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Message: <blockquote data-quote="James from London" data-source="post: 116025" data-attributes="member: 22">1962Cora Cross, speaking in 2014: I still ain’t recovered from the last time I tried the lotus position.Pam Coker: When was that?Cora: 1962.Pat: Tried yoga once. Could hardly walk for a week.Stan Carter, speaking to Sylvie on January 21st, 2015: Do you know what it’ll be a month from now? Our wedding anniversary. Fifty-three years. We had our honeymoon in Bournemouth. We went down on my Lambretta — you shouting and yelling in my ear the whole time to slow down, me in my leather jacket. We danced at the Pavilion. [Sings:] “Unforgettable …”Sylvie, joining in: “… that’s what you are …”Stan: We drank stout.Sylvie: And we ate chips on the beach.Stan: We talked about all the things we were going to do, all the places we were going to see. I wish I’d been a better husband.Sylvie: So do I.Pauline Fowler on spring cleaning: Kathy [Pete’s second wife] used to help Mum. Pat never did. She wasn't keen. Mum reckoned that's why they never got on really.Pat to Pauline: Your mum used to make a really fluffy sponge.Pat on Pete: He [was] always such a fastidious man. I had trouble keeping up with his shirts, seven a week at least. Polished shoes, never a hair out of place.Pauline: When we went out, we dressed up to the nines. We went out to be seen.Dot: I was brought up to take a pride in me appearance, to make the best of the raw materials that the good Lord give me.Pauline: It’s not as if we didn’t make the best of ourselves in our day, is it?Dot: I never went out without me rouge.Pauline: No, and I was a dab hand with the eyebrow pencil. I used to wear a beauty spot just about there [points to her left cheek]. Thought I was gorgeous.     Pat to Den: Do you remember that terrible fancy dress party we had up at the club? We all had to come as stars. You were Elvis. You got him to a tee. You had more hair then, but the same sulky, mean look and the slinkiest hips.Den Watts: It took a lot of practice to win first prize and then what happens? The old man beats hell out of me for nicking all his hair oil.Pat: I come as Marilyn. Now there was a star. Not like those girls that came after, Twiggy and Marianne Faithfull. More like stick insects. I think that's where it started to go wrong.Garry Hobbs, speaking to Minty in 2005: There was a time, years ago, when our dads, when they was our age, if you were a bloke, all you had to do was be a bloke. I reckon I would have liked it back then. Me and you would have been more than adequate back then. And it was easier for the birds and all. Pot bellies, big bazookas - none of your surgically-sucking-out years ago. And of course, the tragedy is, that was what we was all aiming for, weren't it, eh? All the big lovely wobbly bits - that was your Marilyn Monroe all over, that was. Say what you like, but everyone knew where they was. The bloke went to work and the bird stayed at home. Might not have been equal, but if you don't expect too much, no-one gets disappointed.Den: I don't know how you poured yourself into that dress [you wore to the fancy dress party]. We used to have bets in the gents, see how long it was before you burst out of it. You was a big girl even then.Pat: I don't remember many complaints. You boys may have had some bets about me, but us girls had some about you.Den: About what?Pat: If you don't know now, I ain't going to tell you. We weren't that much different from girls nowadays. Just pretended to be more innocent, that's all.Den: Innocent, you? Don't make me laugh.Pat: I had my share of partners that night. Pete was sulking because we had a stupid row in that taxi. He stopped it and walked off into the night. He was always doing things like that. I think he saw too many films. That's when I realised I should never have married him. He was a kid. Lou never let them grow up, not the boys anyway. Pauline had no choice. She come as Kathy Kirby. Typical. Old fashioned, even then.Den: She gave you a run for your money.Pat: That's not how I remember it. Angie had come as one of those dark haired women, I can't remember who. They shouldn't have let her in. She was too young. Running around after you even then, she was.Pat to Pauline: I could see it in your eyes all time — "Poor Pete, married to that bit of rough. Poor Pete, having to put up with her tongue. Poor Pete,making a fool of himself with a woman not good enough to lick his boots." Well let me tell you, poor Pete was boring, selfish and terrible in bed.Pat to Pete: I might just as well have been in bed with a eunuch for all the excitement you gave me.Barry Evans: You had kids. Weren't you scared?Pat: Yeah, I suppose I was.Barry: But it didn't stop you, did it?Pat: No, I wanted