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Message: <blockquote data-quote="James from London" data-source="post: 117506" data-attributes="member: 22">1974     Pat on New Year’s Day: I never liked it very much — resolutions you’d never keep.Arthur Fowler, recalling a power cut: It was just after New Year. Mark and Michelle were [under seven years old]. Your mum was over the Vic with Ethel. We were watching Morecambe & Wise, and then voomp! It went black. Didn't half shake us. And Mark started crying his eyes out.Pauline Fowler: Tommy Cooper. It was Tommy Cooper on the telly.Arthur: Oh yeah. Mark wouldn't stop crying. He was terrified, absolutely terrified.Pauline: And then Michelle went and gave him a hug. She put her chubby little arms round his neck, hugged him, and he stopped, just like that. Just put everything right with a hug.Mark Fowler to Pauline: You taught me to play [cards], remember? The power cuts, and all those endless nights in front of the telly when we couldn't watch it.Phil Mitchell to Grant: I’ve always been better at cards than you.Terry Raymond: Do you remember the miners' strike? Our electric was out for weeks. Louise was pregnant. She had to stay in bed all day just to keep warm and you know what I used to do? Go down the pub. I was a rubbish father from beginning to end.Babe Smith: Sylvie and Stan, they had problems. When Tina was born, things got better. He stopped drinking so much and lashing out.Stan: You’re making me sound like a monster.Babe: Are you going to deny you ever raised your hand to my sister? Are you? May God strike you dead if you do. Tina Carter on Stan: If it wasn’t for him, we wouldn’t exist.Stan to Tina: I tried, Teen. Tried to be a good husband, good dad.Shirley on Stan: He don’t need any of us. He never has.Sylvie Carter: Shirl, I’ve told you before, it’s rude to point.Shirley to Sylvie: The times you used to hit me.Shirley on Sylvie: She’s always been sick in the head.Babe to Shirley: I know you think there weren’t good times, but I remember a few — when I was on leave from the navy, you, me and your mum having a giggle.Shirley: No, I don’t remember.Babe: I was away at sea a lot.Babe to Fiona “Tosh” Mackintosh: Knew lots of women like you in the merchant navy — hard as nails, never take back anything they’ve said, lonely.Linda Carter, speaking in 2014: Forty years my mum’s run a pub.Big Mo, speaking in 2011: A grand, just for winning a pub quiz? In the old days you’d have to bump someone off to earn that kind of dough.Johnny Allen: I've done some bad things in my time, some very bad things.2006 Walford Gazette headline about Johnny Allen: “I CONFESS - NIGHTCLUB BOSS CONFESSES TO STRING OF GANGLAND MURDERS ... Ronnie Adlington KILLED IN WAREHOUSE.”Kenny Beale on the Walford Towers estate: This [used to be] all warehouses. When did they put this lot up?Pete: 1974, I think.Carol Jackson: I've lived on estates all my life.Carol: See over that wall over there? That’s where our old house used to be till they knocked it down years ago. It was an old prefab.Arthur: I can remember people saying that Jerry did us a favour blasting all the back to backs, saying they'd have to build us somewhere decent to live now, and look what they got - tower blocks.Phil: My old man ended up in one of them, poor old beggar.Arthur: Slums on stilts. Doesn't mean to say you're living in Heaven though, does it?Peggy Mitchell to Phil: Your dad always wanted [a house with] a snooker table, a drinks bar. He'd have loved that, sad old sod. He'd have thought he'd have made it then.Alfie Moon: Proper little boy scout, me. Twice crowned Bob-a-job King.Alfie: Just before my tenth birthday, I'll never forget it, I cried myself to sleep. Everyone was going on about it - "Oi Alfie, you're gonna be ten! Double figures!" I could feel my childhood just slipping away. I thought to myself that night, "Well Alfie, no more single figures for you, pal."Alfie: Sold me first motor at ten and I never looked back.Max Branning: What — too busy running from the bloke you sold it to, were you?Maxwell Moon to Alfie: You were always sending me out to the offy to get [cider] when we were kids.Mick Carter, Stan’s grandson: The only reason he had kids is so he had someone to send round to the shop for his fags.Phil: I used to love [cherryade] when I was a kid. Me and Grant used to go round the back off the offy, nick the empties, go back round the front again and get the deposit back on them. I haven't had any since I was about fourteen.Rose Cotton: I’ve not bought myself a drink since 1974 — flash a bit of leg, open a button.Rose on her black negligee: That’s kept me warm on many a cold night.Rose on the reason she changed her name to Beauchamp: It was a man, as usual, in Liverpool. It wasn’t a good relationship, Dot. It was ...Dot: Adulterous?Rose: Violent. He hurt me, Dot. I had to