo: May I come in as well?
Tom: Unless you want to listen through the keyhole.

Margo: They will ruin my garden.
Barbara: We're not keeping them in your garden.
Margo: Well, say they jumped over the fence?
Tom: Oh, come on, I can't see piglets doing the Fosbury flop** over a great high fence like that.

Tom: All right, tell you what. If they build a ladder and as much as set a trotter*** in your garden, I'll get rid of them. How's that?

Margo: We will leave it at that. Barbara, Tom.
Tom: Margo, Margo.
Barbara: Margo, Margo.
Margo: Good night, Mr. Carter. And I am sorry to say this, but you are not the Mr. Carter I imagined you to be.
Mr. Carter: Well, I'm sorry to hear that. [Margo leaves. To Tom] Because she's exactly the Mrs. Leadbetter I imagined her to be.

Margo: Anything special you'd like for dinner?
Jerry: Anything except pork.
Margo: Well, I must say, Jerry, I never realized before that you were so fond of pigs.
Jerry: I'm not. I think they're nasty, smelly creatures. But I'd rather have Tom and Barbara as friends with pigs than than not friends without them.
Margo: I don't see why you should make me out the villain of the piece. Nothing wrong with asking someone to honor an agreement.
Jerry: That's what they said about Shylock.

Margo: Jerry called me Shylock.

Tom: Talk about cheating Mesdemoiselles Guillotine. The Scarlet Pimpernel wasn't in it.

Tom: Are we the happiest Tom and Barbara in the world?
Barbara: Easily.
Tom: Right. Go sober up. Get your working clothes on. We've got a prison camp to build.



* pretentious
**common high jump technique
***pig's foot

Good Neighbors: The Weaker Sex?

Tom buys an old wood-burning stove, and it falls to Barbara to clean it, while Tom is off trying to figure out how to scare the birds from eating their seeds they've just planted. Not a job for a weakling. It doesn't go over too well with Barbara that they're tasks seem a bit lop-sided.

There is a very funny exchange* between Tom and the man who is taking their phone away (Phones are not essential to people who are self-sufficient, and remember this is the day of home phone lines only. The cell phone wasn't even thought of then.). Tom is trying to figure out how to scare the birds away from his garden, and he asks the phone man his advice. The phone man misunderstands Tom because Tom asks him to imagine he's a bird. Tom means "bird" as in an animal with feathers and wings. The phone man thinks he means "bird" as in the British slang for "girl."

Quotes:

Sam: What are you doing?
Tom: Have you heard of self-sufficiency?
Sam: Yea.
Tom: Well, I'm "self," and she's "sufficiency."

Tom: I'll have to do something about [the birds eating the seedlings], you know. Get a bird-scarer, or something. I don't know, or cellophane their beaks together.

Tom: Do you like it?
Barbara: Yes. I've always wanted a couple of tons of rusty old iron in the kitchen.

Barbara: This must be the oven. Yeech.
Tom: No, no. Lovely. Genuine Victorian dripping.
Barbara: Including the Victorian dripping, how much did we pay for this?
Tom: Your hair dryer and the toaster.
Barbara: Oh, thank you very much.
Tom: No. No electricity.
Barbara: No.
Tom: If you want to dry your hair, stick it in there. And for toast, this is the way of making toast.
Barbara: Will you be swapping your electric razor for something soon?
Tom: I expect so, why?
Barbara: I mean, this thing is so versatile, I want to see how you're going to shave with it.

Tom: I've got to invent something to scare [the birds] off. Of course! The old Chinese idea.
Barbara: Kung Fu?

Tom: Carry on.
Barbara: Gosh. Thanks, Tom.

*Tom: Now, imagine you're a bird.
Phone man: Okay.
Tom: Right. Now. You are in my garden.
Phone man: Am I sitting down or walking about?
Tom: Either. [pronounces it "eye-ther]
Phone: Either. [pronounces it "ee-ther]
Tom: Either. [pronounces it "ee-ther] Now, unbeknown to you, I have rigged a series of tripwires. You hit one with your leg.
Phone man: Not if I'm sitting down.
Tom: Well be walking about, then. It's the principle I'm trying to establish, you see. It's the principle.
Phone man: Oh, sorry. I'm walking about about your garden and I bang into one of your tripwires.
Tom: Right. This sets off the play button of a tape recorder.
Phone man: Oh, yes?
Tom: Yes. All of a sudden, as loud as you can imagine, you get this big Count Basie number.
Phone man: Do I?
Tom: Yes. Now, the point is - would that frighten you?
Phone man: No.
Tom: Why not?
Phone man: I like Count Basie.
Tom: You're a bird. Remember?
Phone man: I don't see why a bird should be frightened of Count Basie.

