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Message: <blockquote data-quote="James from London" data-source="post: 118567" data-attributes="member: 22">1981Dot, speaking in 2011: Thirty years ago, every larder in the land had a tin of syrup. Dot, speaking in 2011: I’ve had this set of [kitchen] chairs for thirty years.Carol Jackson, speaking in 2011: If you’d have told me thirty years ago I’d be selling the shirt off my back to help Pat Wicks, I’d have laughed in your face.Carved into a fence on Turpin Road: "Fowler + Banksey '81"     Tom Banks: What about that time when we nicked the barge?Mark Fowler: Oh yeah. Only went about three mile an hour, didn't it?Tom: The cows were just strolling along going, "I'll catch you at the next lock." When we got there, you were saying, "Ram it!" Ram it at three miles an hour?!Bridget Banks, Tom's mother, looking at an old photo of Tom and Mark: You wouldn't think to look at them they were such a pair of terrors.Ian Beale on ‘That's Entertainment’ by The Jam: That was one of [Mark and Tom's] favourites.Ian on The Jam's "Sound Affects" LP: [Mark and Tom] went halves on it. I'm sure it was about two pound fifty each back then. They played it all day and then Tom stormed off out because Mark put his cup of tea down on the back of it [staining the sleeve].Pauline Fowler on an LP Mark would bequeath to Sharon after his death: I remember his gran give him some money towards that for one of his birthdays.Mark to Sharon: Did you really think I didn't know you and Chelle played my albums when I was out?Jack Branning looking at some LPs: They were Max’s. I nicked them.Max Branning, speaking in 2011: You going to draw a line down the middle of the room, are you, just like when we were kids?Jack: The line was Mum’s idea.Max: No, it weren’t. It was your idea.Jack: Even though your thieving hands still used to creep over and nick my Look-In.Max: Yeah because that was for both of us, weren’t it?Jack: What, even though the line also included hairspray?Max: What you talking about? No one ever said anything about hairspray.Jack: We sat down and we talked about it. I even drew up the rules.Glenda Mitchell on the ‘80s: Do you remember?Ronnie Mitchell: I remember big hair.Roxy Mitchell: Big make up.Ronnie: Adam and the Ants. Do you remember your ...Roxy: Sparkly legwarmers!Glenda: And the three of us dancing round the lounge before you went off to the Friday night youth club.Ian on Adam Ant: I [had] me first snog to him. I used to love the way he got dressed up in all those big costumes with a white stripe on his face.Minty Peterson: We were putting on make-up and dressing up like highwaymen.Garry Hobbs: Speak for yourself.Mick Carter: Here, what was that song — you know, the one with the treacles ripping their little skirts off?Linda Carter: Bucks Fizz, ‘Making Your Mind Up’, [Eurovision] winner in 1981.Linda: July 1st, Princess Di’s birthday and mine. I loved her. Proper lady, she was.Pauline: That Princess Diana, now she knew a thing or two about a wedding dress.Sharon Watts: Yeah. She had a big budget though, didn't she?Alfie Moon: When Di got married, I remember sitting with my nan watching it and she cried all the way through.Cindy Beale: My mum and dad used to talk about [their dream home in the country] as if it was really theirs, before they'd even seen it. I used to see what they were imagining in their minds and then draw pictures of it, like a diary of things that hadn't really happened.Bev Williams: Cindy was a smashing little girl, so funny and affectionate. I spoilt them, both of them, Cindy and Gina, because it made me feel less guilty. Me and Tom had spent so much time arguing that sometimes we forgot that the girls were even there.Ian, looking at an old photograph of Cindy and her sister Gina: Where was it taken?Gina Williams: It was outside our old house in London.Ian: The look on your face!Gina: That's because Cindy was pinching me when it was taken. See? It looks like she's got her arm around my back. She loved winding people up.Jack Branning to Jim: I remember our school photos — behind our backs, me and Max giving each other Chinese burns. That weren’t a smile on his face, that was a grimace. That’s typical of us Brannings, isn’t it? Why is that, why have we been at each other since the year dot? You know how it was. You used to play us off against each other, always wanting us to be better, to beat each other. Only one of us got a watch. I had to buy me own. And whoever got the worst exam results got text books for Christmas. Look what you made us into.Andrea Price, looking at an old photograph: Chalk and cheese, my daughters. That's Natalie, the one with the finger up her nose. If she puts it up any further, she'll