them.Pat: You want to try giving birth with Lou Beale standing at the end of your bed.Honey Edwards on giving birth: Pat said it was like going to the toilet and pushing out a melon.Pat: David had an enormous head.David Wicks (formerly Beale) on his parents: Do you know how long they stayed together after I was born? Three years. Three years, and most of that time she was on her back in other blokes' beds.David: I was surprised you took the time out to go to hospital and have me. Don't they deliver babies in the pub? I was only born five minutes and you were whoring round the town.Pat: Where'd you hear all this?David: I read the toilet walls, Mum. You were a legend on toilet walls, do you know that?Pat: People used to [call me] a right little scrubber.Pat: I wasn't the most wonderful mother in the world.David: You weren't a mother at all.Pat: Do you know why I was such a bad mother to you?David: You were born that way.Pat: Because I should have married Frank. Then everything would have been all right. I shouldn't have married Pete. I should never have had you. You've been a curse on my life since the day you was born.Sylvie Carter to her daughter Shirley: I should have had you aborted.Mick Carter to Stan and Sylvie: Neither of you should have ever had kids.Shirley Carter: I never had a chance.Alfie Moon: You're related to Sharon Stone, am I right?Shirley Carter: That's right. Me and Shaz, we were separated at birth.Pat: I can remember my David's [christening]. It was a smashing do. Of course, his godparents stumped up for it because me and Pete were starting out. Couldn't have afforded it otherwise.Pat on teething: My David was a right misery for weeks with his.Pat: I didn't get a full night's sleep the first year with my David. I was that tired I didn't even know who I was anymore.Natalie Evans (née Price): Were you breastfeeding, Pat?Pat: No, love, not me. My babies were on the bottle from the day they were born. Mind you, probably explains how they turned out!Janine Butcher to David: You weren’t born a bad person. Nobody is. You just had it tough as a kid like I did.David on Pat: I just brought her misery her whole life.Pat: If I could go back, I’d do it all so different. I would have been kinder. I’d have made the most of those moments, having a baby, having a child. I’dhave been there for my boys in the right way. A little baby in your arms, looking up at you. They were the best years of my life and I didn’t even know it.Dot: I don't know where it all went wrong. I mean, I always tried to do the best for us.Dot: Nick's dad only stayed because I made him. I was always having little fits and turns, wasn't I, so he wouldn't go.Dot: When my Nick was little, my Charlie, he came home flush one day, which was a rare occurrence I can assure you, and he told me that he'd had a win on the dogs, but I'd overheard him talking to some friend of his about a job they was going to be doing.Heather Trott: What sort of job - criminal?Dot: And he give me a hundred pounds. Now that was a small fortune in them days and he said, "Go on, girl. Go and treat yourself." Well, I looked at the money in me hand and I looked at me Nick in the pram and I thought, "Them three wise monkeys could be right after all — see no evil, hear no evil." So I took my Nick down to the shops and I kitted him out in all new clobber and with the rest of the money I opened a post office savings account for when he was older. Nothing on God's earth would have made me take that money for meself, but when there's a little one to think of ...Stan Carter: Things weren’t always bad, you know. Used to take you down the park in your pram. You’d be sat up, taking everything in.Shirley: Looking for an escape route, more like.Dot, looking through a family photo album: We were happy sometimes, you know, Ethel - Charlie and me. Oh look, there's one of the three of us at the church picnic.Ethel Skinner: I expect that's the time he got off with Rose.Dot to Charlie: [My sister Rose] made a dead set at you. She was always the same. Anything I got, she wanted.Rose on Dot: Never could stand to see me happy.Dot: You stole my Charlie.Rose: He couldn’t get away fast enough.Dot: Take, take, take — that’s all you’ve ever done.Dot to Rose: It was you that left me, taking my Charlie with you.Dot: Me and my Charlie, we never argued, but he had other women. He used to come back, steal me money, take me odd bits of jewellery and off he’d go and then finally, he went and lived with my half-sister Rose.Andrew Cotton, Charlie’s son: My dad treated you like a doormat.Dot: What do you know about it?Andrew: I know that he left you for your sister. Shows you how much he thought of you.Pauline: One day, Charlie Cotton packed his bags and left. Dot stopped holding the [three] hankies [she always had with her]. She