I’m a bit late on writing this for November, we’re almost halfway through December already, but there’s plenty to catch up on before the festive season begins (and we have to endure Lynda’s latest creative endeavour).

Of course, the main story over the past few weeks has been Ed, Emma and their lack of funding. George dropped them in it a bit by demanding the more expensive cereal whilst shopping with Nic. When Will said they should have George more often, Ed flipped out. When Nic asked Emma, it went over much better. Good ol’ Super Nic. Anyway, there was an emotional trip for Emma to the foodbank, where she was caught by Susan (what are the chances!) and then after another hefty bill, they realised the solution was staring them in the face. Ed swallowed his pride and agreed to move in to Susan and Neil’s. It seems very hypocritical how Susan said it was “different” that Emma wanted to come home, as opposed to Tracey. Emma has two noisy kids too!

The other big story came out of Lilian’s troubles with Matt. As if having James moping about wasn’t vile enough, Leonie turned up to take care of him. There were canoodling exploits galore as Lilian burst in on her son and his reunited girlfriend, and then Matt walked in on Tom home alone. All very amusing, but the laughs soon stopped when Lilian got fed up with Matt’s disappearing act and ended up getting closer to his brother, Paul. It seems as though Paul is a much better guy for Lilian, but it would be a quieter world without the Tiger and the Pussycat team.

Brenda found herself considerably overworked as Lilian was busy tending to her personal life, and there was much snapping at Tom to be heard. No wonder, the man will not stop going on about his ready meals. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I do not understand why ambitious Brenda is working a dead-end job with Amside. She appears to be doing more admin than advertising, which I thought was what she wanted to specialise in.

In other bits and pieces:

• Naomi tries to undermine Fallon, and then quits. It might have been more fun to see Fallon challenged a little bit more, but it led to the big breakthrough with Rhys, so it served its purpose.
• Thank goodness Kathy saw sense and started supporting her son in his ambitions rather than pushing him to attend college when he doesn’t want to. She’s lucky Jamie has a dream job, many many people have no idea what they want to do!
• The consultant’s report arrived at Lower Loxley, and there are a gazillion plans afoot to make it a more viable business. Hayley got super concerned she would be out of a job, with her and Roy having all their employment eggs in one basked, but Elizabeth moved quickly to reassure her.
• There’s even a bonus maths lesson when we heard a sneak peek of Iftikar tutoring Freddie. I thought he was a cricket guy?

And all that remains to be said is: Poor Arthur!