Ongar. EastEnders have
put it on the map, only, cruelly, to take it away again with the deaths of
Ronnie and Roxy Mitchell.
Having had a festive break, I’m
just catching up with the TV I’ve missed, and the spooky, watery death of R
& R puts paid to any thoughts the pair had about the new life they were
planning in the civil parish in the Epping Forest District in Essex.
There, you see? I Googled it.
Twenty miles north east of London, there is a railway station and, um . . .
well, to be honest I can’t see much else. Ongar. The name makes me giggle. I
have no idea why. It means “grass land”, and quite why Ronnie had chosen to
start her married life there is anybody’s guess (did she know how many Albert
Square residents have been buried in that forest?). Every time the word came
out of her mouth, it sounded as if she didn’t really understand it, either.
EastEnders can’t resist a bit of
festive rigor mortis; it’s sort of their trademark. The sisters’ death – the
worst kept secret in the soap’s history – was particularly dramatic. First,
they were drinking too much while sitting on a ledge in the building where
Ronnie had just tied the knot with the divine Jack. Alas, instead of hopping
into bed with his beloved, Jack was forced to read a bedtime story to . . . I
don’t know . . . some sleepy kids (to be honest, I lost count of whose kids are
whose in the show years ago).
The week had already seen Lee contemplating
suicide by jumping from a ledge, too, which makes me think there might have
been a writer of the Christmas shows just trying to conquer his/her acrophobia.
Anyway, Lee didn’t jump and
decided, instead, to confess all to Mick about his part in the robbery of the
Vic. Mick was not happy. In fact, if there had been a ledge, Mick would have
pushed Lee off it.
But back to the sisters. So,
having survived the car journey in which viewers thought their fate was sealed;
having survived the slip on the ledge with bottle in hand . . . what do they do
but nip off to the pool for reasons that were even less comprehensible than
Ronnie’s sudden love for Ongar.
One minute, Roxy was laughing;
the next, there was silence. So, what did Ronnie do but dive into the pool to
save her sister – the sister who had already ruined the wedding day and was set
to ruin Ongar, too, with Ronnie insisting that she move with them.
To be honest, that dress was
always going to be the pair’s downfall. Not since the Andrex puppy went berserk
in the bathroom have I seen so much flotsam and jetsam just crying out for a
disaster. Jumping into the pool to save her sibling, Ronnie couldn’t cope with
the frock six feet under, and, if you were looking for a murder weapon, it was
the dress wot dunnit. Oh, Ronnie, Ronnie. Don’t drink and dive.
Had the pair gone in a car crash,
there would have been two livers that would undoubtedly have been ripe for
Phil, who had been languishing in hospital waiting for a transplant. But another
donor had already turned up for him and, post-operation, the job lot of yellow
make-up the show had been reliant upon to display Phil’s jaundice was suddenly
surplus to requirements (does the yellow colour really fade within minutes of
the anaesthetic wearing off? Just a medical query. I worry about these things).
I was always a tad concerned
about the way that car crash story might have gone, though. Livers are like
buses. You wait for ages for one to come along, then three come along together.
Luckily for Phil, in the end he didn’t have to choose. He wouldn’t have wanted
Roxy’s, anyway – a liver I suspect was in an even worse way than the one that
had already given up on him.
And so, the double whammy brings
to an end the age of Tweedledumb and Tweedledumber, the sisters who never realised
there was anywhere else to go on holiday other than Ibiza and for whom Ongar
was the Downton Abbey of their whole miserable existence.
At least it leaves Jack a single
man again – and for that, I suspect, he will be eternally grateful. No more
Ronnie. No More Roxy.
More to the point: no more Ongar.
Praise the Lord!
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