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Message: <blockquote data-quote="James from London" data-source="post: 118152" data-attributes="member: 22">1978Emma Summerhayes born 1978Alfie Moon, showing a scar on his left side: My appendix, 1978, that is.Big Mo: I've haven't felt as rough as this since Clacton, 1978.Charlie Slater, speaking in 2003: Look, I don't want to make anything worse than it already is.Big Mo: Charlie, you've been saying that for twenty-five years. It ain't exactly been a great strategy.Shirley Carter on Stan: All the years of grief he put us through.Shirley to Stan: All you’ve ever wanted to do is to hurt me.Phil: Your old man, he never …?Shirley: No, nothing like that.Stan Carter: We never had stability.Shirley: Who’s fault was the lack of stability?Shirley on Stan: When he used to drink, he couldn’t even tell us apart. No matter what we did, he’d just cut into us, tearing us, until one day we just stopped talking. There was silence at the table. And the worse thing was we started turning on each other because that’s his trick. He makes you hate yourself.Sylvie Carter, speaking in 2014: Are you in pain, Stan? Are you wondering when it will stop, when you’ll start feeling better? I’ve had years of this, courtesy of you and your drinking. I could have you locked up for what you do to me. Shouldn’t have had to run. I could have a life with my kids, but you took that from me. You gave me no choice but to leave because you, Stan, are a monster.Stan: Wives don’t leave husbands.Sylvie: They do if they can’t breathe.Stan: Never did know how to treat a lady. That’s probably why Sylvie left me in the first place.Stan: I did love you, Sylvie. I know I wasn’t good at showing it but when you left, it broke my heart.Cora Cross on Sylvie: When did you last see her?Stan: Soon after Mick was born. She left me and the kids to fend for ourselves, not a thought for our welfare. Mick to Sylvie: You left me when I was a little baby. You left me when I was a few months old, little Mick.Patrick Trueman on Sylvie: When was the last time you saw her?Shirley: When I was fifteen.Shirley, speaking to Sylvie in 2014: [Tina]’s forty now, older than you when you walked out on us. Babe to Sylvie: You left [Stan], didn’t want him. Walked out and left me to pick up the pieces.Shirley to Sylvie: Everything fell apart when you left. Daddy couldn’t cope.Stan: We were broken. I couldn’t cope. Babe: You thought Sylvie left you because of the kids, so you gave them up, washed your hands. You used them.Mick on Sylvie: She left, but we had Aunt Babe and we had Shirley.Stan: Shirley did us proud.Mick on Shirley: She should never have been responsible for me and Teen. She was just a kid herself. It was too hard for her. She done a good job.Stan Carter to Mick: [Shirley] always loved you, always took care of you.Stan: I don’t blame you for not telling me [about Mick’s parentage], but after your mother left …Shirley: How could I? Mick was the only thing that made you smile. Mick to Stan: That time when you painted our room red when we were kids. Tina Carter: Yeah, who paints a kid’s room red?Stan: I got a job lot from a mate in Soho, didn’t I?Linda Carter: Paint from a strip club — charming.Mick: Bet Mum was thrilled with that, weren’t she?Stan: Your mum weren’t there. She’d been gone a few weeks by then. That’s why I did it, take my mind off it.Tina: Yeah, that and the paint was cheap.Tina to Mick: The only time I remember Dad decorating we all ended up in A&E because of you. Shirley: After Mum had left, I tried. I tried to keep it together but I couldn’t hack it and then one day, I just snapped. Mick was about one and we’d been doing some painting. It got everywhere. You know what kids are like. I put him in the bath, tried to clean him up. Tina to Mick: You slipped in the bath or something. Yeah, it’s me, Shirl, Dad covered in emulsion. It’s snowing. You’re bawling your eyes out.Shirley to Mick: You were covered in paint. You wouldn’t stop crying. All I did was put you in the bath and try to wash it off, but all you did was keep smashing your hands in the water. Shirley on Mick: The taps were running, he was screaming. Phil: You held him underwater, your own son?Shirley: I never meant to. I never wanted that. It was just in that one moment. That one moment. Stan to Mick: I remember so vivid that song, ‘I’ll Never Smile Again’ [by Frank Sinatra] on the radio in the kitchen. I remember because we were sent home — the snow — and I thought, “You must be joking, Frank. I’m grinning from ear to ear!” And then I see water dripping down the wall. Race upstairs, someone’s run a bath, fallen asleep. On the landing, Tina’s crying, carpet soaked. Into the bathroom, she’s over the bath, arms in the water, staring down. “What you doing, you silly cow?” Turn off the taps, takes ages, there’s water all swirling, and then I see something held down. Push her away, shouting. Pull you out, limp.Shirley on Mick: I didn’t know what I was doing until Dad burst in and dragged him out.Stan to Mick: Lay you on a bed. Panic. Can’t think what to do. And then a little cough. I thought I was going to fall over. Frank was still singing up through the floor, her still staring in the water.Shirley on Mick: When we got to the hospital, Dad wouldn’t let me see him. Mick: The nurses, they thought the paint was blood. Shirley on Mick: A bloke who nearly drowned when he was one and hasn’t been near water since.Phil on Mick: That’s when they took him into care?Shirley: No, not at first but things were never the same after that. They came back to the house, they saw Dad’s empty bottles and what a mess I was in and it was only a matter of time before they took Mick and Tina away.Stan: It was hard in those days without Sylvie. Shirley did her best, but she was young.Tina: She was great. She always had our dinner on the table. She always had us ready for school.Stan: You had your moments, eh, Shirl? Some better than others.Shirley: We all struggled.Stan: Yeah, but like I said at the time, it wasn’t your fault.Shirley: After what happened in the bath, I couldn’t trust myself anymore. I hurt [Mick], like I hurt everyone, and I figured out that it would be best that he had a mum that wasn’t there rather than have a mum like me.Phil: How old was you back then anyway?Shirley: Fourteen, going on fifteen.Phil: No wonder you couldn’t cope.Shirley: That’s no excuse.Phil: And what about the dad, where was he in all this?Shirley: He was long gone.Stan: The little ‘uns had to go into care.Babe to Mick and Tina: It was [Stan] wanted to get rid of you.Stan: I thought it was the right thing to do.Linda Carter to Stan: You drove your kids away. You pushed them.Mick on Stan: He abandoned us.Shirley on Mick: Once he was taken into care, that was it, I’d lost him. He never had the chance for me to screw up his life.Mick: I remember my foster parents had a purple kitchen. And I had, like, this little toy car, it was like a little cortina, and my foster mum, what was her name? Shirley: Jill. You really loved her. You used to scream your head off when we used to come and take you out for the day.Mick, looking at the children’s height chart in Stan’s flat: Why is my height even on here? I was in care then.Shirley: He [Stan] used to measure your height when you came home for visits. Wanted you to feel part of the family.Mick: No, he wanted other people to think I grew up here. That [height chart]’s a lie. I was never here. No-one was here. Stan on his flat: It’s years since it felt like home.Tina: Social services, they sent us miles away when Mick’s foster family give him up. Aunt Sal on Roxanne “Roxy” Mitchell: A born actress, like me.Ben Mitchell: What was your mum’s name?Roxy Mitchell: Glenda, like the Good Witch in The Wizard of Oz.Ronnie Mitchell: That was Glinda.Roxy: Was it? Oh. All these years ...Laurie Bates: At twenty-seven, I got married again, to Marion. I loved her. She wasn't beautiful, she wasn't clever. A lot of people would have said shewas ordinary, whatever that means. All I know is that her and me, well it felt right. We sort of fitted together. I didn't have to pretend to be anything. I could just be, I suppose. We both wanted kids. That could come later.Big Mo: Jimmy was in so much pain one night, I was at me wit's end, and then I had an idea. I got Gladys next door to come in and keep an eye on him and I got a night bus down to Piccadilly. I hung around that all