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Finding a suitable home can be difficult in a constrained housing market such as small rural village. Within Ambridge, only a small proportion of the homes in the village is known about, and it is rare for additional homes to be added to those where named characters live. This chapter takes a generational view of housing pathways and options, showing how Generation X, Millennial and Generation Z populations in Ambridge are housed. The chapter examines the extent to which characters rely on friends or family for solving their housing problems and considers the role of family wealth and wider dependence in determining housing pathways. The research shows that dependence on others' access to property is by far the most pronounced feature of housing options for these households. These pathways and housing choices are compared to the wider context in rural England, to consider the extent to which luck, in the form of the mythical ‘Ambridge Fairy’, plays a role in helping people to find housing. The ways in which the Ambridge Fairy manifests are also considered – showing that financial windfalls, unexpectedly available properties and convenient patrons are more likely to be available to people with social capital and established (and wealthy) family networks. The specific housing pathway of Emma Grundy is reviewed to reflect on the way in which her housing journey is typical of the rural working-class experience of her generation, within the wider housing policy context.

As a network analyst, I am fascinated by social interactions. The ways in which people connect with one another and exercise power and authority by deploying different forms of capital. This piece returns to the underlying and changing kinship network structure of the village of Ambridge over time, explores the role of ‘kin-keeping’ as deployed by the matriarchs Peggy and Jill. I am most interested in the ways in which gender as performed by the women of the village intersects with abundance or lack of other forms of capital, and how far inequalities persist and why. It is clear that there is an intergenerational power dynamic at play in the spreading or hoarding of the various dimensions of power layered together and how forms of capital intersect for protection or precarity. Social and cultural capital at birth in the village is defining in terms of both ‘serious’ life outcomes as well as how more minor infractions and foibles are viewed. Further, I return to discuss how my various network-based predictions have fared over time. The Headlam Hypothesis and the fate of Ed Grundy – King of Ambridge are revisited and their durability explored.

For thirty years or so the Middlesex County Council, through its Public Control Department, has persistently tried to protect purchasers of fish from malpractices in the retail fish trade. It would be incorrect to suggest that no other Food and Drugs Authority has tried to do the same, but it is evident that in many areas there has been little or no overt sign of similar activity. Recently there was a Middlesex prosecution in which the owners of a restaurant were fined £2, with £4 costs, for supplying fried dabs described on the menu as plaice. This aroused the ire of a Mr. Ralph A. Hadrill, who wrote to The Times a letter severely criticising the Council. To that letter pride of place on the leader page was given by the Editor of The Times. Two days later, four further letters were printed on this intriguing subject. One writer expressed the view that some purchasers prefer dabs to plaice in the spring. The Chairman of the Middlesex General Purposes Committee strongly criticised Mr. Hadrill, and emphatically denied that his Council was wasting the ratepayers' money. On the contrary, he claimed that the Council provides purchasers of fish with very necessary protection at a most economical cost.