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Message: <blockquote data-quote="James from London" data-source="post: 119361" data-attributes="member: 22">1986Nigel Bates: We used to do it every year — you know, kind of make a rhyme, like "Come alive in '85", "Get your kicks in '86" - that sort of thing.Grant Mitchell: Why?Nigel: A bit of a laugh, really.Grant: And did you?Nigel: What?Grant: Get your kicks in '86?Nigel: No.Heather: Every Saturday, Shirl, she’d come round mine and we’d neck a couple of bottles of Asti listening to Tommy Vance. Then we’d put on our leg warmers and our parachute pants and jump on the 188 because it took us outside the Hippodrome.Shirley: Here, Hev, do you remember that night in the Hippodrome in '86 when you made us dress up like Mel and Kim and that bird, that mouthy bird, had a go at you? She tried to steal your deely-boppers. I looked after you then, didn’t I?Heather: You knocked her out, Shirl. We ended up getting barred.Shirley: Yeah but I still had your back though, didn’t I?Shirley to her mother Sylvie: I thought I saw you once, years ago in a nightclub. I heard a voice and I thought it was yours, and I run to the bog and I puked up.Phil Mitchell on Manda Best: She had a cracking pair of legs but she always hid them in them horrible dungarees. [We didn’t] do very much.Heather: You used to hang about with Phil?Manda Best: Let’s just say we had our moment in the sun.Manda on Phil: I loved him once.     Manda: That was a very happy time for me, with Phil. He acted the big tough guy but secretly I reckon he was a bit arty. You wouldn’t think it of Phil, would you?Minty Peterson: No, you wouldn’t. Phil wasn’t some great romantic, you know.Manda: I remember one Valentine’s Day he sent me the most beautiful card, hand made. [Quoting the message inside:] “I long to see the morning light colouring your face so dreamily.” So romantic.Minty: Eric Clapton wrote some good lyrics, didn’t he?Minty to Manda: I made you that [Valentine] card.Manda: I always thought you’d be good with your hands, Minty.Manda: I remember you always being a bit on the grumpy side.Minty: I was probably just a little bit jealous of Phil. He always got the best looking girls.Manda: You were such good friends, you two. It was all knockabout fun back then, wasn’t it? All jokes and windups. I was the tall dopey girlfriend, youwere the clown, Phil was the big macho man, but there was always a bit of an edge with you.Minty: No, there wasn’t.Manda: There was. You were always putting me down. You were always a little bit chippy with me.Minty: I didn’t mean to be.Minty: Oh come on Mandy, you don’t think you were the only girl [Phil] was seeing back then, do you? You were just one of many.Ugly Mug: Here Phil, what was the name of that girl you went out with that time? The redhead, the one with the legs up to her armpits. Katherine, weren't it?Phil: No, Sadie.Ugly Mug: Sexy Sadie, that's the one.Ugly Mug's mate: Cracking girl.Ugly Mug: Phil always did get the lookers.Billy Mitchell: Yeah, it was holding onto them he had trouble with.Grant on Phil's conquests: What about that blonde bird who used to work down at the airport?Phil: What, Sally? Underarms like the Black Forest.Grant: What about Gina? You know, the one who had the mate who, er ...Phil: Yeah yeah yeah, I remember. She should have been arrested for that, shouldn't she? She was, eventually. Holloway, last I heard.Grant: Eleanor, your very own Posh Spice. Nothing like a convent girl who loves a bit of rough.Phil: Apparently, she bats for the other side.Grant: You don't half pick 'em, don't you?Denise Fox: I tell you who I used to like - Gary Lineker. I used to have his calendar in my kitchen. I used to say, “It’s a crying shame how February is the shortest month in the year" — because you would not believe how fit he was in that picture. Oh yes, oh he was lovely, oh he was — poetry in shorts.Denise: I always did like a tough guy.Denise to Lucas Johnson: You never were exactly the domestic type. You didn’t know one end of a saucepan from another.Suzy Branning to Max: You’re no good on your own. You never have been.Syed Masood, speaking to Zainab in 2009: I’ve been waiting twenty-four years to sample your cooking.Charlie Slater to his daughters in 2002: What are you doing for your nan's birthday? And no kissagrams. I don't want a repeat of her fiftieth.Zoe Slater on a pair of ostentatiously large earrings: Our gran wore those for her fiftieth birthday.Sonia Jackson: I hope it was dark.Liz Turner: Owen always sends me