do what I do to get away so he couldn’t find me. I had to change my name, change my identity, whatever it took. I need someone to take care of me. I always have.Pauline to Arthur: I've been thinking [about] the school concert for parents when Mark had to sing "Blackbird has spoken, like the first bird." He thought that was funny. "I thought it was only budgies and parrots that spoke, Mum." How old was he, six? And the night before the concert, he got himself in such a state. He woke me up and I had to give him a big cuddle and stroke the back of his hair. He liked that. Then the night of the concert, and we're sat there in the school hall and you took my hand, the piano started and nothing happened. Then you caught Mark's eye and you mouthed the first words to him, "Morning has broken." You knew all the words. It did the trick. He sang it all the way through, never missed a note.Shirley on Minty Peterson: How many O levels does he have?Heather Trott: None.Pat: How long you and Shirley been mates then?Heather: Since we was kids.Shirley on Heather: She’s been a real good mate to me.Shirley to Heather: You’re just some stray I found hanging outside the flat one night. One plate of food and I was stuck with you.Queenie Trott to Heather: [Shirley]’s used you since the moment you met.Shirley on Heather: She was the best thing that ever happened to me.Andrew Cotton to Shirley: You kept [Heather] down all her life, just so you could feel better about yourself.Shirley on Heather: I was drying her tears when her bully of a mother was calling her a pig.Heather to Shirley: All my life, I’ve had people telling me what to do — you, Mummy.Heather: I used to look in the catalogues when I was a kid to see what [engagement] ring I’d choose. Mummy would laugh at me. “No man’s ever going to marry you, Pig.”Heather: I’ve not even been a bridesmaid.Dot, speaking in 2011: How many times you’ve been bridesmaid now?Heather: This will be my fifth.Heather: The moment I waited for all my life —  husband on the way home, roast dinner waiting for him on the table.Carol: I had this fantasy when I was twelve years old. I had it all worked out — country churchyard, man in tails, me all in white with half a dozen bridesmaids, all dead jealous, me dad walking me down the aisle to give me away - oh, and my picture on the cover of Bride Magazine.Carol: I’ve never been one for the limelight. I’ve always been the same. I’ve always hated any fuss.Carol: When I was [twelve], I was always falling out with me mates and making up again.April Branning: We had some good times, didn't we, eh?Carol: Yeah.April: Forget about the sixties, the seventies was the time to be young. I was mad about the Bay City Rollers. My room was a shrine to Eric.Julie Perkins: We were all into Bay City Rollers. That’s how I first got into tartan.Nigel Bates: As far as I'm concerned, the Bay City Rollers are the seventies. The seventies was my time. I loved it - Jackson 5, Olivia Neutron-Bomb, Brotherhood of Man.Jean Slater: Cliff Richard and ...Ted Hope: Olivia Newton-John.Jean: Yes, that’s it. Saturday teatimes!Ted: Before she was famous.Jean: Oh, he was so handsome.Ted: She was so pretty.Heather: George Best, he was gorgeous.Patrick Trueman: I'm a ‘70s man myself — Isaac Hayes, Barry White.Paul Trueman on his brother Anthony: Always did have bad taste in music.Sharon Watts: Mum was bonkers about Scott Walker. She had all his records. [He] used to be on all the time when I was a kid.Ricky Butcher on Jim Reeves: My nan used to listen to him.Roxy Mitchell on Otis Redding: My mum worshipped him. Every day on the anniversary of the [plane] crash [in which he was killed], she would play Otis all day long. It was like a religion.Jim Branning on a "Reggae's Golden Greats" LP: My Carol had that when she was a teenager. That's got Bob Marley on it. [Sings:] "No woman no cry, No woman no cry ..." I'm not one of his greatest fans like, but some of it's a bit catchy.Charlie Slater on the family record collection: [Viv] bought most of these.Charlie: My Viv used to be a good mover, but I couldn't keep up with her of course.Aunt Sal: My Harold used to be a dab hand at darts. Him and the kids used to play for hours against the kitchen door. Had to put an end to it when he put one through his cousin’s cheek.Jean: Brian used to play darts. Never taught me.Cora Cross: I taught Phil Taylor everything he knows.Pauline: Pat used to throw a fair arrow.Pat: I was captain of a darts team once — years ago mind, when platforms were in the first time round.Peggy on 1970s fashions: Did we honestly used to wear stuff like this?Jim: I didn't.Mark: I did and I nearly got arrested!Nigel on 1970s fashions: It was our generation who invented it. It was our idea. We had to test run the stacked heels and suffer sprained ankles. We lived it, man. We suffered.Billy Mitchell: I’ve always