I hope you’ve all had an exciting week, but I’m going to assume that unless you’ve been to a jumble sale, you haven’t had a week as exciting as the residents of Ramsay Street. Let’s unpack the world’s most thrilling jumble sale and everything else that happened last week.
A JUMBLE SALE!? OH MY GOD!
I can genuinely say that I don’t think I’ve ever been as excited about anything as the people of Erinsborough are about a charity jumble sale. It’s such a big deal that it requires an opening ceremony, and people are falling over to get there as soon as it opens. I went to plenty of Bring and Buy Sales as a kid, and I don’t think I ever saw this level of enthusiasm.
JJ and Dex are so absolutely thrilled about the jumble sale that they have figured out a strategy to get the best stuff, they perform a special celebratory handshake for the occasion, and they are trying to hurry Remy out of Harold’s while she’s talking to Krista, so they can get there early enough. Incidentally, if I’d been with my mum and she’d stopped to speak to another adult, me interrupting her because I was in a hurry to get where I wanted to go would have resulted in me getting smacked into the middle of next week.
The jumble sale is much more liquorice-based than I would ever have expected, with seemingly everyone talking about the liquorice stand. Now, I have the confectionary taste of an 80-year-old grandad, so the notes I made on this episode featured the line: “A LIQUORICE STALL?! Now I’m interested”. Also, when JJ suggested to Sadie that they go and get some liquorice, I wrote, “As pick-up lines go, that would work for me.” So, perhaps I would have been as thrilled about the jumble sale as everyone else in Erinsborough was.
On the subject of JJ’s crush on Sadie, I still can’t get over the fact that he used to suspect she was his sister, and nobody in his family is mentioning it. Have they all forgotten? It’s weird.
Nicolette’s Baffling Drama Continues
Still, at the world’s most happening jumble sale, Isla goes missing, sending Nicolette and Byron into a panic. It isn’t long before she’s located on the steps of the police station with a book that alludes to the current baffling drama going on between Nicolette and Veronica. Nicolette assumes that Veronica has something to do with Isla’s brief disappearance, but the police won’t take the matter further, so it’s up to Jane to get herself riled up and give Veronica the hairdryer treatment instead.
As I predicted, it isn’t the end of the world when Jane finds out what Nicolette did to Veronica’s husband, Sasha, and all she gets is a bit of a lecture, although Jane does deliver the absolute zinger: “I’m disappointed by your lack of personal growth.” Personally, I’m more disappointed that Nicolette pronounces the word “pedestal” as “pedastool” for some reason when she’s talking to Paul.
Is anyone else struggling to care about this storyline? Even with the distribution of the saucy pictures of Nicolette, it isn’t capturing my attention at all, and Veronica is feeling more and more like an Aldi-brand version of Scarlett.
Aaron and David Want More Privacy
Just quickly, I have a brief bit of advice for Aaron and David. If you’d like more privacy at home, you don’t need to stretch yourself financially and buy a house, you just need to not play your silly strip-cocktail games in the kitchen-diner, right next to the front door that you seem pathologically incapable of locking. Go into a room with a closed door between you and the rest of your household, and then you can whip your clothes off and cover each other in squirty cream for as long as you like without traumatising the very easily shocked lady you live with. Just an idea.
Melanie Has Possibly the Worst Date in History
Melanie decides that the best way to get over the re-emerging feelings she has for Toadie is to put herself out there on dating apps, which seems like a spectacularly bad idea even if it hadn’t ended with her being the victim of a cruel prank. Rebound dating rarely ends well, but admittedly it doesn’t usually end with being threatened and having something gross chucked over you by a local oik.
Poor Melanie gets stood up by her date, and it becomes obvious as she’s taunted by a car full of morons on the way home that he never existed at all and that they set her up on a fake date. They drive at her threateningly, and then one of them throws something over her. What was that anyway? To my utterly inefficient eyes, it looked like minced beef, but obviously, there’s no plausible reason why anyone would ever be carrying minced beef in a way they could launch it at a pedestrian like that, so I’m going to wait for someone who doesn’t need bottle-bottom glasses to tell me what it was.
Cara’s Sister Arrives, and Remy is Simply Ecstatic
Cara’s sister unexpectedly arrives, and Remy couldn’t be less thrilled about it. I can understand where she’s coming from because Chelsea seems like exactly the sort of person who, if I saw her at a social gathering, I would grimace and sidle away from. No new character in Neighbours is ever on the level, and Chelsea is obviously also up to something. Either that, or she’s just really into the genealogy of prominent families in the places she visits because she’s busy looking at a Robinson family tree on her laptop. I bet that took her a long time to compile, and she must have had to amend it every time another one of Paul’s surprise children turned up.
Krista and Leo – UGH
Talking of Paul’s surprise children, Leo has defied everyone’s advice and jumped into a relationship with Krista. First of all, she accepted his apology for the awful things he said about her last week very quickly. I would not have forgiven him as readily as she did. The things he said were awful.
This pairing seems like a truly terrible idea to me. She’s in the early stages of a drug addiction and trying to juggle a new and demanding job which involves trying to outwit Leo’s dad at every one of his devious turns. Leo is clearly still struggling with a few issues surrounding the death of his girlfriend Britney and has openly said that he thinks Krista is mentally unstable, not to mention there being a huge conflict of interests with Leo’s twin being Krista’s sobriety coach.
Poor David’s job currently appears to be trying to undo all the damage that his dad and brother are inflicting on Krista. Still, I suppose they’re helping him stay in a job…