flowers. Hasn’t missed a birthday since he was sixteen. Always buys me daffodils, ever since he was a kid.Minty: When did you smoke?Garry Hobbs: When I was fifteen.Shabnam Masood date of birth: 01/04/1986Ruby Allen: 5/4/86 — Scarlett’s birthday.Zainab: You’ve brought me many things in life, Shabnam — love, joy, hope — but there’s one thing I prayed you would never bring me — shame.Masood to Shabnam: You were up all night when you were a baby. Right little screamer you were.Zainab, speaking about herself and Masood: We were happy once, when you [Syed] were younger, when it was just the four of us.Denise: I can remember when I went into labour with Chelsea. I had to pack me own bag, put meself on the bus.Heather: Where was your fella?Denise: Good question. Being in that hospital on my own, that had to be one of the most terrifying nights of my life.Chelsea Fox: I weren’t born till 1986.Kevin Carter, speaking about Chelsea in 2006: I’ve got y-fronts older than her.Lucas Johnson to his daughter Chelsea: I was [seventeen] when your mum gave birth to you. Me and your mum, we were just two kids, and all of a sudden, we were parents.Chelsea to Denise: Was it so wonderful having me? It can’t have been that great. I was, what, a mistake?Chelsea to Denise: What was you when you had me — unlucky or stupid? I stopped you from living your life, did I?Denise: I cried when I first held Chelsea. I looked her straight in the eye and all I could see was me mother staring straight back at me.Lucas to Chelsea: I remember the first time I saw you. You had this little blister on your finger where you’d been sucking on it in your mum’s womb.Denise: You always were a tough little thing, weren’t you? Right from the start.Chelsea: And I wonder where I get that from?Kim Fox: Denise always had a temper on her.Kim on Lucas: He’s always had a temper on him.Kevin Wicks to Denise: You named your daughter after my boys — Chelsea [Football Club]. Good job you didn’t support Charlton, wasn’t it? “Charlton Fox” — not quite the same, is it? At least it weren’t Accrington Stanley.Lucas to Chelsea: I was so nervous when we brought you home. I never in my life carried anything that felt so precious. I used to lie with my face right up close to yours just so I could feel your breath against my cheek.Lucas: I used to love you dancing round the flat, pretending you were Aretha Franklin.Denise: It’s called escapism. It’s what happens when your boyfriend hides his drugs in your baby’s cot.Denise to Lucas: When Chelsea was a baby, you holding her, your hands on her skin — your dirty, smack head hands stroking her hair and then shooting up.Denise on Lucas: Drugs, drink, other women — you name it, he had his hands in it.Chelsea: My dad, he never stuck around, did he?Denise: Your dad, he didn’t behave very well. He was a horrible man, scum.Denise: It was you who walked out on us when [Chelsea] was three weeks old.Lucas: I was a different person then.Lucas: I was a scared kid. I ran.Denise on Lucas: I was glad to see the back of him.Denise to Chelsea: When Lucas walked out on us, you gave me something to live for. You needed me and I promised that I would never let you down.Denise on motherhood: A couple of months’ sleepless nights and nappies that look like they’ve come out of an alien and it all becomes a blur. I couldn’t even remember my own name. I once left Chelsea on the bus. I walked all the way home, I was going through me handbag, I thought I’d lost something. I just couldn’t suss out what it was.Denise: Me mother, when I had Chelsea, could just be a little bit overwhelming, but once she learnt to back off a bit, things were all right.Carly Wicks: Since when did you start giving me orders?Kevin Wicks: Since the day you were born and don’t you ever forget it.Kevin to Carly: When you came along, it was a bit unexpected. Well, at least on my part. I didn’t know it at the time, but your mum had met someone else.Carly: And you stayed with her?Kevin: I loved your mum. I was prepared to give her another chance.I never asked [who the real father was]. I didn’t want to know. I just didn’t.Dean Wicks: Did you know my dad, Kevin Wicks?Buster Briggs: Yeah, I knew him.Dean: How well did you know him?Buster: Well enough.Dean: Were you mates?Buster: I wouldn’t say that. Kevin was a good man.Dean: When was the last time you saw him?Buster: That sister of yours, her christening I think.Buster to Tina: I remember when you were really little, Carly’s christening. All you wanted to do was talk about my bike. And Mick, he must have been only