have a nostril like a horse.Andrea: [Remember] that blue bracelet that you used to fight over with Susie for dressing up?Natalie Price: Yeah, Susie always used to win.Gina on Cindy: She used to go running to Dad, "Gina's done this, Gina's done that." He always took her side.Ian: Was she the favourite?Gina: No. I don't think either of us were that privileged. She was just better at getting attention. She knew all the tricks, especially with men. She idolised our dad. He couldn't have cared less. We used to share a room when we were little. Sometimes I'd wake up and I'd look at her and I'd think, "I don't have a clue what's going on inside your head."Ian: She must have opened up to you sometimes.Gina: Never. That was the thing. She was so good looking, so confident. She could have any bloke she wanted. Underneath she was no different to anyone else. She just wanted to be loved.Cindy: I remember fancying this bloke rotten. He never knew I existed. It was terrible.Sanjay Kapoor: Who was that?Cindy: Sean Connery.Cindy: When I was in the second year, I had a crush on a bloke in the fifth year.Gina on Cindy: Sometimes she just didn't care about anyone but herself. She saw something and she went for it. At the time I could have killed her, but he wasn't worth it and he dumped her for someone else soon after. That's one thing we did have in common, terrible taste in men.Gina on Cindy: I was so jealous of her. Clothes, make up, boyfriends - whatever she had, I had to have too.Bev: Gina always was the brainy one.Cindy: My sister lost a baby at seven months.Father Fraser to Cindy: I can still see you now, dashing round the playground with your socks round your ankles. We never had a champion of rounders to top Cindy Williams, either before or since.Cindy on pulling hair: I did [it] once to a snotty little kid in the school playground. Didn't know me own strength. Looked like she'd been scalped by the time I'd finished.Tina Stewart: At times, I thought I hated my dad. Thankfully, my mum made me see sense and I was able to make up with him before he died.Tina: My dad died when I was sixteen. And mum, bless her, she didn't cope very well.Tina: After my dad died, Mum was so wrapped up in her grief, sometimes I just wanted to grab hold of her and shake her and say, "Look at me, I'm still here." But then again, I had my brother and sister. We had each other to talk to. Without that ...Ruby Allen: And did your mum ever come round, open up?Tina: No — wasn't her style, but things did get better. Just took a bit of time, that's all.Billy Mitchell, recognising a man in 2000: Harry Harvey, Bournemouth Detention Centre, 1981.Billy: I’ve done plenty of time.Paul Trueman, speaking to Patrick in 2001: You hadn't seen [Audrey] for the best part of twenty years.Patrick on his sons: I wasn’t there when they were growing up, but a father’s love is always there no matter what.Gary Bolton: It must be [1981] since I've seen you.Big Mo: At least. Last I heard, you were going to set off to travel the world.Gary: I did. Got as far as Portsmouth.Big Mo: Very exotic.Gary: It was compared to Albert Square.Big Mo: What stopped you?Gary: Decided I had to grow up. Everyone has to sometime.Alfie Moon: I never had any trouble [chatting up girls] when I was [a teenager].Alfie, speaking in 2012: I was watching Fats [Fatboy] earlier chatting all them girls up, all that silver tongue, giving it the swagger, giving it large. Do you remember when we used to be like that?Nana Moon to Alfie: I remember when you had a different girl every week. You could have filled the hospital with broken hearts.Alfie: I've been called names all my life — conman, Jack the Lad, "always great for a laugh but you wouldn't want your daughter to marry him".Alfie: I was quite happy being Jack the Lad. Jack the Dad was never in my plans.Alfie: When I was seventeen, I got a girl pregnant. I'm not going to make out she was any old girl because she wasn't. I was in love and she was so bang in love with me, and it was all, like, tragic and tears before bedtime. Her parents got involved. Her dad is screaming at my dad. We were like, "Oi, back off, we'll get married." And I was up for it, and so was she. But then her mum sort of piped up and her mum was like, "Oh you're too young. I'm not going to let you throw your life away." And all of a sudden, she stopped answering my phone calls. I mean, I couldn't even get through her front door without her mum going, "Go away, she doesn't want to see you." Next thing I know, she's had an abortion. And no one asked my opinion. Or hers, for that fact. And I remember going to the hospital afterwards. She wouldn't even look at me. All she said was, "Alfie, get lost." I never saw her again.Suzy Branning: I lost