night chemist and then I saw some junkies come out who'd just picked up their 'script. So I went up and asked them if they'd sell me some. They did. Told me how much to use. My heart was pounding and I was shaking, I was so sure I'd get arrested, but that night, Jimmy had the best night's sleep he'd ever had in weeks. When you love someone, you don't care about breaking the law. I've never told anyone that.Charlie on Big Mo: She really loved [Jimmy].Pat Evans: Did Jimmy never ask to see me when he was dying?Big Mo: He was too ill. He'd stopped caring about anything except for just getting through each day.Pat: Did he know he was dying?Big Mo: Yeah.Pat: And he never once asked to see me?Big Mo: Oh, I don't know. Once maybe, in passing. It was a terrible time.Extracts from an unsent letter addressed to Pat Harris, 20 Furrow Walk, London: "I don't have a lot of time left and I'd like to think we could let bygones be bygones. You were the best sister in the world and Mo's been the best wife. I'd like us to be friends again because, as I'm about to find out, life is too short. I've really missed you over the past few years and now that my time is ... deep with regret ..."Big Mo: I did a terrible thing [not giving Pat Jimmy's letter, but] I couldn't take the risk of her turning up, making him doubt me again. Not at a time like that.Charlie: [Reconciling with Pat] was Jimmy's dying wish.Big Mo: I know.Pat on Jimmy: He must have died hating me, thinking it was all just spite and malice on my part. Maybe it was.Big Mo: When Jimmy died, a little bit of me was relieved — all that fighting, fighting to get hold of them drugs he needed, him fighting to breathe, day, night.Jimmy Harris's gravestone: "Beloved husband of Maureen. Dad to Viv, Billy and Jean. 1941-1978."Pat on Big Mo: The woman didn't even tell me [Jimmy] had died. She left me out of me own brother's funeral. I didn't even know he was dead till I saw an old schoolmate.Big Mo: When my old man died, I was hoping Omar Sharif would come riding by — on his camel if he had to. I’d have let him do anything in the name of comfort.Jean Slater: Why didn’t [he] turn up?Big Mo: I still think he did, only I was out at the time!Big Mo on her granddaughter Little Mo: I used to ask [her] mother [if] she was dropped on her head as a baby.Charlie on his daughter Little Mo: Do you know the first thing I ever remember Little Mo saying? It was "Sorry."Big Mo on Little Mo: No fight in her, never has had.Kat Slater to Little Mo: You never could lie, could you, Mo?Little Mo: All my life, people have told me that I’m too thick, too caring, too soft for my own good.Billy: I’ve tried. All my life, I’ve tried.Pat Butcher to David Wicks: You always did have the gift of the gab.Pat to David: When you took a girl out, you'd be in that bathroom for hours and when you came out, you'd smell like a men's toiletry counter. There was one girl, whenever you took her out, you'd use a whole bottle of aftershave.Pat, mid-anecdote: He [David] had another bloke's bird, they were sworn enemies, and he can't smell a rat —  I ask you!David: Come on, Mum, I never knew at the time he knew I was seeing her. He had this cat stuck up on the roof. He asked me to go and get it because he was afraid of heights. So he puts the ladder against the side of the house, I climbs up it, gets onto the roof. As soon as I'm up there, he whips the ladder away.Ricky Butcher: So what happened to the cat?David: I discovered it wasn't a cat in the end, actually, but it was black and furry. It was his mum's wig!David on Pat: She always taught me never to refuse anything that was going free.Pat to David: All my life, I have tried to keep you on the right path, away from the bad, but you don’t listen, David.David: Everything I learnt about lying and deceit and adultery I learnt from you. I am what you made me.Pat: All my fault, isn't it?David: Most of it, yeah.Pat: None of it yours? It was me that nicked everything that wasn't nailed down, was it?David: You never cared what I did.Pat: Me who forged stolen cheques, was it?David: Well, you might as well have done. Because you taught me everything I know.Pat: You're right. I created a monster.David: I look back at my childhood and you