about ten. He got caught short. Went and peed in the font. Right little toe rag he was then.Tina Carter, mid-story: So to prove she ain’t scared, right, of “all this superstitious rubbish” on Friday 13th, she walks out straight under the ladder, trips over the black cat, falls smack right on her artery, right in the middle of the broken mirror.Masood: So your schoolfriend died?Tina: She had some very nasty grazes.Grant to Nigel: Remember that time we went down to Brighton, to the races, and you fell out with a couple of geezers in that boozer? I stepped in to give you a hand and got a good pasting for my troubles. And where were you? You'd legged it out into the garden, over the wall and back onto the train.Nigel: You said you were never going to mention that.Grant: I swore I'd never tell another soul about that night and I never have.Phil: Brighton 1986 — how many Old Bill did it take to get us in that meat wagon, eh?Minty Peterson: Eight. I think seven of them were on Grant and you were struggling with that WPC!Phil: What are you talking about? I had a pig on each arm, a pig on each leg and I won't tell you where the WPC was!Detective Inspector Samantha Keeble: I joined the force in 1986. My parents thought I should have done a secretarial course. I found Page Three open on my desk every day. I know people think I’m hard, but that’s just because I’ve had to fight all the way.Nick Cotton speaking to Phil at an alcohol support group in 2009: Imagine when you were twenty-five, Phil, seeing yourself here, jabbering on about your feelings.Max Branning, speaking to his daughter Lauren in 2011: You think when I was your age [seventeen], you think this was the kind of life I chose for myself — flogging heaps of junk [on a car lot]?Phil: How long's it been [since we've seen each other]?Minty: Back in the days when blokes wore make up, I think.Rod Norman: I've moved on all me life. It's the way I'm made, I suppose. New towns — countries sometimes. No-one knowing nothing about you except for what they see. Taking you for what you are instead of dragging stuff up from the past.Barry Clark: Different girl every night?Rod: We're not all like that. There was this one girl, Ginny. She used to cook for the last band I was with. Came everywhere with us, took everything in her stride, always laughing. Don't remember her moaning, not once. She went off with the drummer, same as they always do.Rod, mid-anecdote: ... So they arrested him in this hotel room and he stood there stark naked and covered in blue paint. He's out of his box. They've been having a pillow fight so he's covered in feathers and all. You've never seen anything like it in your life.Rod: I got a bit mixed up with drugs. Nothing too heavy, but heavy enough, you know.Rod: [Heroin] killed my best friend.Rod: I spent half me life climbing in and out of windows when I was on the road.Rod: I did one or two things that weren't too clever. There's no point regretting things. You just got to pick yourself up and start again, that's my motto. The only trouble is, some people won't let you forget. You make a mistake and you're weak — and if you're weak, they can use you. So they do you a little favour — only somehow it always feels like it's the other way round.Brad Taylor, henchman for The Firm, an East End crime organisation: You've done a bit for us in your time, right?Rod: Right.Minty on Jack Dalton, head of The Firm: This geezer crossed him once, right. When they found his body, they'd chopped off both his feet and ...Jean Slater on her son Sean: He was the sweetest little thing you ever saw in your whole life. Slept through. Potty trained himself at eighteen months. Perfect angel.Jean: I always thought it might be Sean [who inherited her bipolar disorder], the way he behaved sometimes.Roxy Mitchell on Brian Slater: He wasn’t afraid of what his kids might turn out to be like.Sean: Well, he should have been.Roxy: He stayed because he loved you.Jean: Brian was a wonderful man. Always put others before himself. Responsible, reliable, a good husband and father.Janine Butcher: I remember when I was little, I used to sit on the back of Dad's chair and brush his hair while he was watching the cricket. They were the good old days. Everything was so simple then.Lydia Simmonds, looking at old photographs: Here’s one of you [Janine] and your mother outside our old house.Michael Moon to Janine: You were raised Christian.Kat: I did cookery CSE at school. I did French CSE and all.Kat: I've got no O Levels.Kat: I may have left school early, but I've