This was the
week of a Coronation
Street birth, a
beating and a bit on the side – and I’m not sure which was the
hardest to watch. Let’s start at
the very begining, it’s a
very good place to start. When you watch
Corrie you begin with
“Aye up, chuck” and when you puff and pant and give birth to your
baby in the cleanest disused beach hut you’re ever likely to stumble
across on a deserted beach, you begin with Maria
Connor and Tony
Gordon. They walked
Ozzy on the beach and the sign said “Breakwater” so Maria’s
did. Maria screamed
at Tony. Tony screamed
back. Ozzy ran rings
round the pair of them, stole the scene and out of nowhere appeared
a woman walking her own dog too, conveniently placed to take Ozzy
off Tony’s hands leaving both of them free to deliver baby
Liam. So that means
Tony killed the old Liam and brought the new baby Liam into the
world but Maria’s
too dim to know, care or
question. It’s in the
genes, just look at Kirk, who turns up at th’ospital with an It’s A Girl pink balloon when
his sister’s just given birth to an it’s a baby
boy. Maria brings Liam home
and Tony’s got the place tarted up with
flowers and a teddy bear. Maria’s
wondering already if she can cope without him when he moves back
into his flat but she’s got Audrey, grandmammy and grandaddy floying in
from Oireland and of course, the wisdom of
Kirk to help her settle into a slummy mummy
routine. I’m surprised
Claire Peacock hasn’t been round there with the Peacock book of
childcare offering to Shake n Vac Maria’s carpets.
Down the road
there’s love in the air at the Grimshaw house when Eileen spends the
night with Jesse. Problem
is, he still lives with his
folks. I know, and at
his age too, and Eileen gets more of a grilling than the
bacon from his mother in the morning. Another Grimshaw in the grip
of passion is Jason who ends up spending
more than the
night together with Tina, they’re planning to get
mortgaged and do a
property up like they do on those house programmes on the telly and then sell it
for a profit, like
they don’t. Jason’s light
bulb is too low wattage to rearrange these two
words:
Crunch. Credit. He doesn’t
care, he’s got Tina, she’s got him, they’re Weatherfield’s fittest
couple, the Posh n Becks of the Manchester suburbs.
Nothing can stop them - but David Platt
tries. When Tina
tells David that she’s with Jason now, he’s upset, you can
tell. When Joe tells
David not to give Tina a hard time about her being with Jason now,
he’s upset you can tell. And after
David throws bricks from the builders yard
at Jason down on the cobbles, he’s upset you can tell. But when he
breaks down in tears in his granddad Ted’s arms later at Gail’s
house, my little heart almost broke. I was upset,
can’t you tell?
Over at the
factory, Rosie’s
between the two thorns of Mr Strong
and Mr Gordon as she’s
now a stake-holder in the knicker
factory. She wants to
design her own pants, sexy ones, not belly warmers like her mother
wears. Luke and Tony
pay Rosie lip service (Luke more so than
Tony), they’ve got her money now so they’ll listen to her ideas but
it doesn’t mean they’ll let her have her
way. She’s promoted
to Executive Chair Sitter or something big
in the office and she’s over the moon although she’s doing the same
clerical job she was doing before, just in a
new frock. “It’s Miss
Webster, to you all, from now on,” she demands of the staff and her
mother on the factory
floor. Sally radiates
with pride while all the other factory girls and
Sean, you know, don’t.
Speaking of
Sean, Jason drags him along to the gym where he spots a tasty geezer
lifting weights. This was
really funny, it’s what Sean does best, as
he tried to lift the weights like he’d been doing it all his life
when the heaviest thing he’s lifted before was a new cotton bobbin
for his sewing machine. Sean’s in the gym jacuzzi with a smile on
his face when the new fella, Leon, jumps
in with him and guess what, he’s gay too, which fair cheers Sean up
but confuses him when Leon wants to know all about Jason instead of
Mr T.
At the Windass house this week, with the absence of
Gary in the big house for a crime he
sort of didn’t
commit although he did, you know what I mean, Mr W proposes to Mrs W on the sofa. I know, I
thought they were already wed too but apparently
not. She’s taken
his name, she’s borne his child
but Anna Windass, mother of Eee Gary, isn’t the legally married wife of
Eee Gary’s dad,
Eddie.
More romance hit
the Street this week when Emily and Ramsay grow
close. You have to
say that once the characters get over 60. They grow
close. Between 50 and
60 you could say they get it on. Between 30 and
40 they’re allowed to have red wine and as much passion as they can
stay up late for, and the under
30s are at it like rabbits but the over 60s, especially when it
comes to HRH Mrs Bishop, Saint Emily of
the Street, well, she grew close to Ramsay this
week.
And finally
this week, boring
story
(for this Corrie fan) of the
year so far is Kevin and Molly. You’ll
forgive me I hope
for not giving you
the red! hot! passionate! details that
the tabloids are pumping out about Weatherfield’s unlikeliest and
unloveliest relationship of the decade but
it’s just so very wrong. Kevin wouldn’t
do this, not to Tyrone, not with Molly, although yes he may well
have a fling to get back at Sally for all the times
that she did and he didn’t. But Kevin and
Molly together is wrong, wrong, wrong. And
it’s still going on, that’s all I’m going to say, except that Sally
wants Kev to arrange a birthday party for her, invite
“nice people” along and to have finger foods and
nibbles. The only
nibbles will be Kevin on Molly’s ear lobes and the only finger food
Sally’s ever eaten comes in a pack of ten, coated in day-glo orange
breadcrumbs, with a whiff of the sea and Pollock about
it.
And as a PS: I
was intrigued to note this week that The Kabin sold a boxed game of
Luxury Tiddlywinks. Luxury Tiddlywinks? Does it come with velvet
tiddles and satin
winks?
And that’s just
about that for this
week.
Coronation Street
writers this week were Chris Fewtrell,
Simon Crowther and Joe Turner.
Glenda--Blogging away
merrily at http://flamingnora.blogspot.com