The morning after Carla’s Barlow’s drug-induced meltdown, her husband Peter wants her to take a break from work. Unaware of the reason behind the paranoid episode, he reminds her of the old saying (attributed to lawyer Arnold Zack) that no one’s headstone ever said they wished they’d spent more time at work. ‘Nobody ever said they wished they’d spent more time in their dressing gown watching Loose Women either, did they?’ is Carla’s counterargument.
Daisy Midgeley is angling for a discount on her wedding flowers at Preston’s Petals. Tracy McDonald adheres to the philosophy that you don’t get anything for nothing in life, so she wants to know how Daisy will reciprocate any good turn she does for her. But promoting the flower shop on social media won’t cut it for Tracy because, as she so bluntly puts it: ‘Kim Kardashian, you are not.’ Keeping up with the card-giving elsewhere on the Street, it’s Evelyn Plummer’s 77th birthday and Roy Cropper has bought her a card featuring Monet’s Water Lilies. He asks how she plans to spend the day and – her facetiousness undimmed by time – Evelyn constructs a celebratory narrative that includes a Red Arrows flypast, Grimethorpe Colliery Band and Cliff Richard leaping out of a cake topless while singing Congratulations.
Tracy’s Faustian offer to Daisy is discounted flowers in return for being a bridesmaid. ‘Can you imagine it? The Bride Of Chucky in the back of every photo,’ is how Daisy envisages this nightmare scenario. She’s also appalled by Tracy’s demand that she and her daughter Amy Barlow wear matching dresses. Daniel Osbourne believes Daisy is unfairly trying to portray his stepsister as Miss Havisham, clad in wedding garb from a different era. Glenda Shuttleworth and Jenny Connor haven’t the foggiest inkling who Miss Havisham is. He explains she’s a character from Great Expectations. ‘You know, Dickens?’ he asks. ‘Not him again,’ wails a defeated Daisy. What Daniel doesn’t mention is that Miss Havisham is commonly portrayed as an elderly woman, even though she’s only in her mid-thirties when the novel begins (like a reverse Reg Varney in On The Buses).
Coronation Street episode 10904/05. Originally aired 17th March 2023.
