[cc100]

ok, maybe this is more suitable?

[Mairi]

Well, cc100, I think Helen & Paul are far too "nice" to hold grudges and I'm pretty sure both of them have forgiven Elizabeth months and months ago.

I, on the other hand, find it extremely hard to forgive her but I am trying.

Give me another year or so!!

[bonzobravo]

Elizabeth was very vindictive, towards Helen & Paul. But in my opinion most things in life should be forgivable. It doesn't do a person any good to hold grudges against people. I think Helen & Paul are genuine and nice people, and will have forgiven her. I even forgive Alex for being such an irritating manipulative...........

[Ig]

I doubt if they ever give Elizabeth a second thought.

[Janette]

I think Helen would have forgiven Elizabeth straight away, she always looked up to Elizabeth and would have tried to see the positive side of what she said and did.

Paul, on the other hand, was visibly hurt when he heard Elizabeth's comments and did have a go back at her. So I don't know if he would have forgiven her quite as easily.

I'm sure though, if they all met on the street, it would be hugs and kisses all round because life's too short to hold a grudge for long!

[Romantic Old Bird]

I think Paul was particularly hurt by Elizabeth because he had thought of her as someone very kind and caring.

"You can't say a bad word about her".

He had treated her as a confidante on a mumber of occasions, particularly about his feelings after surviving evictions. How I remember her

"Oh, sweetie!"

followed by a hug when she saw how upset he was. She was very insincere, yet he was touched by it.

He made an error of judgement trusting her, and a greater one in describing the flirting as 60/40%. He was trying to justify what he saw as behaving dishonourably.

However he wasn't wrong about the ratio, and it only became awful when Elizabeth passed it on as the proprtion of FEELINGS he had for Helen. That's what hurt him the most, and more crucially, what hurt Helen the most.

If you watch things he said at the time, and his face when he saw her cry, and comments he made about hurtful media reports, he doesn't complain about how he feels. He remarks about how he resents the fact that it hurt someone he cared about deeply.

So, I think he will have forgiven Elizabeth, and after all, he did tackle her on BBLB. Again, I thnk it was because Helen cried. However, he hugged Elizabeth immediately after. I don't think he bears grudges. Elizabeth is unimportant to him and Helen, so I would imagine he has put it behind him long ago.

Miriam, I too am working on forgiveness.

However, I have just had a flash of clarity about how sad we I am even worrying about this any more, so I think I'll have to say it's something I can live with now.


The thing is, imagine if Elizabeth, Brian and Dean had just sat and discussed how sweet it was, and how life-enhancing the experience of watching them together had been for them all. How they hoped to even touch on the happiness that Paul and Helen had found together. What a wonderful, kind and fascinating person Paul was and HOW they missed him.

Wouldn't have worked really, would it?

The reason we were so in the thrall of it all was the poignancy, the tragi-comedy, the pantomime good and badness of it all.
It was exciting, uplifting, and incredibly moving.

It is also sadly unrepeatable, as we have seen this year. They threw everything at it, but it still remained a pale shadow of BB2.

So, (she continued to the ever thinning crowd) my summation is this.

We needed Elizabeth. She gave the added touch that made the fairy tale.

I mean, where would





have been without the




wicked stepmother?

Which makes Brian into Buttons I suppose.........................

[BusyBee]

ROB you put things so clearly. I am sure that as far as H and P are concerned Elizabeth belongs to the past, she has nothing to do with their present happiness. As you say Paul was more upset for Helen than for himself and I think a bit upset that he had been taken in by her.

[susieq]

Elizabeth - who's she then? In the past, long forgotten, never to be seen again. She's of no importance to anyone, least of all Paul & Helen. They had the last laugh didn't they?

[James]

'To carry a grudge is like being stung to death by one bee.'