Tom: Let's get back to basics. What do you think is the best way to scare birds?
Phone man:  Flashing on the Common, I suppose.

Margo (at Tom's front door): Hello, Tom. It's Margo.
Tom: Yes, it is you. Yes.

Margo (to the phone man, who is leaving with the phone): GPO [General Post Office], I see.
Phone man: Me? No ma'am. I'm an eccentric millionaire. I get so many phone calls, I have to carry the phone around with me.

Margo: So, you've had to let the phone go. Are things that bad?
Tom: No. It's just not essential.
Margo: Not essential? But, say I wanted to phone you up?
Tom: Damn. I hadn't thought of that.
Margo: No.
Tom: I suppose you'll just have to walk all the way around from next door and speak to us in person.

Margo: Would you tell Barbara it's Margo, please Tom?
Tom (as Barbara walks into the room): Barbara. That's Margo over there.

Margo: Barbara, what have you been doing to yourself?
Barbara: Oh, it's rust. I've been suffering from it for years.
Margo: Well, let me show you what I've got.
Tom: Woodworm?

[Margo shows Barbara a dress she just bought.]
Barbara: Oh, that's nice.
Margo: Yes, well that's what I thought when I bought it. But I'm afraid it was a terrible mistake.
Barbara: Laclerq. Jolly expensive mistake.
Margo: Well, that's not important. The point is, Barbara, I got it home, I put it on, and I said to my self, "Margo, that simply looks cheap and nasty." So I wondered if you would like it.
Barbara: You are the mistress of the unfortunate phrase.
Margo: Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't mean... Look, I simply thought of you because, well, I'd only thrown it away and... I know how difficult things are. I mean, I saw the telephone being taken away.
Barbara: Well, that's all right. I haven't worn a telephone for years.

Barbara (re: the dress): I told you, I don't want that thing.
Tom: It's not for you.
Barbara: Well, then who's it for?
Tom: I want it.
Barbara: Why?
Tom: You'll see.
Barbara: You'll look cheap and nasty in it.

Margo: Tom, either you take down my dress, or I shall call the police. And I'm aware that didn't come out right, but you know what I mean.

Tom: If you mean this life makes me happy, then yes it does, and I thought it made you happy.
Barbara: Well, it doesn't today. I mean, it did yesterday, and it probably will tomorrow, but it just doesn't today.
Tom: Well, surely there's a joy in everything we do now.
Barbara: What? Scraping half a ton of rust off that thing?
Tom: Well, yes. Even that. I mean even the grotty jobs I find enjoyable.
Barbara: Oh, yes. Digging up that tree stump?
Tom: Yes. I mean, I'm not saying it was easy, but there a joy in it. Albeit a savage, primeval joy.
Barbara: You lying hound. You chuck the pick ax at the goat.

Jerry (to Barbara): Marriage must be a fair division of labor.
Margo: Like ours.
Jerry: No, no. Not exactly like ours. I was thinking more 50-50.
Margo: Meaning what, Jerry?
Jerry: Meaning not 80-20.
Margo: I would hardly call keeping this house in immaculate condition a mere 20%.
Jerry: You don't. Mrs. Pearson comes in five times a week.
Margo: Well, there is the garden.
Jerry: Oh, no. Mr. Pearson comes in three times a week.
Margo: I pick and arrange all of my own flowers, Jerry.
Jerry: I bet you wouldn't do that if the Pearsons had a daughter who did flower arranging.
Margo: I don't know what has prompted this poisonous outburst, Jerry. But since we are dragging skeletons from under the bed.
Jerry: Oh, get your metaphors right, please! Skeletons come out of a cupboard.
Margo: Well, thank you very much for correcting me in front of guests. I really must apologize for Jerry, Barbara. I--
Jerry: She's gone.
Margo: Well. The manners of some people.
Jerry: How extremely rude.