wanted [a lava lamp].Billy: 1974, fell down a gully. Well, my mate Julie pushed me down a gully. Smashed right into the side of this old Anderson shelter. It was totally overgrown. I mean you’d never know it was there. Anyway we made a little camp out of it. You know, kitted it out with bits and bobs, the way kids do. A lampshade — no light, just the shade — a couple of comfy chairs, and we kept it to ourselves, me and Julie. Our little cave.Alfie: Sounds nice.Billy: It weren’t really.Billy on panic attacks: I used to get them a lot when I was younger. My mate Julie used to talk to me. She was the only person that could calm me down.Julie Perkins, speaking about Billy in 2010: Still the same old self-pity, still the same old Skid Mark, still the same old Billy.Julie to Billy. I’m the one that liked you the way you were.Julie to Billy: Even I could beat you up when we were kids in the children’s home, Skids.Billy on the children’s home: Weren’t all bad.Billy to Julie: We survived back then because we were a team.Julie on herself and Billy: We didn’t have any parents but we had each other.Billy to Julie: We used to have spirit before we had it drummed into us that we’d never amount to anything.Billy: There was lots of running about — in and out of shops, up and down in the lifts all day, like a big wild pack we was — and days when the sun wasshining.Julie: That Evening Standard bloke who used to stop for a fry up on the Dock Road, do you remember?Billy: Pushed his van over.Julie: We’d nick his newspapers and sell them on to the ship workers.Billy: “Hot off the press!"Billy: Proper little tearaway, I was.Julie on being fifteen: I needed a firm hand. I didn’t get one though, did I?Billy, looking at an old photograph taken at Hope Manor Children’s Home: Don’t we look smart?Julie: Yeah. That’s the day the inspectors were coming, that’s why. Look at you, the only one not looking at the camera, and there’s me, hiding at the back as usual, wishing I wasn’t there. And there’s Gillian — Gillian Hodge, Graham Ash, Danny Bilson. He’s dead now. Long time ago. There’s Nancy Stewart.Billy: I used to fancy her something rotten. She was halfway to being a junkie.Billy, looking at another picture: That is me — an old photo from the home.Jay Brown: You was a handsome little bleeder, weren’t you? Who’s that [in the photo] - your mate?Billy: Well I thought he was, but I nicked his milk one day so he broke me nose.Billy, mid-discussion: I’m telling you we never had a party at the home, never.Julie: Yes, we did. Do you remember Rita Nesbitt? She brought in some vodka and we locked that little kid with callipers in the storeroom all night. Remember?Billy: Oh yeah - except it wasn’t Calliper Charlie you locked in the storeroom all night, was it?Julie: I’m sorry, Skid Mark!Billy: It was the nights. Monsters don’t have fangs — they come at you with smiles, look like your best mate, and then they turn and you want to hate them and that’s the worst thing because you can’t even do that properly because deep down, even when they’re beating you to a pulp, even then, you still want them to like you.Henry Mason, carer in the children’s home: Always liked you, Mitchell.DS Mulligan: Did you know Henry Mason?Billy: Yeah. People knew what he was up to. They just turned a blind eye.Julie on Henry Mason: He was never violent with me and he never deliberately set out to humiliate you like Kite would, for instance. That man was evil.Billy: Or Stovey.Julie to Billy: Do you remember when we were younger, me and you — back of that shop?Julie: Henry Mason, I did have a thing with him. I was a slag.Billy: You weren’t a slag.Julie: Oh come on, Billy. It was only thing I had to trade. None of us were angels.Billy: Julie, you was fourteen years old. That’s statutory rape.Julie: But he wasn’t the one who got me pregnant. He always used something. The only time round then when I didn’t was with you, Billy.Henry Mason on Julie: Bit of a troublemaker as I recall. No wonder she got herself knocked up.Billy: Why didn’t you tell me that I was the father?Julie: Because I was frightened of what they might do to you.Billy to Julie: You was already showing by the time that you left.Billy: Mason said that you’d gone to stay with some distant aunt or something.Julie: He lied. He sent me to a home up north. “Somewhere nicer to have the baby,” they said. A really nice place — all the other kids called me thecockney tart.Dot: I’ve always maintained you go north of Watford at your peril.Billy: When I was [fifteen], growing up in all them homes, being shifted — three months here, six months there — I remember I swore to meself that if I ever had kids I’d wrap them up so tight so nothing could touch them.Archie Mitchell: I always wanted kids and a family. It came naturally to me.Glenda Mitchell on children: They spend nine months inside you, all safe