was really upset, ever so upset. I couldn't understand why because he was such a bad lot, he really was, and she was better off without him, even if you do believe in the sanctity of marriage and you've got a baby. Anyway, that night I heard her and Mum talking. Well, Mum was doing most of the talking. Dot was just crying. But she'd punched him. She'd punched Charlie hard in the face with her hankie hand.Dot on Charlie: Went off with me sister, didn't he? Ruined our marriage, devastated our son and left me with a hole in the heart.Dot: You ruined my life.Rose: And he [Charlie] ruined mine.Dot, speaking in 2013: I fell out with my half-sister Rose over forty years ago. All the years we wasted, all that time we’ll never get back.Rose on herself and Dot: Charlie Cotton split us up.Dot on Rose: I never thought I’d see her again.Dot to Rose: You left my Nick without a father. It’s your fault he turned out how he did. It’s disgraceful, taking away a little boy’s father.Dot: There is nothing worse than having a husband who ain't there for you. I should know.Nick to Charlie: You done a runner the moment I was born.Dot on Charlie: He left because of Nick.Dot to Charlie: I prayed you'd come back to me for years and years.Dot on Rose: The way she treated me, cohabiting with my Charlie.Pauline: Once Charlie had left, Dot started answering the door again. She cancelled all the credit, even the milkman. She stopped crying. She bought herself a nice pair of slacks, had her hair done different. Very smart, she was — well, for Walford. And she started reading books. Yeah, for months you wouldn't see Dot for a book, a cloud of cigarette smoke and a long word. And she had this tea caddy in her kitchen with all her savings in, and a list of teachers' training colleges she got from the library.Sonia Jackson: She didn't go, did she?Pauline: No, but she got a place — oh yeah, at a woman's college in Essex. That was her dream, but nobody would give her any lodgings. See, nobody wanted a girl from the East End with a baby and no husband, even if she did look like Audrey Hepburn.Dawn Miller to Dot: I bet you looked just like Audrey Hepburn when you were young.Masood Ahmed looking at a picture of his mother: Straight off the boat, 1962.Shabnam, Masood’s daughter: She looks so happy.Masood: Yes, she was. It was the first time she’d seen your daada in six years. Imagine that. Just got married and he left her to travel halfway across the world to drive a bus.Shabnam: It’s hard to believe.Masood: She wanted a better life for them, for me, for you.Tanya Branning (née Cross), looking her mother Cora’s old photographs: Oh, look at this swimming costume!Poppy Meadows: Oh Cora, you look gorgeous! Look at the little cossie!Aunt Sal: Now the summer of ’62, Mum insisted on a family trip to Leigh on Sea. It was a nightmare. We never stopped bickering.Aunt Sal: I didn’t take those [marriage] vows lightly.Ronnie Mitchell: It’s a shame the same can’t be said for Uncle Harold.Peggy on Eric: The first two years of our marriage, any time he was somewhere I couldn't keep tabs on him, I'd be in a right old state. And he'd say this and say that, and I wouldn't believe him, and then it would end up with the dinner service all over the kitchen floor. Then one day, I saw that the only person who was hurting was me. So that night when he comes back, I'm not waiting with the frying pan. Instead, I've got a little bit of perfume on and I'm looking nice. You know what I mean. I know it sounds old fashioned, but believe me it works.Jim Branning: Women like a bit of the other just the same as a bloke does. I mean, me and my Reenie, we were very happy in that department.Jim: My Reenie was a quick-cuddle-with-the-lights-out sort of woman.Peggy on marriage: Our generation used to work through their problems, not give up at the first hurdle.Peggy on being pregnant: [It's] easier the second time. You can relax and enjoy it. I know I did with [Grant].Peggy: In my day, you never had scans or nothing. You just had to wait and see. I was very pleased with my little boys.Peggy: I should have listened to my dear old mum. She said, "Never have boys. They grow up, leave home and never phone their mothers."Sean Slater: Oh give it a rest, Peggy. You had your kids three hundred years ago. Times have moved on.Grant Anthony Mitchell: Date of birth 8/7/62Dean Wicks to Grant: Is it true you were the first Mitchell born without a tail?Peggy to Grant: I should have turned you in [to the police] the day you were born.Peggy on Grant: I ain't done nothing but love that boy since the day he was born.Phil: Mum said [Dad] wanted you to be a girl. You were in pink cardigans for the first six months.Grant: She never told me that.Phil: Probably didn't want you to think you weren't wanted.Peggy: Grant looked