my virginity on my sixteenth.Max: Yeah, for the sixteenth time.Bradley Branning: Aunty Carol told me you once took a week off with a bad back just to go to the Cheltenham Races with the money you stole from the electric metre.Jim Branning: No, no, no. I didn’t steal it, I borrowed it. And it weren’t Cheltenham, it was Sandown Park as it happens. Just shows how much your Aunty Carol knows, doesn’t it?Kathy Beale on Pete: He took me [horse] racing once.Rachel Kominski: What was it, a fancy hat job?Kathy: Rain hat, more like. It rained all day. We ended up in the bar watching the racing on the telly while Pete got quietly plastered.Rachel: Could have done that at home.Kathy: That's exactly what I said.Johnny Allen: I put some money on a horse in the National one year. It fell. Did itself some serious damage. Four grand to win — gone at the third fence. I knew the bookie and I asked him, "What odds would you give me on whether or not this horse has got to be destroyed or not?" A way to get some of me money back, you know? He wouldn't take the bet. He'd seen the horse fall, very messy. There was no question what was going to happen.Ruby Allen, Johnny’s daughter: Mum and Dad were married [in 1981].Phil Mitchell on Johnny: They reckon he used to be a vicious git.Peggy Mitchell: This is just a story I heard, a rumour, it might not even be true, but it’s the one [about Johnny] I remember most clearly. There was this girl, Susie Law, a stunner — should have been a film star, but sometimes life doesn’t quite happen for people. She had a problem, an addiction, I’m not sure what, but maybe it was her way of escaping.Ruby: And my dad - what, gave her drugs?Peggy: Well, he visited her.Ruby: She was a prostitute?Peggy: Yeah, after a fashion.Ruby: While he was married?Peggy: Yeah, I think so. She got into her head that she could blackmail your father. He didn’t take too kindly to that so he thought he’d teach her a lesson.Ruby: He killed her?Peggy: No, no. I suppose probably that would have been better in some ways. He booked her for an hour and he did some damage to her hand — well, to her fingers — and well, she lost them.Ruby: How?Peggy: You work it out, darling.Ruby: Did my mum know?Peggy: I don’t know.Ruby: Was she involved in it all?Peggy: I suppose she was, whether she liked it or not.Johnny, speaking in 2005: Susie Law, the hooker with the missing fingers? You can still see her some nights on Dog Street in her slippers, turning the odd trick or two when she hasn’t got the electricity money. Ask her how she lost the fingers on her right hand, Peggy. She won’t tell you because she knows if she does, she’ll lose the fingers on her left hand.Darren Roberts, speaking in 1988: I used to be a snooker player.Carmel Roberts: Don't make me laugh.Darren: I got paid for it, didn't I? A hundred pound a night on form. And with that money, I started to invest in various businesses. A few deals. Taking up whatever came along. Never miss a chance. First, a club in Soho. Then a sandwich bar, then a mobile disco, then a cab firm. I gave up mini-cabbing. Didn't suit me. I sold it off. Got enough to chip in for a small caff. Didn't like that much. Didn't like the hours, Didn't like the smell on me clothes. Then a beauty magazine.Carmel: Yeah, which folded in its third issue.Darren: Then a barbershop, which is still going strong.Carmel: Darren could have been an accountant or a company secretary or something.Garry: When you were in your twenties, what type of bloke did the birds your age go for?Minty: Anyone apart from me.Garry: What type of bloke particularly? Nine times out of ten, it was your older man, right? Ones with their own gaffs, with jobs, with a bit of money intheir back pocket.Minty: Lucky so and sos.Terry Raymond: I was a top estate agent — “In Fleet Salesman of the Year” in 1981. I used to be known as Terry Turnover — not because I turned people over, but because I had the highest turnover of properties in the area. Spiel is everything in this game. That's all you needed in the eighties — golden days. I had my selling techniques down to fine art form. A few chosen phrases and bang, they were mine.Janine Butcher: Things like, "It's an up and coming area."Terry: Yeah, that's kept Balham on the map for years.Janine: Or, "It's close to a full range of amenities."Terry: I sold a whole khazi of a place in Kings Cross with that line.Janine: Or, "It's a wonderful view of the city."Terry: Always a winner when you're shifting tower blocks.Terry: The first [car] I bought brand new [was] a BMW.Louise Raymond on Terry: He bought the house for forty thousand, but I did all the work on it, all the renovation, redecorating and everything.Terry: We're talking the early eighties here. Money all over