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Message: <blockquote data-quote="James from London" data-source="post: 119922" data-attributes="member: 22">1990Carol Jackson on Nelson Mandela: When they let him out [of prison], we just sat in front of the television all day and cried.Denise Fox: Yeah. I prayed for the first time in years when I heard the news. Just to say thank-you.Jack Branning, speaking in 2008: If I hadn’t been a copper for the best part of twenty years ...Derek Branning: My brother was [a policeman]. Broke my father’s heart.Jack: Some nutter lobbing petrol bombs around, waving a shotgun. I arrested him. I was too young to know any better.DI Samantha Keeble: I was stationed with you once. I was a DC, worked on a couple of jobs you were running. From what I remember, you weren’t too bad a copper.Jack: I remember you — frumpy hair and big glasses, always early, first to arrive.DI Keeble: You know what they say about the early bird.Detective Constable Emma Summerhayes: I have wanted to be a police officer since I was a little girl.DI Keeble: It’s not easy being that little girl when all the others are playing with their Barbies. Cora Cross to Tanya: You got up to a lot worse [than drinking] when you were Abi’s age [fifteen].Cora to Tanya: Bit of vandalism’s nothing to what you got up to at that age.Tanya: When I was younger, I was into all sorts. I weren’t exactly a saint.Tanya: If I’d have kept a diary when I was a teenager, well, let’s just say, it would be shocking.Cora on Tanya: Out till all hours, off her head on who knows what?Tanya: People think that dope isn’t that serious but for a lot of kids, it’s just the start. It was for me.Tanya: I’ve been an idiot with men. Ever since I could put my lipstick on straight I’ve been understanding, forgiving, sacrificing.Heather Trott: Mummy always said lipstick was for hussies.Kat Moon: When I was twenty, I thought I knew it all. I knew nothing.Cora to Tanya: The puddings you and Rainie brought home!Tanya: Sweet though, isn’t it, eh — first romance? All them butterflies just thinking about him.Jane Beale: Your mum nagging you not to be home late.Tanya: Yeah, lying through your teeth you wouldn’t be. Swearing blind we’d be different with our own kids.Tanya to Cora: You haven't cared what time I got home since I was a kid. Even then you weren’t that bothered.Rainie to Tanya: It’s unnatural for teenage girls not to hate their mum — look at us.Cora to Tanya: The times when I looked after you and your sister — I was in so much pain, my hands shook.Kat: Zoe, do you remember the time, you must have been about six years old, when you nicked that penny chew from the sweet shop? And you came running indoors, bawling your eyes out, and you wouldn't tell anyone what you did — not Mum, not Nan, not me — and you kept crying and you kept saying over and over again, "I'm a bad girl, I'm a bad girl." And you had your little hand clenched so tightly and in the end, we managed to prise your little fingers apart and we see the chew and we knew what you did.Zoe Slater: You gave me a penny.Kat: And you went back to the shop and you put the penny on the counter and everything was all right.Roxy Mitchell to Ronnie: Your poodle skirt, I stole it out your wardrobe and I wore it to the under fourteens’ disco. And the bracelet Mum bought you, it didn’t go up the vacuum. I snapped it because I was jealous.Ronnie to Roxy: You’ve always been a thieving selfish cow.Roxy: You take me for granted, Ronnie, and you always have. It’s like the time you swapped my Vanilla Ice CD for Whitney flaming ...Kim Fox to Denise: You’ve always been jealous of me — youthful elegance, easy-going.Lorraine Wicks: When I was in Lancashire, I was going somewhere. I had a proper career — company car, all the perks — and I was good at it. I worked for Robert Morgan Stores for two years and then Direct Sales for eighteen months.Carol Jackson: I bet you had a childminder for Joe, didn't you?Lorraine: Oh yeah, he was called Peter. The fella I lived with!Carol: Blimey, you had him well-trained.Lorraine: Yeah.Joe Wicks to Lorraine: You used to like going [to watch Peter play guitar].Joe to Lorraine: You said that ["nothing's going to happen"] when you first started seeing Peter.Peter, Lorraine's boyfriend: Do you remember Karen's eighth