were never there.Pat: I brought you up for sixteen years.David: No, no, no. We occasionally spent the night under the same roof. That ain't the same thing. You left me on me own and I had to get on with it.Pat: Things were different then. I had no support.Pat, speaking to David in 1993: Last time I saw you, you were screaming blue murder at me and walking out with a suitcase.Simon Wicks to Pat: You didn't care about [David]. Why do you think he run away?David to Pat: You never loved me, never, not one moment in my whole stinking life, not really, Mum, not like a kid should be loved, not when it counted.David: I was only sixteen when I left home. Did that give you any sleepless nights?Pat: Of course it did.David: Get out of it. You were glad to see the back of me. Why didn't you ever come looking for me?Michael Moon: My dad, he messed me up. That’s what they do, your parents. They may not mean to, but they do.Michael on Eddie: He was never there for her [his mother], never, or me.Ronnie Mitchell: My dad was exactly the same.Eddie Moon: I was always too busy [for family]. Always had things to do, deals to sort, people to see.Michael on his mother: Did you ever hit her, Dad? You’ve got a temper on you — shacked up with a mad bird — drove you to it, I suspect.Eddie: It was like a sick game — who could hurt who?Michael: You destroyed her.Eddie: We destroyed each other.Michael: Well, you won.Eddie to Michael: You never had anything good to say about me, did you? You were always a mummy’s boy.Michael on his mother: There was a picture in her bedroom, an old black and white one, one of those old portraits, but she’s young in it. She’s wearing a white frilly dress with a bow and she’s not happy about it, but she’s wearing [a St Christopher medal] round her neck.Jean Slater: What happened to it?Michael: My dad took it down. Said she wasn’t that person anymore.Michael on his St Christopher medal: It was a gift from my mum.Jean: “To Michael, Love Mum.” She gave it to you to keep you safe, didn’t she? To protect you.Michael: She was very religious, my mother. Heaven and Hell, very very real to her. This St Christopher, he's the patron saint of travel. She gave my brother Craig one as well. She said that he couldn’t help her, where she was going. Imagine that, imagine sending yourself to Hell.Vanessa Gold: No one’s ever really liked you, have they, Michael? Except maybe your mother. She got away from you the only way she could.Michael: Thirteenth of September, 1978 — the day my beloved dad killed my mother.Eddie, speaking to Michael in 2011: I was younger than you [are now, thirty-nine] when your mother passed.Eddie on Michael: I killed his mother. That’s what you think, isn’t it, Michael? I was so cold, so neglectful, so callous that she had no choice but to do away with herself.Michael: You killed her with your neglect and your wandering eye. You are the reason why she couldn’t take it no more.Eddie: Maybe.Eddie on Maggie, his wife: She was angry at me, raging. Maybe I looked at a waitress the wrong way. She said she was going to do something big, make me sorry.Eddie: What I did, that was a mistake.Eddie: I left Michael in a house alone with a woman that shouldn’t have been alone, a woman that had problems and I knew it. You know the last thing I  said to him that night? “Look after her,” I said. “Look after your mum.” I thought he’d like it, you know, being man of the house. I turned around and she was standing in the doorway, looking in at us. I should have seen it coming. I should have seen it then, the way she was looking at me as if she was telling me — “You look after me, Eddie,” that’s what she was saying. “Not some six year old kid. You, like you promised you would when we got married.”Michael: While Eddie was out getting hammered, my mum was at home eating sleeping pills. He may as well have poured the pills down her neck. She did it because of him, because of him, because of who he is, because of the man he is, because of the evil piece of scum that he is.Michael on his mother: She topped herself with sleeping pills and a big bottle of sherry and I found the body when I was six.Alfie Moon on Michael: His mum was forty-one when she died.Eddie: She wanted you to