Image by Andreas_MB via Flickr
Missed Neighbours last week? Then you missed superheroes, Sandys, squids, spies, scientists, Spartacuses (Spartacusi?) and other things beginning with the letter “S”. Apart from that you missed sod all really (hey, another thing beginning with the letter “S”). What with all the “Previously on Neighbours” recaps, musical interludes, flashbacks, daydream sequences, and “Tomorrow on Neighbours” spoilers there wasn’t really much time for plot development.
The finding-and-doing-up-old-cars-on-request business of the oddly Aussie/Scottish accented Andrew Robinson and the sushi-scoffing Chris “Freckles” Pappas (no longer the only gay in Erinsborough) is actually doing well after an iffy start. Even Andrew’s “daaah”, the evil one-legged hotelier, was impressed. Thrilling.
Toadie, still stuck between a rock and a hard place, is experiencing a wide range of emotions (mainly love, guilt and despair), all of which are conveyed by just the one vaguely puzzled facial expression (raised eyebrows and a cross between a grin and a grimace). Thanks to Kyle the handyman’s chest and a flirty gay councillor (long story), Paul Robinson’s cunning plan to delay the new shopping centre by getting some old newspaper office listed (it’s located on the proposed car park site) worked. Toadie’s suspiciously anxious, party-pooping boss Peter, upon learning of the delay, ordered Toadie to leave his green fingered beloved’s “S” themed 30th birthday party at once and come up with a solution to save the development (yes, he threatened to sack him yet again). Toadie’s solution? Build the car park on the site of the Dial-a-Kyle handyman yard, Fitzgerald Motors, the mysterious bric-a-brac/antiques shop and Grease Monkeys, offering the respective business owners a handsome sum in return. How could such a plan fail?
Despite all the threats of sackings, financial ruin and potential pariah-type woes, he and Sonya have decided that once things settle down a bit they’ll (cover your eyes if you’re of a nervous disposition) “try” for a baby and in the meantime (cover your eyes again) “practice”. Alas, Toadie doesn’t know that the manic mac wearing Sonya (who now suddenly wants nothing more in the whole wide world than a baby) has already thrown away her (cover your eyes again) contraceptive pills.
Some of the Erinsborough High kids, having reached new levels of boredom, decided to watch paint dry / paint a giant mural as part of the history wall project (delete as appropriate). The increasingly sullen Sophie Ramsay, twigging that Summer Hoyland was the fictitious year 12 girl that the floppy woolly hatted guitar strumming Noah has a fake secret crush on, kicked a tin of paint over the smug, zombie loving, do-gooder’s boots in a fit of jealous rage (major drama). Jealous paint-kicking-rage led, as it so often does, to nose piercing, yet more sisterly bickering, tedious besotted grinning (Noah at the perceptive-as-ever Kate), jamming in the Collective, aloof I’m-so-not-interested-in-nose-pierced-14-year-old-bass-playing-girls type behaviour from Ark Boy (harsh), the return of Lou Carpenter from East Timor, and yet more broken hearted teenage stroppy tantrums.
And what of Tash and the recently discovered Serbian hair dressing aunt, Emilia Jovanovic, you cry? What father-daughter relationship shattering secrets were finally revealed? What edge of the seat, high emotional drama finally ensued after weeks of intrigue? Well, after the hair and nail appointment a nervous Tash had booked under Chris’ name fell through, she hopped on a bus to a fashion shoot her aunt was working on (luckily a mere 40 minute ride away). In the meantime her surfer dude head teaching father Michael returned home, checked the answering machine and discovered a message from an unrelated Jovanovic Tash had phoned during the search for her grandparents last week. Oh the shock. Oh the horror. Oh what would happen next? Well, Tash arrived at the fashion shoot, was mistaken for one of the models by her aunt, plonked in a chair and… that was it.
Puzzle of the week
How come Sophie, who spent weeks strumming the same tune over and over and over again on her guitar, can now jam along to new tunes with a bass she’s had but a week?
Ramsay Street Recaps 
Not only did Sophie have a nose pierced,she also had a magical hair braid that was there on one scene ,not on the next then reappeared again