birthday party?Joe: Yeah, I do. She invited all her little girlfriends round, didn't she? I was the only boy there. I felt so stupid.Peter: So did I. We hid in the kitchen most of the time. It was a nice day though.Kevin Wicks: You and me as The Blue Brothers at that holiday camp in Yarmouth, remember? We won the talent competition. What was that number? [Sings:] “Everybody needs somebody, everybody needs somebody ...”Carly Wicks: We didn’t win the competition. We came second.Nigel Bates on stage fright: I stood up in front of an audience once, tell some jokes. Talent competition, you know the sort of thing. No problem. My hand? Steady as a rock. Nerves? No problem. Except, when I opened my mouth ...Louise Grey: Nothing came out.Chelsea Fox: I did this dance class when I was a little kid and I just froze up. It was really embarrassing.Big Mo on Fat Elvis: I remember when he was Thin Elvis.Charlie Slater on Fat Elvis: He looks like Elvis and he sings like Chas & Dave, and he used to have the hots for my Viv.Garry Hobbs, singing: “Nessun Dorma, Nessun Dorma.” World Cup 1990. Pavarotti, fat bloke with a beard.Jack Branning: Where’s your patriotism?Max Branning: I lost that after Italia 90.Jack: That’s when you lost your barnet, ain’t it?Spencer Moon: My mum was a right character. Always singing, she was, really stupid songs with naff lyrics.Vicki Fowler: Your dad?Spencer: Just like Alfie. He used to do these little puppet shows over the bedroom door. They were brilliant. Alfie says I used to ask for one every night.Vicki: And he never let you down, right?Spencer: Come to think of it, it must have bored the pants off of him.Vicki: No. I bet he loved every minute.Max to Bradley: You won’t remember this, but when you were little, you were always by my side, wrestling on the rug. I used to put you to sleep. I used to lie on your bed and tell you stories, tell you things I told no-one else — hours, it was — till we both fell asleep. Your mum, she had to come and get me, wake me up. I’m not an honest man, Bradley, but you’re the only one I’ve told the truth to. You’re the only one I didn’t lie to. So whatever happened between your mum and me, I never stopped loving you.Bradley: The only person Max Branning’s ever loved is himself.Sonia: Mum used to say all the Branning men were cut from the same cloth.Bianca to Billie: I can tell when you’re lying, ever since you was a toddler.Bianca on Billie: I didn't used to take much notice of him when he was little. He scribbled all over me and Sonia's wallpaper once in our bedroom with crayons. I shouted at him. He was only a baby.Carol on styling Billie’s afro: Three and a half hours that used to take, your lovely long curls. Do you remember? My favourite part of the day.Billie Jackson: Yeah, I remember because you used to pull out half my head with that nasty comb of yours!Carol: You used to sit on my lap watching the telly like a little angel.Alfie Moon: I remember my dad saying to me once, not long before he died, he said, "You can stick your foreign travel, your champagne and your caviar. The best things in life, Alfie — are you listening, son? — are a coal fire, warm slippers, something good on the telly and a lovely woman sitting opposite you in a chair."Alfie: All things to all people, that's what I am. That's all I know and that's the way I was brought up. I've done all the other stuff — selfish, Jack the Lad, not caring about anything or anyone else but me, having the time of my life. I remember one time, my old man begged me for two weeks to fit this little plastic cassette holder into his car because he'd just had this cassette player fitted, but did I do it? No, I was too busy. I had plans. Getting ready to emigrate to America, weren't I? Yeah, New York City — perfect city for a two bit con, eh? More birds to pull, more money to make. I had it all sorted, you know. I had my travel sorted, I had a place to live, I even had a job. Life couldn't be any better — until two days before I was due to go, I come home and found out there was a pile-up on the motorway. My mum and dad were there. They'd wedged themselves underneath a lorry on the way back from shopping. They were gone — like that. They had a boot full of sausage rolls and crisps. Apparently, they were planning a going away party for me. Nothing was too