Flora – an outline Robert L. Fielding & A girl who has recently lost both her parents goes to live with relatives – an aunt and uncle, who have several children – some older than the girl, some younger. All have problems – relating to today’s issues – drug abuse, alcoholism, unemployment, lack of direction, listlessness, ennui, depression, all sort of things, and the newcomer helps each one in turn. Whilst doing this, the girl – let’s give her a name – Flora – helps herself – finds ‘the one’ – fall is in live and that’s the end of the story. This is basically the plot of Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons – a poorly written book that has been made into a great film. Each person helped could be a sort of vignette contained in the whole thing, so it would be easier to write – being composed of units that contain how each person is transformed. However, this should be revealed as the story unfolds, devoting some time to each character as Flora helps each one. She reveals her innermost thoughts by writing letters to a close friend – who reads them out to the camera while she is doing something else – this could be a source of humour. She is being rowed across a lake by her beau and she is reading to the camera (voice over) about someone who says she feels she is drowning – do you see what I mean – a sort of irony injected into the situation – inner voice vs outer action at odds with each other – something the audience comes to expect and eagerly anticipate as each story unfolds through letters. Robert L. Fielding

Flora Fairford - nee Post's stories

Scenario/synopsis 1
Flora Post, newly married to Charles Fairford – embryo parson and amateur aviator, now lives in the leafy Sussex hamlet of Nether Wopping, where she ‘interferes’ in the life of the villagers, who confide in her chiefly because she is educated, and the vicar’s wife.
The tale unfolds with Flora listening to stories and tittle-tattle from the housewives – bored and otherwise, from the village and surrounding farms and large houses.

Scandal is the main topic of these ‘chats’ and Flora makes good use of them, for her own benefit and her husband’s and for the chosen few – downtrodden wives and sisters, mothers and grandmothers, daughters and aunts – while not exactly a feminist, Flora is assertive and it shows in the advice she gives to others.
The men of the area are torn between hating her for her meddling, and adoring her for her pulchritudinous figure and enticing looks. She plays them off against each other, while doing the females of the neighbourhood no end of good, with hugely humorous effects.

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