Ambridge is the only place you can return to after six months and find that nothing whatsoever has happened, unlike, say, Walford and Weatherfield, where, after a long weekend, you can confidently expect to find your best friend buried in the back yard. Every evening announcers try to whip up our expectations to a fine froth ("There's been an unfortunate accident.") Mr Pullen, it turns out, has swallowed a peanut and spilled his pint.
The hot news is that Peggy, stirring the rosy potpourri of an old romance, has got in touch with Con, a GI who used to give her nylons during the war. A warning of the perils of the internet if ever I heard one. Con is now living in Waving Palms, a Florida retirement home with ruby-throated humming birds, unlike Peggy's husband Jack, who is living in the danker sounding Laurels with Alzheimer's. When you are 80, the idea of warming your hands at an old flame has its appeal, if only because it will cause almost endless family recrimination. Harry, the well-spoken milkman, is urging Peggy to shuffle off to Buffalo – or the Florida equivalent – but she belongs to the "I never will desert Mr Micawber" school of thought.
Harry, a comparatively recent arrival, cycles, cooks, is clean living, computer-literate and kind to old ladies. In any other context he would be immediately arrested. He even has a pleasing tenor and has volunteered to star in Linda's seasonal spectacular, Dick Whittington, ("I haven't got a Dick!"), with Fallon, the song thrush of The Bull. Their vegetable love has been on a slow simmer since spring and should surely be al dente now. As George V used to roar from the royal box during a film when the action flagged: "Get on with it, man!"
Jamie, who has hit adolescence head- on, reminds you why bull calves are slaughtered ruthlessly, while Jazza, living with the houseproud Harry, demonstrates why pigs are not kept as house pets. Ed and Will are, of course, still horns-locked ("You pillock!" "Loser!") and may eventually have to be sawn apart and used as hat stands.