find her. She knew you were playing out in the yard and you’d soon be in for your dinner.Michael: She wanted her six year old to find her corpse?Eddie: It was a stunt, for revenge, attention, I don’t know. She thought you’d find her and call 999 to get help.Michael: I kept playing and dinner got burnt. Then I came in too late.Michael: I was playing in the yard and I come in the back door. I knew something was up. The house was dark, through the kitchen and down the hall. I look in the utility room. There’s nothing. I see a foot on the sofa. She’s got her slippers on. I just knew.Ronnie Mitchell: What did you do?Michael: Nothing, nothing, just sat there and waited for me dad to get back — with this. Sat there with this [his St Christopher].Jean to Michael: You should have curled up and died when she did.Eddie on Michael: When I got back, it was him I saw first. Bent over her, he was. She was just lying on the sofa. I thought, “Good boy, he’s brought her a cup of tea or something. He’s looked after her like I told him to.” Then I came a bit closer. I saw the pills.Eddie on Maggie: I found her at 9pm. I know that because I could hear the clock striking, nine little chimes.Michael: Nine chimes when my mum topped herself. It was nine o’clock pm.Michael to Eddie: What colour were her eyes? They were blue, weren’t they? But then they turned grey, do you remember, when she was lying there? The colour just drained away.Jean on Michael: The day his mother committed suicide, the light went out in him.Michael: Have you ever cuddled a dead body? She was very cold, my mum. She was very cold. It was horrible, really, but you just can’t ... you can’t do anything. What can you do? You just can’t ... you can’t do anything. What could I do, what could I do?Michael: I used to think what if I’d done something, called a neighbour? Maybe she wasn’t dead. Maybe I could have saved her.Janine Butcher to Michael: “Mummy was sad. She was so sad that she committed suicide. Your mummy just didn’t love you enough” — the words that you heard when you were a little boy, the words that made you into a twisted, messed-up freak.Eddie Moon: Michael barely knew his mother. He was too young. He’s put her up on a pedestal.Michael on his mother: Why didn’t you tell me what she was really like?Eddie: To protect you.Michael: You should have just told me the truth.Eddie: You were a little boy whose mum had just killed herself, a damaged little boy.Eddie on Maggie’s suicide: It was the most painful and difficult period of my entire life.Eddie to Michael: When your mum died, I wasn’t what Craig needed. I got letters from his carers, but I stayed away.Tyler Moon on Eddie: He abandoned his own son.Craig Moon to Michael: You’re the eldest. You’re the one Dad kept.Michael to Eddie: Did you never just think to introduce us [he and Craig] — you know, Sunday afternoons, a burger place, normal family stuff?Craig: It’s all right. I was fine.Eddie: I thought if I could keep everything separate, I could keep you all safe — Craig from rejection, you from the truth about your mother.Michael: Your plan didn’t work though, did it? Craig missed out on a family and I ...Eddie: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I get it. I ruined all of us.Carol Jackson: I had a best friend when I was [sixteen]. Lied through our teeth for each other, we did. I mean, that's what best friends are for. In myday, you looked out for your mates. You think you know everything when you're sixteen, that's the trouble. I know I did.Shirley Carter: When I was [sixteen], I’d have gone for anything [in trousers].Shirley: I used to ditch [maths] for a beer and a bundle over the rec.Pauline Fowler on Mark: There he is, ten years old, kneeling on the chair, rolling out bits of pastry for Arthur. Quite grey. Still had to bake them though.Lynne Slater to Kat: I remember my tenth birthday. You cried all day till Dad had to give you one of my presents.Nigel Bates: Ilford Palais, eighteenth birthday — Deirdre Kelly threw Guinness all over me.Kate Morton: I decided I didn't want anybody else ordering me around. I can't remember how old I was exactly — six, seven.Alfie Moon to his cousins, Danny and Jake: Ever since the pair of you were old