As the head of the Dingle family, Cain Dingle (Jeff Hordley) is currently shouldering a lot of worries in Emmerdale.
His sister, Chas (Lucy Pargeter), is currently on holiday with her daughter Eve (Bella James) – but when she returns she’s facing treatment for recently-diagnosed breast cancer.
On top of this, everyone is worried about Charity Dingle (Emma Atkins)’s mental health after she stabbed her husband Mackenzie Boyd (Lawrence Robb), apparently while in the middle of a night terror or hallucination that she was being attacked by Damon ‘Harry’ Harris (Robert Beck).
Charity’s mental health has been heading towards crisis for some time, ever since she shot Harry at Christmas when he was about to kill Mackenzie.
She’s managed to hide her panic attacks and anxiety from most people, although after she was arrested for stabbing Mack, Moira (Natalie J. Robb) told Cain that Charity had been struggling for some time.
So all of this was on Cain’s mind in Tuesday (February 27)’s episode. Then Vanessa (Michelle Hardwick) complained about warm beer in the Woolpack. The cooler had broken down and Cain didn’t want to add another thing to Chas and Charity’s woes, so he set about fixing it himself.
This involved a lot of hammering as Cain took a bit of a sledgehammer approach to to the task, with Ryan (James Moore), Vinny (Bradley Johnson) and Bear (Joshua Richards) looking on in horrified fascination.
Aaron (Danny Miller) came in and wanted to know why they weren’t stopping Cain from being so aggressive with the delicate equipment.
‘None of us want to get brayed wi’t spanner,’ Bear reasoned.
Aaron – whose rivalry with Cain has quietened down since Chas’s diagnosis but is still obviously bubbling under the surface – couldn’t keep quiet.
‘There shouldn’t be any banging,’ he told his uncle, which went down about as well as you’d expect, with Cain getting increasingly exasperated at all of Aaron’s helpful suggestions.
‘Back off will you?’ he snapped. ‘Trained mechanic here.’ Aaron pointed out that he, too, is a trained mechanic. Cain replied that he had years more experience. ‘I’ve got this.’
‘If you want to blow the compressor you do,’ Aaron remarked – and rather than blow the compressor, Cain blew his top.
‘I said I’ve got it!’ he snarled through clenched teeth, brandishing a spanner across the bar at the amused Aaron.
Bear intervened, releasing Cain’s grip on the spanner and telling him that is efforts hadn’t made any difference. Then Cain stood back as Bear presented the spanner to Aaron. ‘You’re up, lad.’
Despite Cain’s scepticism, Aaron managed to do the job and presented his uncle with a nice cold pint (and a side order of humble pie).