got a CSE in smelling rats.Kat: I did a couple of weeks on a [hairdresser] training scheme when I was sixteen.Max Branning to Jim: You ain’t got the slightest clue what I was like since I was sixteen.Max on a pair of cufflinks: I wore them on my first day at work.Max: I wanted all the money, all the status, all that jazz.Max on his brother Jack: All our lives, he thought he was the good looking one, swanning around, bringing girls home. I was always the one with the brains.Suzy Branning: I was the one with the looks and the brains.Derek Branning: Max and Jack could never be relied on, could they?Derek to Jack: You always was a sucker for a pair of pins and a bit of cleavage, weren’t you?Derek: I’ve had strippers fall in love with me. They probably meant it at the time as well, until me money run out!Rachel Branning, Max’s first wife: Always been jealous of his little brother, with good reason. WhenJack was around, Max had to [make] do with the left-overs.Tanya Branning: Is that when you met him?Rachel to Max: Our first date, you asking me to the pictures.Qadim Shah: My family were involved in choosing my partner.Amira Shah, his daughter: But you fell in love with Mum.Qadim: Yes, very deeply.Jamie Mitchell on his father: He said that when I was little, [my mum] used to draw me these wicked pictures, and he said that if she hadn't married Dad, she could have gone to art school.Kevin Masters, Peggy's boyfriend: It's been hard for [Peggy], bringing Sam up on her own.Sam on Peggy: She lost me a long time ago, the day she shacked up with that moron [Kevin].Phil: I was the one you could always count on, the one who took care of you when Dad died.Peggy: Oh yeah, you played the man of the house all right, when I had any fellas in the frame. What was all that about? Jealous, were you?Glenda Mitchell to Peggy: You always wanted what I had — my girls, my legs, my husband.Manda Best on Peggy: She always was too big for her boots, jumped-up little busybody.Peggy: I regret moving away from the boys. Mind you, they were grown up by then, of course.David Wicks on his daughter Karen: She was quite a kid, wasn't she? She had a lot of spirit. I remember when she was little, reading her stories and putting her to bed. She'd have a cheeky little grin on her face, always wriggling around when I was trying to get her to go to sleep. She was such a sweet little thing.Joe Wicks on Karen: When she was alive, I never thought much about her. She was just there and that was it.Grant: Well, that's what it's like when you've got a brother or a sister. You don't really think about it, but it's like you're never alone, you know? You're never lonely.Joe: Yeah, that's what it was like with me and Karen.Joe on Karen: She was OK, you know, for a sister. She was OK.Lorraine Wicks: When my kids were little, David and I used to argue all the time — real screaming, throwing things rows.Joe: Were we happy?David: We had our moments.David to Joe: Do you remember that time, it was your birthday, we went down to Formby. We took a cake down on the beach and you got in a strop because the wind blew all the candles out. How old were you, seven?Joe: Six.David: Then you did a wobbly because the cake dropped in the sand and Karen said something ...Joe: She said, "Never mind, Joe, because we can take it to the woods. Bears like icing too."David: That's right. Always sunny side up, eh?Joe: Except you wouldn't let us go. You said you had to get back to Bolton for some meeting or other. But she didn't cry, oh no, not our Karen. She wouldn't do anything to upset her precious daddy, now would she?Eddie Moon to his sons, Tyler and Anthony: Sometimes I wonder if you two actually sprung from my loins.Anthony Moon: Some of us weren’t born weeds, were we?Tyler Moon: No, but you were born a weevil!Alfie Moon, looking at old photographs: That’s me and Spence! Look at him with his blond hair. That’s either Margate or Highgate. No, that’s Margate because I recognise the beach.Nana Moon: Sweetheart, that’s your mum. Remember?Alfie: Wow, look at her smile!Jake Moon on his ability to catch peanuts in his mouth: I learnt it off a kid on a beach in Clacton. Took me about ten days.Joe on Blackpool: I used to go there when I was a kid.Lorraine: We had some good holidays up there, didn't we?Joe, looking at an old photograph: We'd all been to the fair that day. Karen wanted to go on the Big Wheel, but once she got up there she started crying.Tina Carter to Mick: Shirl smuggled us into Dreamland without paying.Sam Mitchell: I used to love places like [the adventure playground] when I was a kid - just sit on the swing and see how high you could go. You think life's going to go on like this forever.Little Mo: When I was a kid, I had this book. It was my favourite, and there was this little girl and she went off to a magic country and she had a four poster [bed] with curtains on it and everything. I thought that was romantic. I always wanted a four poster.Little Mo to her sisters: You know when I was little and I had that exercise book and I used to draw them pictures of what we all looked like in my dream?Kat: Ballet dancers, weren't it? And fairies.Roxy Mitchell to Ronnie: You’re the one that took ballet.Janine Butcher: I used to love dressing up when I was a little girl. You know those fairy wings? They were my favourite. Just put those on and you could just fly away.Roxy: When I was a kid I wanted to be a fairy princess but that didn’t work out.Janine: My favourite [fairytale] was Cinderella. I used to think my fairy godmother would magically appear in a puff of smoke one day, make all my wishes come true.Whitney Dean: What would you have wished for?Janine: One more day with my mum.Jamie Mitchell: When I was kid, I asked Mum what happens when you die. She said, "Every new star, that's for a person. It's their soul." I looked after she died, but I could never see. Me and my dad used to sit there looking, just the two of us sitting in the dark trying to find her. Then sometimes I'd think, "That's her, that's the one," but I never knew. I never knew for sure.Lynne Charlotte Mitchell [Jamie's mother] died 29th November 1986Sarah Hills: I've always wished I was dead. Even when I was a little girl I wished it. I remember once, I'd have only been about six years old, and I was in my room and Mum and Dad were screaming at each other down in the kitchen, and somehow it felt like everything in the world was all my fault. And I thought to myself, if I hold my breath, and I held it for long enough, then somehow it would all go away and it wouldn't be my fault anymore, but no matter how hard I tried, I could never do it. Life just goes on and on and on.Janine: I never had many pictures with my mum.Lydia Simmonds to Janine: That picture [inside June’s locket] was taken on your third birthday. Your mother loved that photograph. You were such a happy child.Janine: That’s not the way I heard it.Norman Simmonds: Me and my sister [June] may well have had our differences, but I know she was a good woman and she wanted the best for her children. Many’s the time Frank and me would sit in a pub and after a few, he’d bring out the photos — his kids.Norman: Frank was my best friend all those years ago. He’s the one who gave me the capital to start my radio repair shop. He believed in me.Norman: I used to repair all sorts in my shop. Radios were a speciality.Ricky: Do you remember Mum?Janine: I do have one memory of us all singing along to the radio — you know, that song, ‘The Tide is High’ by Blondie.Ricky: I remember that. There was me, you and Mum singing along.Janine: Except it wasn’t my memory. It was yours and Diane’s. I wasn’t even born when that came out.Janine on Christmas: I think there's only been one that I've ever actually enjoyed.Ricky: When was that?Janine: The year before Mum died.Ricky: You was only three.Janine: It's the one time I can remember us all being together as a real family — Mum, Dad, you, Claire, Diane. I thought it would be like that forever.Ricky: So what do you remember then?Janine: That I was desperate to get that doll's house off the telly. Do you remember the one I mean? It looked like a treehouse or something. You pushed the top and then all those rooms spun round. I couldn't believe it when I actually got it. I thought I was the luckiest girl on Earth.Ricky: I remember, yeah. Mum took photos, didn't she, of you in those "Thomas the Tank Engine" pyjamas.Janine: Well, I always was a little trendsetter.Jamie on Christmas: When I was a kid, it was wicked. House just looked like a grotto, but then Mum died and we never really bothered.Shirley Carter: Do you remember when you used to make me post all those letters to Father Christmas?Mick Carter: Yeah. I used to ask for the same things every year — the mighty Hammers to win the league, a Castle Grayskull and for Mum to come home.Mick: When we were growing up, every birthday and Christmas, every Sunday lunch, I used to sit there and I used to wish that Mum was there, just to blow out the candles, carve the turkey.</blockquote>

Verification: What month follows July?