Angry Birds, sad Hayley Cropper: What we learnt from Corrie this week

Angry Birds, sad Hayley Cropper: What we learnt from Corrie this week

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WARNING: Contains spoilers

I am not a person with a high tolerance for sadness on TV or in films. In fact, I avoid it at all costs.

Once, thinking it would be the jaunty tale of Bette Midler doing some island hopping around Thailand, perhaps with Leonardo DiCaprio, I accidentally watched Beaches. This was a huge error, and though I’ve fallen off the wagon a few times since (just the big ones - Jen’s death in Dawson’s Creek, Max Cunningham in Hollyoaks etc), I have mostly managed to avoid on-screen misery.

What can I say? I like jolly telly. A nice American high-school love story! The life-affirming tale of an Essex boy meeting a Welsh girl! Deirdre Barlow having a wine with Eileen!

Unfortunately things are about to take a terrible turn for me, and if I do the maths of Hayley’s test results this week + her leaving the show + the rumours in the press about how that might happen, I have some tough weeks ahead.

Like a child who’s jus t been told they’ve got to go to school despite trying everything to get out of it, I was curled up in a ball with my arms completely wrapped round my face to make it go away at the end of Friday’s episodes. I’m going to need some support with this.

In the meantime, Corrie lessons...

People in soap continue their devil-may-care attitude to discarding full drinks

There’s Tracy, skint and moaning about it, but does she mind leaving a wine she’s had no more than one sip out of, casually ditched on the Rovers bar? No she does not.

It’s an attitude that goes Corrie-wide, with people turning up for one gulp then realising they need to be somewhere else. There is only one woman who we can rely on to battle against this trend, and that is Carla Connor.

Did anyone see the speed that she polished off that Merlot with Deirdre? Seeing them together with that bottle of red was like seeing something that was just... right . Something that was meant to be.

Stay away Ken, ‘helping Adam after his fall’ (*knowing eyebrow is back*), because Deirdre? Oh she has a new soulmate.

Audrey is 73 next week

This is PHENOMENAL, I bow down to the woman, but the best bit is that Audrey and I share a birthday.

I am so excited about this that it’s counteracting the misery I felt on learning that I was the same age as Nick Tilsley last week.

I’d suggest we had a joint do if I didn’t think Audrey would drink me under the table, look more glamorous and stay out later than me, and that that would be quite embarrassing given the 41 year age gap.

We might not be missing Ken, we might not be missing Ken at all

It’s an odd thing this, but does anyone else think that Deirdre is thriving without Ken?

“It’s a small world but you wouldn’t want to Hoover it, as my mother used to say,” she told the po tential toilet customer she’d hijacked from Tracy for a flirt.

Then there was her suggestions for how Tracy could ‘zhuzh’ (I Googled the spelling. That was difficult) up her sales pitch (Deirdre can even make veruccas sound glam).

Finally, this, my personal favourite: “I don’t take sides,” she told Carla. “Just think of me as Switzerland in glasses.”

Basically, Deirdre is hilarious without Ken. Awkward. 

Rob is a man who is easily confused

Not during a ‘four horse accumulator’, obviously, he’s focused then, but when trying to remember the names of the people in his life: easily flummoxed.

“I borrowed it from Amy,” Tracy said, about the money she’d suddenly got her hands on.

Rob furrowed his brow. “Little Amy?” he said, pondering. No Rob, she borrowed it off Big Amy, who she’s never mentioned before, and whose bank account she probably doesn’t have access to because of the fact that sheâ €™s not a real person.

The Underworld cake run still happens in summer

I’d have switched it to an ice-cream run, but maybe that’s risky, because no-one wants a bit of a Fab dropping on to the waistband of your unsewn knicker.

Norris has grown half an inch from getting a house and Roy might take up Bikram yoga

I don’t know what’s going on, but I like it.

How to do high-powered business, Michelle Connor-style

So basically, it works like this. You send an email at 7am, saying you’re on your way to a breakfast meeting, which suggests that you’re so important you have to cram extra hours into the day, and also, that people might buy you pancakes. Get you!

And then you recline back on your pillow, cast a loving glance at a snoring Steve McDonald, and get on with your actual task: another game of Angry Birds.

I sort of love it, though I’m worried the lack of sleep is affecting Michelle’s mind, as I can’t think of another reason she’d be in opaque tights in July, plus there was all that funny business with the shopping.

Tune in next week for more Corrie lessons!

Click here to check out Caroline's previous, ace columns about Corrie