like Winston Churchill.Peggy to Grant: I can't remember, but I'm sure I must have dropped you on your head when you was a baby.Peggy to Grant: After I had you, I [was] like a bear with a sore paw.Peggy on Phil and Grant: I've always been there for them. I always put them first. Well, that's what mothers are for, aren't they?Peggy: My kids are the only things that have ever mattered to me. I couldn't get enough of my boys.Phil: I've been messing it up since the day I could walk.Pat: I look back on me twenty-first sometimes — me at the start of the day, wondering what the rest of it was going to bring — and then you came knocking at me door, asking for help.Johnny Allen: If it's any consolation, I didn't actually know it was your birthday. Not at first, anyway.Pat: Would it have made any difference if you had? Let's face it - you had a problem. It wasn't exactly the sort of problem that would have kept, was it?Johnny: No.Pat: Poor cow was in a right state.Johnny: Yeah. These days, it's all so different, isn't it? A quick trip to a nice clean clinic.Pat: In them days, a backstreet butcher. And afterwards, hoping that somebody was around to help you out if it all went wrong.Johnny: And there was — just not quite the night you had in mind for your celebration.Pat: You [made] a big song and dance about my twenty-first birthday.Pauline: Pete and I went to an awful lot of trouble to organise that party.Pat: And I told you at the time, something important came up.Pauline: Oh, it was always something important with you. How could you expect us to believe you?Pat: It was none of your business. I told you it was important. That's all that matters.Pauline: Yeah well, poor Pete, he deserved better than that.Pat: Yeah, so you said at the time and every day for about a month after. It was a friend. They got themselves into a spot of trouble and they needed my help.Pat: It was a grim old night — we nearly lost her at one point — [but] I remember it for what happened afterwards — you showing your gratitude by offering me that job. I mean, there was me, a normal sort of kid with a normal sort of job, a waitress in a club, and the next minute I've got a new job and a new life, running Johnny Allen's girls.Johnny: You were never going to stay a common or garden waitress forever. There was always more to you than that.Pat: I used to see the blokes coming into the club — businessmen, property tycoons, even the odd high court judge, if I remember right.Johnny: Very useful people to know sometimes, Pat.Pat: And I'd think to meself, "I could end up with any one of them, doing anything, going anywhere."Johnny: You did a good enough job for me.Pat: Johnny, it's not how I did it, it's what I was doing.Johnny: You were helping me out.Pat: No, I was your madam. I was helping you pimp a small army of girls.Johnny: It wasn't exactly the white slave trade though, was it?Pat: No, they were willing enough.Pat to Johnny: Keeping your girls happy - that’s what you used to pay me for.Johnny: We didn't exactly press gang the punters into it either.Pat: Most of the time I enjoyed it. I actually felt like I was helping the girls, making sure they weren't getting into any sort of trouble.Johnny: But?Pat: It set me off. Everything I did, everything I became started that day.Johnny: Believe it or not, I almost took that job offer back.Pat: Second thoughts?Johnny: Different thoughts.Pat: Oh, I get it. You reckoned you promoted me above me station, eh? That I should have worked me way through the ranks?Johnny: I wasn't sure that I wanted to be your boss, that's what I'm trying to say. I was beginning to wonder if there could have been a different sort of relationship we could have had.Big Mo to Pat: The amount of money you earned off his [Johnny’s] back over the years.Pat: Johnny never could prioritise his private life.Pat: Johnny always had a problem sharing his feelings.Tina Stewart: You and Johnny ...? Pat: Oh no, darling! Not even when I was twenty-one. Johnny always set his sights too high for me. We just knew each other, that's all.Johnny: You had men crawling all over you in those days. Why should I be any different?Pat: But you were so reserved, so held back then.Johnny: Do you blame me? I saw what happened to most of the men that got close to you — looked like they'd been through a mincer. Thought you might have eaten me alive. The thought of that kept me warm on many a cold night, I tell you.Peggy on Johnny: He always was a sucker for blondes.Pat on Johnny: There was this time he went out with a really posh blonde.Pat: Do you remember this one — tall, white lippy, always used to have nice earrings?Johnny: Gill.Pat and Johnny in unison: "With a G!"Pat on Johnny: He had his heart broken once or twice.</blockquote>

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