Good Neighbors: Say Little Hen...

Tom and Barbara are on the road to self-sufficiency. They've bought a goat for milk and butter. They've tilled the front yard and part of the back yard to plant vegetables. They've made a chicken coup, which Barbara paints pink because they had pink paint in the shed, to house the chickens they've just acquired. They are quite serious about living self-sufficiently. And Jerry and Margo want to talk them out of their lunacy, so Jerry invites his boss over for dinner to talk him into asking Tom to take his job back. The discussion gets quite heated when Tom and Barbara come over for drinks prior to dinner.

This is the episode when we meet Margo for the first time. We only heard her voice in the pilot. And luckily for us, she says my favorite line twice in the episode, "Thank you very much, Jerry."

Quotes:

Margo: Jerry! She's smashing glass now.
Jerry: That's nothing. You should have seen Tom on the common with the goat.

Margo: Why can't they have a dog like everyone else?
Jerry: Dogs don't have udders.
Margo: Jerry, don't be obtuse. You know what I mean.

Margo: Well, thank you very much, Jerry. I shall not set foot in that car again until you've had it thoroughly valeted.

Margo: They are headed for degradation, misery and squalor. And we have to live next door to it.

Tom: Pink? You've painted our chicken house pink?
Barbara: Yes.
Tom: Have you put little chintz curtains in the windows as well?

Tom: This is just chicken voyeurism.

Jerry: They're happy. Perhaps lemmings are happy as they rush toward the edge of the cliff. So, I've taken steps.
Margo: Have you actually covered any ground?

Margo: Well, thank you very much, Jerry.
Jerry: What's wrong?
Margo: What's wrong? I need at least three weeks if I'm going to entertain a managing director. That's what's wrong.
Jerry: Three weeks to cook a bit of dinner.
Margo: I have never done that in my life. I prepare meals, Jerry. And I've nothing to wear.
Jerry: You could serve it naked.
Margo: Would you mind very much not being quite so vulgar. I just remembered, the candelabra being replated, and we don't have a new napkin in the house.
Jerry: Oh, forget it. I'll think of something else.
Margo: No. No, I'll manage, Jerry. A woman always does.

Jerry: I'm not awfully familiar with Taming of the Shrew.
Tom: No, Margo does get rather a lot of her own way, doesn't she?

Jerry: I think if I can get him back on the rails we should save him from himself. I don't think that's putting it too strongly.
Andy: That's awfully admirable of you, Jerry. But I'm running a business, not a psychiatric clinic.
Jerry: He's the best draftsman we've ever had. In fact, I don't see us keeping the Weber account without him.
Andy: Well, of course, I've always been very fond of... what's his name?
Jerry: Tom.

Felicity: Oh, look, a goat!
Margo: I'm so sorry, Felicity.
Felicity: Oh, no. I like goats.

Tom: Sorry about this. We're expecting our first egg.

Andy: There's a desk waiting for you at JJM.
Tom: You what?
Andy: Yes.
Tom: Has it been asking for me by name?

Margo: All right Tom, if you wish to commit social suicide and ruin the neighborhood while you're doing it, then so be it. But I think it's despicable to tow poor Barbara in your wake.
Barbara: Oi! I'm not no barge.
Margo: I know, dear. But I'm not sure you understand the implications.
Barbara: Now, look --
Felicity: Your goat, dear, has it got a name?
Barbara: Yes. Margo.
Margo: Jerry?

Jerry: If you come back to JJM, you won't have to work nearly as hard.
Andy: I heard that, Ledbetter.

Tom: We don't look on it as work. It's our way of life. I mean, it is work, because we tend to collapse at the end of the day, but we don't look on it as work.
Barbara: Yes. If I could understand that, I'd agree with it.

Felicity: I wanted to do something exciting when I was young. And then I married Andrew, and that was the end of that.

Felicity: Just trying is exciting.
Tom: Felicity, you've got it in one.

Barbara: At least you got the last word, and that's not easy with Margo.
Tom: Well, I excel at hollow boasting.