enough to walk, you've been dumping troubles on my doorstep and it's always Danny that starts it.Danny Moon to his brother Jake: We're a team, always have been. I've trusted you my whole life.Jake Moon to Alfie: I used to love it when you used to come round when I was a kid. Always brought something with you. Always had a laugh, didn't we?Alfie: Yeah and then we all flew off to Neverland, didn't we, Jake?Alfie on his favourite age: Fourteen, definitely fourteen.Ian Beale: What was so good about being young?Alfie: The possibilities.Alfie: When I was a kid at school, I was the kid that always got the biggest conker in the world. I'd soak it in vinegar, bake it in the oven so it would be hard like concrete, and then a bloke looking like David Beckham would come along with a conker the size of a baked bean and smash mine to a million pieces — and I'd be left there, standing with a piece of string dangling, while Golden Balls would be on the other side of the playground with everybody around him. It's all right — that's the natural order of things. It's the same with fighting. While Mr Floppy-Haired Git With The Six-Pack was knocking hell's bells out of all the kids and giving them brain damage, I'd get them in a headlock and let them go just before they went purple, but make sure they were all right — and then they'd get up and give me a right good kicking. But the thing was, you see, I'd always get up and that freaked them out. They'd knock me down, I'd get up and I'd be laughing. They'd knock me down again, I'd get up and I'd say things like, "Watch the face, mate, because I'm taking a bird out tonight." They'd still keep knocking me down and I'd still keep getting back up. And after a while, they stopped hitting me and they started to like me, and that's how I found my way in the world. I knew where I was. I knew where I fitted in. Everyone really liked me. All the girls at school, they were like, "Where's Alfie?" at playtime. "Where's cute, cuddly Alfie? He's got cuddly cheeks. Look at him!" I was like an honourable bird, I was — "Alfie Moon. Aw, bless him." But then Mr Six Pack would come along and he'd give them all a good seeing to. But because I was his mate now, he'd come back and give me all the gory details.Nana Moon to Alfie: Bob Woolcher, the [friend] you was at school with. I did like him.Peggy Mitchell: Geography was the one O Level you got, wasn't it?Grant Mitchell: I cheated.Peggy: If you cheated in your O Levels, how come you only got the one?Peggy on Phil and Grant: One O Level between the pair of them.Bianca Jackson on Carol: Left school, no qualifications.Carol: I didn’t listen to my mum and dad either.Ian: I remember my old man working all hours, getting up early, hands chapped from the cold. I always vowed I would never spend the rest of my life on that stall.Nick Cotton on Pete Beale: Pete the Potato, they used to call him. Stood out there flogging fruit and veg, all weathers. I used to whip things off him all the time. He never done nothing about it because he was scared.Pauline: Ian loved the market. He was always out there on a Saturday helping his dad.Mark Fowler: Only because he got paid for it.Pauline: Be fair, everyone did. You'd see whole families working the stall at the one time. It was ever so friendly.Mark: Yeah, until the arguments started.Pete Beale on Mark: He helped me [on the stall] all the time when he was a nipper.Mark: I spent more time on that stall when I was a kid than I did at school.Pete to Mark: [Lou] had this vision, you know, us all working on the stall together — "family business" — but the trade weren't about. It's something your gran always thought of you doing. Something she always wanted.Pauline: Beryl's been selling kitchenware on the market for years.Mark: I used to put her stall out every morning before I went to school.Mark: I haven't slept in bunk beds since I was a kid.Arthur Fowler: Mark used to [sleepwalk] when he was troubled about something, moving school or something like that.Michael Moon: I used to sleepwalk when I was little.Dot: My Charlie, he had a friend [who sleepwalked]. He was called Hubert and he was a terror. They had to lock the house up at night like Fort Knox in case he got out and