Full Moon Over Walford - Again

Another full moon over Albert Square tonight.

Sorry, but there isn’t one outside my window. Not even close. The wind is howling, the rain falling, and there is nothing but black, illuminated by the occasional firework.

Yes, I know that the show is filmed in advance, but Walford has more full moons than the man who lives in it. The scriptwriter or producer who came up with giving Alfie (Shane Richie) the surname Moon has a lot to answer for, because every time the character enjoys an over-emotional moment, out it comes.

And there it was again tonight, as Alfie went down on one knee to Kat (Jessie Wallace), the woman who already is his wife. Great, she must have thought, another cheap, disgusting ring, and, Oh no, here comes the full moon to illuminate just how cheap and nasty it really is.

“By the light of my pal up there, the moon . . . “ Alfie began. Did he really have to tell us who his pal was? It was never going to be “By the light of my pal the South East Electricity Board, was it?” – or whatever extortionate service now serves the East End (having said that, with the light and power generated from these full moons, who needs a supply anyway)?

By now, Alfie was gazing up adoringly (cue moon lighting), holding out the box to his lady dressed in purple and gold, her pregnant belly silhouetted against the night sky like a . . . well, a big purple full moon, really, which, if Alfie had been the father, would have been quite apt – she’d be full of Moon, geddit?

In fact, so enormous was her purpleness, she could have passed for the Big Purple One in Goliath’s Quality Street box.
She agreed to give the relationship another go, while acknowledging the difficulties they were likely to face. You’re telling me – not least, from her tongue.

Good grief. Did you see it lunge forward as they moved in for the kiss? It didn’t so much enter Alfie's mouth as try to excavate it, as if it was diving into a litre carton of Haagen Dazs on the assumption it was never likely to meet another ice-cream this side of 2011.

And, once it was in there, it kept scooping and scooping. I was trying to eat my supper of spaghetti Bolognese and had to put it aside until Question Time, when I will hopefully not be feeling quite so nauseous.
Let’s hope the show puts that moon away for a while now, even though, in real life, there’s a New Moon due on Saturday night.

It has to be a new one, presumably, because EastEnders has nicked all the old ones.