Barbara: Now, there's no need to shoot yourself, just 'cause you can't kill a chicken.

Tom: Chicken, I'm going to make you an offer you can't refuse.

Felicity (to Margo): It looks just like the illustration on the tin, my dear.

Barbara: How can you miss a chicken from six inches?
Tom: It ducked. Anyway, we know how to make them lay now. Scare them into it.

Classic British Comedies: The Good Life (a.k.a. Good Neighbors)

Britain is well known for its great television. It has produced wonderful period dramas; Downton Abbey and the 1995 version of Pride and Prejudice are probably the most successful. There have been many other popular period dramas, such as North and South, Bleak House, Little Dorrit, Lark Rise to Candleford, Crandford, and many versions of Jane Eyre. (Someday soon I plan on writing up a post of all of the period dramas I would recommend.) British television has also given us many of the great comedy series. Fawlty Towers, Black Adder, Keeping Up Appearance, Are You Being Served?, To the Manor Born, and Red Dwarf, just to name a small number. British comedy is very different from American comedy. Some Americans love it, and some Americans just don't get the humor.

I would have to say that my favorite of all of the British comedies is The Good Life (known in the U.S. as Good Neighbors.) Richard Briers and Felicity Kendal play Tom and Barbara Good who live in Surbiton, a suburb of London. Paul Eddington and Penelope Keith play their neighbors, Jerry and Margo Ledbetter. On his 40th birthday, Tom leaves his job as a draftsman making plastic toys for breakfast cereal, because he doesn't feel fulfilled, and he's no longer able to take his job seriously. He convinces Barbara to try to adopt a self-sufficient lifestyle, and they turn their yard (front and back) into gardens to grow their own fruits and vegetables, and they buy chickens, pigs and a goat. The generate their own electricity, and they also try to make their own clothes. Jerry is confused as to why Tom would leave a perfectly good job to try self-sufficiency, and Margo simply horrified by the fact that she is now living next door to a couple who grow their own food, have chickens, pigs and a goat in the backyard, and create electricity using methane (i.e.,manure). Not to mention how it reflects poorly on her that they are her friends.

All of the characters in the series are excellent. The situation itself is ripe for comedic scenes, and the actors are perfect in their portrayals and have great comic timing. All of the actors are great, but I have to mention Penelope Keith's Margo specifically. Margo Ledbetter is one of the greatest characters ever to be seen in television. The character is well written, but it is Keith's portrayal of the Margo that makes it so wonderful. Someone just has to say to me, "Thank you very much, Jerry," imitating Margo's haughty manner, and I bust up laughing. I love this show!



Episode 1: Plough Your Own Furrow

Quotes:

Tom (reading a birthday card): "Mendelssohn and Mozart were dead by 40. Why aren't you?" How thoughtful.

Tom: When I get a birthday card from my wife, I expect a sentimental, loving, sickly verse. Not, "Another nail in your coffin, you wreck."
Barbara: Blow your candle out and eat your cake.

Barbara: Life begins at forty.
Tom: That's a fallacy for a start.

Tom: It's quality of life. That's what I'm after. If I could just get it right.
Barbara: What's "it"?
Tom: It? Well, "it" is... it.
Barbara: Well, if I see it lying about, I'll say, "Look here 'it,' my husband's had enough of you."
Tom: Not being very specific, am I?
Barbara: Borderline.

Tom: You look like an advert for gracious living.
Jerry: I am.

Commissionaire: Good morning, Mr. Ledbetter. Good morning, Mr. uh...
Tom: I've really made an impact with you over the years, haven't I?
Commissionaire: No. I've got sciatica.
Tom: Good.
Commissionaire: Charming.
Tom: No, no, no, that's my name. I've only been here eight years.

Brian: It really is something, isn't it?
Tom: Yes, it is. It's a mold for a plastic hippopotamus that's going to end up in a package of breakfast cereal.
Brian: You've gotta hand it to the ideas men on the fifth floor, haven't you?
Tom: Electric shock treatment probably. Ideas men? They sit up there like the gargoyles on top of Notre Dame.  Every now and again, one of them jumps up, puts on his jester's cap and says, "Eureka! Hippopotamus, oh!"