done himself a mischief. See, they lived on a dual carriageway.Mark on Pauline and Arthur: When I was a boy, all I wanted was to keep them happy, but I never could.Michelle Fowler: Of course you kept them happy.Mark: What - skiving off school, playing dumb? Don't make me laugh.Mark on himself and Ian: We used to bunk off.Mark: Ever since I was a kid, all I wanted to do was get away from Albert Square. Go anywhere, it didn't matter, as long as it wasn't here.Mark: When I was a kid, always the answer was just to head off into the wild blue yonder.Michelle: That's called running away.Lofty Holloway: I left home when my mum and dad started having goes at me.Charlie Slater on Kat: She always was a tough little thing.Kat on Charlie: I can't remember the last time he hugged me. Not since you [Belinda, her younger sister] were born.Arthur: Mark had a bit of trouble when he was younger.Pauline: Kid's stuff, mucking about on building sites.Arthur: Mark was a bit of a handful. The times I've been down to his school to sort something or other out. Seems like the end of the world when you're going through it.Arthur to Mark: When you were a kid, we were arguing all the time. Sometimes over nothing.Mark: I remember when I failed my cycling proficiency test. Went all moody about it. Mum tried to cheer me up with some sweets, but I remember thinking, "I don't want your sweets. Just want to pass me cycling proficiency test."Pauline to Mark: You always hated being fussed over.Lou Beale on Mark: He was always a cantankerous little git.Michelle on Mark: He was just boring.Phil, looking through old photographs with Charlie Mitchell's son Jamie: Cop a load of your dad's barnet! We'd just got back from a weekend in Brighton. It was mental. Your dad had just copped off with this girl that he'd met in a club, but it turned out that her boyfriend and a bunch of his biker mates were in there as well.Jamie: How old was you?Phil: Seventeen, eighteen. There was a massive punch-up at the end of the night. That's where we got all them cuts and bruises.Jamie: Was my mum around then?Phil: It's funny the things you forget — the girl in the club was your mum. Charlie never looked at another girl after that.Little Mo: I used to love driving with Dad in a cab.Big Mo: Yeah, that was when you was kids.Little Mo: Used to take us all over London.Little Mo: Sometimes you used to take us out on our own.Charlie: Yeah well, that was just to show you what your old dad did to put the fish and chips on the table.Lynne Slater: Yeah well you never made it seem like that, did you, eh?Kat: We always had a laugh, didn't we?Rose Cotton to Andrew: You used to love the [Christmas] lights when you were a little boy. Do you remember when I used to take you?Little Mo to Charlie: I used to love [seeing the Christmas lights] — up Oxford Street, down Regent Street — all the kids in the back [of the cab], Mum making you sing carols. That's all I ever wanted really, was to get married, to be like youse two.Billy Mitchell: A family of me own, that’s all I’ve ever wanted.Little Mo: The last few days before Christmas always reminds me of being little, you know, wondering about all the nice surprises I’m going to get.Charlie Slater to his daughters: Every Christmas, I used to buy a big box of chocolates, but no sooner were they opened than you lot were fighting [over] who's to have first choice. All except Little Mo. She'd always wait patiently till it was her turn. And then when she'd chosen, she'd always look at me and say thank-you.Charlie: Always a special day, the Slater family Christmas. My Viv was always big on that.Lynne: It's Christmas Day. You know Mum's rule — no strangers, just family.Kat: A quiet day at home with the family. That's how Mum had it. That's how it's always been.Lynne: It's a family tradition — presents after lunch.Michael Moon: I always had this thing as a kid. I always wanted to tear down the decorations come Boxing Day. You know, because after the presents go, the trees and the tinsel look a bit tawdry, don’t they? A bit forlorn.Pat: You must have been a happy child.Michael: I think I just wanted to get rid of the old year, make way for the new one.</blockquote>

Verification: What month follows July?