and part of you, and then someone cuts the cord and snip — it’s out of yourhands. But they’re still tied to you, aren’t they, in here [the heart]? No one can cut the bond between a mum and her baby.Veronica “Ronnie” Mitchell, date and place of birth: 07 Jul 74, Harold Wood.Glenda to her daughters, Ronnie and Roxy: I was the first person to hold you and I was first person to love you.Roxy Mitchell to Ronnie: You were born to be a mum.Roxy to Glenda: You threw [Ronnie] to the wolves the minute she was born.Roxy to Ronnie: Your whole life has been a punishment.Archie: Veronica was always so special. I know dads always say that about their daughters, but right from the day she was born I watched her, fascinated. You could never work out what she was thinking, but I tried and sometimes I tried too hard. I was my own worst enemy and in the end I was her worst enemy.Archie to Ronnie: I love you. I always did.Archie: Ronnie always was a handful.Archie: Ronnie’s always had a mind of her own. I don’t know where she gets it from.Archie to his younger daughter Roxy: It might be a few years since I’ve rocked a baby to sleep, but your mother always said I had the magic touch.Peggy: There was a time when me and Eric, well, we were going through a really bad patch. The love was still there, but it was hidden by the day to day grind of living with someone else. There was the usual stuff — bills mounting up, boys playing up at school. Eric drank, I nagged. Then he went to the pub and I nagged him again when he came home. We'd forgotten who we were, why we were together. Couldn't see the wood from the trees and, well, if we'd carried on like that, one of us would have left.Lisa Shaw: So what changed?Peggy: I got pregnant. I had Sam. Eric [didn't want another child] so I didn't tell him what I had in mind. By the time Eric found out I was pregnant, itwas too late.Dennis Rickman Born 28th August 1974Dennis Rickman to Den: My mum had your kid. Had me at seventeen. She regretted not getting rid though, or so she told me often enough.Sharon: Dad had a son we never knew about.Dennis: So you didn't know about me?Den Watts: Never heard about you.Dennis: [The affair] must have meant more to her than it did to you. Serves her right for getting starry-eyed.Den: Well, she was very young.Dennis: Yes she was.Den: But she'd got your gran and granddad.Dennis: What — your mates? They didn't want to have anything to do with it. Kicked her out.Den to Dennis: I wouldn't have been any good for you. Even if I'd known about you, I wouldn't have been any good for you.Angie Watts: Do you remember when you were trying to sell the Morris?Den: How old was Sharon then?Angie: Four or five. Five.Den: Bloke was just reaching into his pocket for the dough ...Angie: And then she said, "Daddy, I'm so glad you're selling that car because it keeps breaking down."Den: I've never seen a bloke put his money away so fast.Sharon: I grew up on lies and dodgy geezers whispering in corners. I watched Mum being lied to for more years than I can remember.Stan Carter: Lies break families. Mine did.Sharon on Den: He brought me up. He looked after me. He made me feel safe.Dennis: What — his little princess? So he could dress you up like a toy doll or something?Sharon to Michelle: Do you remember them clothes Angie used to put me in? Everything was always lacy, all frilly and that. I must have looked like a right tart. I think she used to dress me how she'd want to look.Pauline on Sharon: Only seems like yesterday Ange was taking her off to her first day at school.Ian on Walford Primary School: It's not that bad a school. I went there.Ian: I remember my first day at school — shirt was all pressed nice. I looked at myself and thought, “Yeah, I’m the man,” in me little tie. I walked through those gates and I thought, “Do you know what? By the end of the day …”Sharon: I remember the first school uniform I ever had. [Angie] took my skirt up three inches. Everyone else had a skirt just below the knee and a white shirt, and there was me with a skirt halfway up me leg and one of them blouses with the frills down the front.Sharon: I had plaits. Thought I was the business.Sharon: The first time a boy gave me a ring, he said, "I'll love you forever." I was five, he was six and the ring came out of a Christmas cracker. I thought he meant it though. I held onto that ring for months after him and his mum had moved away. Anyway, Dad got fed up of me moping around and shoved the ring in the bin. "It's about time you learned, nothing lasts forever."Pat Wicks: I am what I am, Simon. I've never pretended otherwise. I've got a temper, but by God I've used it fighting for you.Pat: I never got any complaints at the old Duke's Head. It was working there paid for [Simon's] piano.Pat to Simon: Who made you practice the piano and paid for it, bought you your first keyboards? Who