the place in them days. Just had to reach down and pick it up. I had it all — flash car, new suits, blinds on the windows, potted palms. Of course, that was before everything went pear-shaped in the recession.Junior Roberts, Darren's son: Me and my dad have been chucked out of more flats than we had hot dinners.Carmel on her older sister: She got hitched to some computer whizz kid and moved to Florida.Carmel: I got an education and moved away. When I was doing my basic training [in social care], I had a lot of new friends, more work than I could cope with, and all of that. It was great, but it's surprising how homesick you get.Carmel on her father: He gave me everything. He forced me to get qualified.Simon Wicks: My stepfather taught me the lot [about running a pub], you know, from the cellar to the little sign outside the front. He said he'd always give me a reference.Frank Butcher: When my old dad died, we had a good sing song for him. And if he'd have been there, he'd have loved it.Mo Butcher: I've only got two things of value in the whole world, my mum's brooch and the carriage clock they gave my husband when he retired, God rest his soul.Mo on her husband: I got him a nice stone, real marble, and it'll do for me when my time comes. I left plenty of room at the bottom.Frank to his sister Joan: Where was you when Dad died and [Mum] was grieving? Where were you?Dot Cotton on Joan: Married a bank manager.Joan Garwood: For a long time, I didn't want any [children], and then when I did, to my great regret, none came along.Frank: I never knew that.Joan: You never asked.Kate Morton: There was this boy at school and everyone hated him. I don't know why. Anyway, when he was about eight or nine, he got leukaemia and sadly, he died. My mate Rosie told me that she used to go up to the cemetery every day and bury sweets under the grass. She said she couldn't stop thinking about how horrible she'd been to him.Garry: We had a mate at school whose sister got leukaemia. After that, we all got into giving blood.Shirley Carter to Kevin Wicks: You used to be a man of life once.Shirley on Kevin: He never changed after we got hitched. The Kevin I married was the Kevin I left.Shirley on being heavily pregnant: I hated being that big. I had stretch marks like varicose veins.Shirley on herself and Kevin: Before Jimbo, we used to make each other laugh, crack each other up. Then we had to put things on hold. Things fell apart, but that weren’t what we were about.Shirley on their son James “Jimbo” Wicks: I was [nineteen] when he was born.Shirley on childbirth: It hurts. It hurts how much you think it’s going to hurt. Getting them out’s the easy bit. Then all you do is let them down. It’s what mums do.Shirley: When I had my Jimbo I necked a whole bottle of vodka straight.Roxy Mitchell: Did it make you feel any better?Shirley: Loads.Kevin on Jimbo: Nice lad, lovely smile.Kevin on Jimbo: CF - cystic fibrosis. He was born with it, but it wasn’t diagnosed for a long time. If it had, he’d probably still be with us now.Shirley: Kevin would go to work and I’d be all on me own with Jimbo, no grownups to talk to. I even had a case packed in case I wanted to make a quick exit.Shirley: I’ve spent most of my life thinking that I was totally useless. I was a terrible daughter, a diabolical wife and a truly awful mother.David Wicks on his cooking skills as a teenager: I could do a bit of bacon and egg without cremating it.Terry to daughter Tiffany: When you were little, you used to ask me for an egg, except you couldn't say it. You called them "eddies".Tiffany on Terry: He used to have this Super 8 thingy. He used to follow us all around with it.Tiffany's brother Simon, watching old home videos: What a repulsive little kid Tiffany used to be.Tiffany: Oi!Louise to Tiffany: What's that they always say — Daddy's girl? Not you. It was Mum you always wanted.Louise on sharing a birthday with Tiffany: I always used to have to buy [Simon] a birthday present so he wouldn't feel left out.Tiffany: The year you left him out, he sulked all day.Louise: What a birthday that was.Simon Raymond to Louise: Always liked to steal the limelight didn't you, Mum?Louise to Simon: You always were a nosy little boy.Cora Cross to Tanya: You’re a very demanding, interfering nosy parker and you always have been.Cora, speaking about Tanya in 2012: She’s been going through my things again. She was like it as a girl. Once she got the bit between her teeth ...Simon Raymond: Dad never really used to go in for holidays. If it had been left to him, we'd never have gone away at all, but Mum used to insist. Every year, two weeks, by the sea. He only used to come for the second week, he was that mean.Simon looking at a childhood photograph of