Waiting for God

- Season 3

(1992)

Depressed vicar Dennis Sparrow is conducting the funeral of ex-Bayview resident Jimmy but is making heavy weather of the eulogy and later he tells Tom and Diana that he is losing his faith. Geoffrey is back with Marion but their life is far from being a bed of roses and it's suggested Dennis tries to help them sort out their marriage. Not long afterwards Geoffrey announces that Marion and the vicar are now living together in Wales. Baines,meanwhile,is looking for a wife - a plan which involves Jane,though,sadly for her,not as a possible candidate but as a helper.

Blaming Tom for introducing Marion to Dennis Sparrow,Geoffrey asks him to baby-sit his two children Skye and Tarquin, but they are little monsters who run rings round them. Fortunately Diana is on hand to put them in their place. Baines decides to try computer dating to find his wife but Jane decides to put her oar in.

It's April and yet it's still very cold so the residents do not appreciate it when Baines turns off the central heating and suggest the residents go jogging to keep warm. Tom and Diana decide to get jobs to get out of the icy-cold home. Tom gets a job working with Geoffrey but he is such a pain that ,in order to get rid of him, Geoffrey pays Baines to put the heating back on.

Baines meets a girl-friend, Lucy Maitland,at the hunt ball. His mother is coming to visit before going to stay with his sister so Jane poses as Lucy Maitland to put Mother off Harvey's new fiancee whilst Tom and Diana ham it up mercilessly pretending to be Baines' parents talking to Lucy. The result is that Lucy does not stay around and Jane has got her Baines back all to herself.

After she has been accused of selfishness Diana goes to work as a volunteer at a charity for elderly people and takes up the cause of an old lady about to be evicted by unscrupulous estate agent Janet Follett. Diana learns that Ms. Follett is Baines' new girl-friend and she has plans for Bayview which will not go down well with the residents. With a little help from Tom and her media background Diana sets out to expose Ms. Follett.

Resident Dave Cartwright has died and at the wake the drink flows freely amongst the inhabitants of Bayview. Tom and Diana certainly have knocked it back and next morning wake up in bed together. Jane is shocked but Tom suddenly becomes very popular with the ladies in the home's bowling team.

Whilst Baines is ecstatic about his new car Tom and Diana plan a little holiday and start a vacation fund. Unfortunately Geoffrey decides to invest the money in the new intensive care wing that Baines is having built for Bayview. When Tom finds out he and Basil show how creative they can be when somebody conveniently leaves a bulldozer lying around and the holiday is on.

Diana decides that she would like to enter politics and stands as an independent candidate for the Residents' Party. Baines has been asked to stand for the Tories so Tom decides he will have some fun and join in the race too. Diana is forced to stand down when Baines threatens to sack care worker Jenny but Diana makes sure that this is used against him too and his political career is a non-starter.

Diana collapses and is rushed to hospital where Baines tries,unsuccessfully to cop off with the lady doctor. Diana,wrongly,gets it into her head that she is dying of cancer and asks Tom to get her some sleeping pills so that she can end it all quickly. For Tom,however,there are limits as to what he will do for his best friend.

The residents are getting wet waiting for a bus but when it arrives the driver claims that they cannot get on for free for another four minutes as they are too early,so Diana hauls him off the bus and Tom hi-jacks it on behalf of the residents. Later this will come in handy when a very pregnant Sarah arrives, seeking Diana's reluctant help to deliver her baby. Ultimately a girl arrives,unsurprisingly Sarah calls her Diana.

It's Christmas and unsurprisingly Diana is not in the Christmassy mood. She's already told off a very young Santa to whom she took her great-niece and she's not bothered that there will be no entertainment, thanks to Baines fiddling the funds to get a new jacket. When Tom takes over as the house pianist, ear-plugs are the order of the day for her. Her dire warnings seem to come true after Tom has invited Sally and Dave, a young homeless couple he met in town, to spend the holiday at Bayview and they run off with some of the residents' Christmas presents. However, ...