went without for your piano lessons, new clothes, shoes?Pat on Simon: When he was nine, he won the piano prize up at the school. I cried buckets watching him.Kevin Wicks: All I ever got at school was, “Kevin should try harder.”Pat to Simon: Anything you've ever asked of me, I've got it for you somehow. You name it, you wanted it. It never stopped. Same with your brother and he's no more grateful than you are.Cora Cross: My wedding day, I was off my head before I even got in the cab. No fancy cars for me. Mini-cab there, bus back. Belly out here, seven months pregnant. It was the social event of the year.Cora: I smoked and drank all through my pregnancies. Didn’t affect my girls.Michelle Fowler on writing to Father Christmas: Gran used to say it was rude to ask Santa for presents. She said the polite thing to do was wish him a Happy Christmas and hope he'd pop in for a mince pie on Christmas Eve. Gran used to sit me, Mark and Ian down and we all used to write thank-you letters to him afterwards.Mark: Do you remember when we were kids, Gran telling us not to ask for presents at Christmas because it meant that we wouldn't get them? I'm sure she did it just to shut me up. I remember going round for weeks saying to meself, "I don't want football boots, I don't want football boots." And it was football boots that I wanted more than anything else in the world.Michelle: Did you get your football boots?Mark: Actually, now you come to mention it, no I didn't.Arthur: I always used to do Mark and Michelle's [Christmas stockings].Mark: When I was a kid, all I got was an apple, an orange and a gun.Pauline to Michelle: You and Mark, you always used to have a wish on the Christmas pudding.Carol on her mother’s Christmas pudding: When we were little, we used to stir it and make a wish. She used to put money in it for luck, but one year, Max nearly choked on a 5p so she never bothered again. She used to love Christmas.Pauline: Two days before Christmas, you went and found all your presents before they were wrapped.Mark: You told me that Santa was too busy to visit all the boys and girls on Christmas Eve so he stuffed my presents in the airing cupboard. I don't think I quite believed you somehow.Arthur to Michelle: I got you this [doll's pram] last thing on Christmas Eve. Shops stayed open then. I was a bit tiddly and I left it on the bus. I had to run after it. And when I got it home, your gran said, "That's no good. It's got no covers." And her and your mum stayed up half the night sewing.Michelle: It was the best one in the Square. How old was I?Arthur: You must have been five because you insisted on taking it to school.Arthur to Mark: My dad used to tell me that if you went into a farm on Christmas Eve, you'd see all the animals kneeling down saying their prayers, just like they did on the first Christmas when Baby Jesus was born. I used to tell you that story.Mark: You were still doing it when I was sixteen and I brought my first girlfriend round for tea on Boxing Day.Arthur: Don't be daft!Arthur: It used to snow every year.Michelle: No, of course it didn't.Arthur: I'm telling you, we had a white Christmas every year. That was before the holes in the ozone layer and that greenhouse thingy. It always used to snow.Michelle: Yeah, yeah, the summer's were hotter!Arthur: Yes, they were.Michelle: No, you just want to remember it like that.Pauline: Christmas was always such a happy time — children up at first light wanting to open their presents, Pete and Kath dropping by with Ian, Mum sat in her chair there, wearing a paper hat and snoring her head off all through the Queen’s speech. There was children everywhere, and noise.Dot Branning, speaking in 2007: I haven’t missed one of [the Queen’s] speeches for over fifty years.Den on the Queen Vic Christmas decorations: We got them from the last governors.Den to Sharon: Watching my daughter open her [Christmas] presents — always gave me a buzz, that — the little smile on your chops when you opened up your packages. Remember that walky-talky doll I give you? Nearly as big as you, wasn't it?Sharon: Head fell off by teatime, didn't it?Carol to Max: When you were a child and something bad happened, you’d go all moody and go into yourself. Do you remember that toy army truck you got for Christmas one year when you were about five? You played with it so much, all its wheels fell off. You were so angry that you broke it, you threw it in the bin and you wouldn’t speak to anybody. I sneaked into Dad’s shed and I went through his toolbox and I managed to mend it. He knew that I’d been in there and he went mad at me, but I didn’t care because the look on your face when you saw that I’d fixed it was worth it.Den on Phil Mitchell: I was dealing with his sort while you [Sharon] were still playing with your dollies.</blockquote>

Verification: What month follows July?