himself and Tiffany: That was Great Yarmouth. We were just about to go on the roller coaster. I was terrified.Louise: She looked after you, I'll bet.Simon: One of my fondest memories is of a holiday we had near Peacehaven. Tiff and I had a great time and Dad even managed to drag himself out of the pub and took us fishing.Terry: I don't know what Simon was on about, me being stuck in pubs, because as I recall there were no pubs in Peacehaven except the Fox and Snare or something, and that didn't count because it closed at ten o'clock.Simon on Peacehaven: Anyway, the year that we were there, we stayed in this little guest house. All [Terry and Louise] were doing was arguing so me and Tiff decided that we'd escape.Tony Hills: To the cliff top?Simon: Yeah, we sat up there all afternoon listening to the gulls and watching the boats. I was so happy.Tony on Peacehaven: When they were kids, this was the only place [Simon] and Tiff were really happy.Grant Mitchell on Tiffany: They said that she loved it there.Bianca Jackson: I used to love going down the coast when I was a kid.Ricky Butcher: Me too. My old man used to spoil us rotten when we used to go on holiday.Ricky: Me and me dad used to have a great time. We used to go and watch the match on the Saturday, sneak off to fishing on the Sunday.Ricky: Remember when we caught that pike, spinning off the back of the rowing boat?Frank: You was about eight years old.Ricky: And I was saying, "Dad, Dad, I got something!"Frank: And I was saying, "Sit down, boy, or we'll never get nothing!" And [you] was jumping about, rocking the boat.Ricky: Everyone's watching us from the bank.Frank: It was a pike and it was about that big. We used a plastic carrier bag.Ricky: That was good, weren't it?Frank: Yeah, great.Michelle Fowler on Mark: He used to go fishing with Uncle Pete.Mark to Ian: You used to come and watch matches with me and Dad when you were young.Ian: Yeah, that was fun. No one could shout as loud from the terraces as Uncle Arthur. When your dad got going, the whole crowd used to turn around and stare at us all.Ricky: I wasn't in the cubs for nothing — "Be prepared", "Who dares wins".Sanjay Kapoor: I thought that was the SAS.Ricky: Oh, right.Alfie: I've done endurance training with the SAS — or was it the cub scouts? — but it was still endurance.Alfie: No one can withstand their hand in ice cold water for longer than half an hour. I learnt that in the SAS.Alfie: I used to be in the Paras and they teach you how to fall.Minty Peterson: I'm still pretty toned after all those years in Martial Arts. I've got a black belt in Feng Shui. You weren't considered qualified unless you could chop a settee in half with your bare hands.Dennis Rickman: When I was in the kids' home in Muswell Hill, I used to make up stories about my dad. I used to say he was in the SAS. And all the time, he was just a backstreet publican in Walford.Frank: I didn't spend much time with my kids.Ricky: I used to like speedway. My old man took me over Hackney when I was a little kid.Pat Butcher on Frank: Was he a good dad?Ricky: Yeah. He weren't cuddly or anything. I was quite scared of him, to be honest. He didn't dote on me or anything like some dads do.Pat: I bet he did.Ricky: No. I had to do something really special before he took any notice of me. I wasn't good at school or anything. I don't suppose I did anything special really.Ricky: Fractions. I could never get me head round them when I was at school. We used to have maths every Friday. I used to dread it. Every time the teacher used to talk about fractions of this, bits of that, I’d start sweating. I found maths really hard. I came last every time.Peggy to Sam: You were never hot on maths, were you?Michael Moon: I was always a dab hand at English. Knew how to turn a phrase.Sam Mitchell: When I was at school, there was a girl. She told everyone she had [dyslexia]. Turns out she only needed glasses. Then when she got the glasses she couldn’t wear them because everyone said they made her eyes look small and piggy.Diane Butcher, Ricky's sister: He [Ricky] got this label put on him when he was a little boy that he was a bit slow, a bit thick. With everyone telling him, he believed it. There's more to Ricky than that.Ricky: All they ever done when I was at school was make me feel bad.Ricky: I was a sheep in a nativity play.Diane: I used to make handmade cards for Christmas.Diane: It's always the best bit of Christmas, the tree. I remember when I was small, I never wanted to finish decorating it. That way, I thought Christmas could go on and on. I used to sneak down and take some of the decorations off, and then Gran would come along and help me put them back on.</blockquote>

Verification: What month follows July?