Brian: Oh, come. You wouldn't want us to go back to the dark ages, breakfast cereal without little plastic gifts?
Tom: It still tastes the same.

Tom: Listen you lot! I am a run machine! A run machine! And I bowl!

Tom: Will you mind explaining to those children in my office that I play cricket?
Jerry: Do you?
Tom: Well, no. But I could if I were asked!
Jerry: Still got the middle-age blues, have you?

Jerry: You use about 1/10 of your ability. I have to use all mine, and what I lack, I make up for with sheer, bloody crawling.

Tom: I can't see the world as a giant plastic toy. How can you make it your life's work.
Jerry: I don't. It just brings in the goodies.

Jerry: You're not going to walk into another job at your age, are you?
Tom: I'll hit you with my crutch in a minute.

Tom (on intercom): Miss Martin, it is funny, but not out loud.

Jerry: Don't go, Tom. (to Sir) I think that Tom ought to sit in on this one, Sir.
Sir: Why? Where's he from?
Tom: Fourth floor.
Sir: Oh, yes, yes. I'm afraid I don't get down to the fourth floor as often as I'd like.

Sir: How is it, um, uh...
Tom: Going?
Sir: Coming.

Sir: Now, look here. A bubble has just come off the top of the think tank. And I don't mind telling you that this is an absolute blockbuster of an idea. It's going to put our wildlife preservation series in the "Van Guard" of world, and I do mean world moldings. [Tom tries to hold in his laughter] Can you guess what it is? No, you can't, can you. Our next mold is going to be... a giraffe! And Tom, I'm thinking of putting this giraffe on your plate! [Tom runs out of Jerry's office and finally laughs]

Tom (to Barbara): Honestly, you should have heard Sir. You would have thought that he discovered penicillin. I couldn't help laughing.

Tom: I'd run off with you if you weren't married. I even love your varicose vein.
Barbara: I'll grow it in the shape of your initial.

Barbara: We don't need a lot of things.
Tom: No. We're a very spiritually advanced couple, aren't we?
Barbara: Yes. Anyway, you don't make enough for a lot of things.
Tom: No.
Barbara: I'll tell you what's at the bottom of all this. All this "it" business you were on about this morning. I had a think in the garden after you left.
Tom: You know, why do you always go into the garden to think? You're not having an affair with the gnome we haven't got, are you?

Tom: Hey! I was brilliant at algebra in school, wasn't I?
Barbara: I don't know.
Tom: I was.
Barbara: Big head.
Tom: X, the unknown. "It." In order to track it down, all you have to do is what they do in algebra.
Barbara: What are they?
Tom: I can't remember.
Barbara: We're both really firing on both cylinders today, aren't we?

Tom: You've heard of the "don't knows." I've come across the "don't want to's."

Tom: New page. [rips off page and hands it to Barbara.] File that.
Barbara: All right. [wads it up and throws it in the corner.]

Tom: I want... it.
Barbara: Shall we go to bed?
Tom: Yes. No. No. I'll be up in a minute.
Barbara: All right. Happy birthday.
Tom: Big deal.

Tom: What do you think?
Barbara: I need to think.
Tom: Garden?
Barbara: Yes.
Tom: Right.

Barbara: Self-sufficiency in Surbiton?

Barbara: I couldn't kill chickens.
Tom: Right. I'll chop their heads off with my Black and Decker while you're not looking.

Barbara: What happens when we need new clothes.
Tom: I'll have made the loom by then.

[Barbara comes in from thinking in the garden]
Tom: Well? Well? Well?
Barbara: You're on. We'll do it.
Tom: Now look, have you thought about this?
Barbara: What do you think I've been doing? Taking my wellies for a walk?

Jerry: Sir sacked you for laughing?
Tom: Other way around. I sacked Sir.

Jerry: You're mad, you realize that, don't you? You're... you're... I'm looking for a superlative.
Tom: Totally insane.
Jerry: Yes.
Tom: Rubbish.
Barbara: (calling to Tom from the window): Tom! The man said the goat will be here by noon.
Tom: Lovely.
Jerry: A goat? This is sheer folly. It just won't work. You're... you're... totally insane.
Tom: Jerry, we've never been saner in all our lives. Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got 300 weight of spuds to put in.