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Little Grudges by Hattie Naylor

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15-Minute Drama on BBC Radio 4

BBC Radio 4, 10-14 December 2012
 
Bonnie (Prunella Scales), a single woman, runs a successful cafe in the seaside town of Bridport.  She is quite successful at her job, while being blessed with a particular talent; the ability to overhear conversations from up to fifty metres away.  Although not intending to, she eavesdrops on almost everything her patrons talk about among themselves.
 
All Bonnie's patrons, it seems, are experiencing emotional turmoil.  Her best friend Ellie (Hannah Gordon) is surprised one afternoon as her one-time friend comes into the cafe; the two of them have not spoken since the time when (in Ellie's view at least) her friend stole Ellie's intended marriage partner.  Fiona and Sissy (Katherine Rogers, Eleanor Crooks) regularly patronize the cafe to debate the merits of a married man who claims his partner doesn't understand him; Stacey (Sarah Thom) shrinks away from her husband Jim (Robert Blythe), despite his protestations of love for her.
 
Bonnie herself has a guilty secret; she believes that her cafe is infested with pixies, who rejoice at everyone else's misfortunes.  Try as she might, she cannot scare them away; she can only pacify them by playing Puccini as background music, as recorded by Maria Callas.
 
While Little Grudges is certainly funny in places, it also explores the ways in which individuals like to suppress their grudges in the hope of leading tranquil lives, but find to their cost that such grudges keep coming back and ridiculing them - just like Bonnie's pixies.  Exactly how individuals deal with them is the most important point.  The director of this 15 Minute Drama was Mary Ward-Lowery.