much trouble for them. I had to go and sort the car out. Bit of a mess it was, but the funniest thing was, I remember the glove box being open. There was tapes all over the floor. I can just see me old man now, leaning over to the glove box to get a tape and whoops, there's the lorry!Kat: You don't know that's what happened.Alfie: No, but it's enough to know it might have been. And that night I went home and I had to tell my little brother that his mum and dad wouldn't be coming back.Mick Carter: I saw a bloke go under an articulated lorry once. It weren’t pretty.Spencer: The day my parents died, it was Pancake Day.Vicki: How old were you?Spencer: Five. Me, Mum, Dad — we were all round Nana's having pancakes like we did every year. Mum and Dad, they went out for the day. Nana couldn't find any lemon juice or sugar, but she knew I liked peanut butter. That evening, the police came round. I'll never forget the look on Nan's face when she came in to tell us that they'd all died in an accident.Alfie on Spencer: He was five years old and he cried his weight in tears. I held him and I told him he wasn't on his own and he'd never be on his own. And from that day [on], I have tried to give him back everything I took away from him through my own selfishness and stupidity.Spencer to Alfie: All my life, I've looked up to you, listened to you going on about how much you love me and you want to look after me and you feel for me.Alfie: My mum and dad are buried side by side.Nana Moon: It's not right, is it? Burying your own child.Alfie on Nana Moon: Her husband died fighting for King and Country, she lost her only son on the Queen’s Highway and she brought up two of Her Majesty’s most loyal subjects [himself and Spencer] on nothing more than bread and cabbage leaves.Alfie: I was twenty-five when my mum and dad went. I was terrified. I would have done anything for you, Spencer, but there was a part of me that wouldn't do it or couldn't do it. At times I felt I wouldn't beable to cope.Alfie to Jake Moon: Where were you when I needed you, eh? Me, Nana and Spence. Were you there? No, I don’t think you were. We didn’t get a phone call, not a visit. It’s like we didn’t exist. And Nana always used to say, “Oh don’t worry about Jake, Alfie. He’s working hard trying to make a name for himself.” But me? I had no choice, did I? I had to make it work, I had to make sure they were looked after — me, Nana and Spence against the rest of the world.Carly: I know what it’s like to lose somebody that I loved and I trusted, for them to leave me and take the easy option when I thought that I was the most important person in their life.Shirley Carter: My Kevin was clean, dependable, a little bit stupid, but he’d do anything for me.Dawn Miller: So what was the problem?Shirley: Who wants to be married to their bleeding dog?Shirley: It is mind-numbing boring being a mum. It’s routine and patience and nappies and needing and routine — and all that love, if you can just get it right.Shirley on motherhood: I felt like the walls were closing in and I wanted out. I couldn’t handle it and so I left.Dean Wicks on Shirley: The night before she left, she gave this [a necklace with pendant on it] to my brother. She said it would protect him — the Virgin Mary.Chelsea Fox: Part of her cared, deep down.Dean: No, the only thing she cared about was getting off her head and getting laid.Kevin on Shirley: She couldn’t have cared whether he [Dean] lived or died when she left all those years ago.Dean on Shirley: She woke up one morning, put her lippy on, and walked out on three kids.Shirley: Jimbo, he was so needy. I mean, what kind of mum does that, leaves her children and a kid with cystic fibrosis?Shirley to Carly and Dean: I couldn’t hack it, your 24/7 domestic bliss, but I never thought for one minute you’d be better off with me than without me.Shirley: I left you and Dean with a man that wasn’t even your dad.Carly: He was my dad.Carly to Kevin: Mother left. She walked out on you, on us.Kevin on Shirley: There never was an explanation, she just went.Deano to Shirley: It was a bloke and a beer on offer and “see ya, kids.”Shirley: I’m no gold digger. I never have been.Shirley: I couldn’t cope, didn’t want to, so I walked. They were better off with Kevin.Shirley: I never said goodbye to Jimbo. That’s my fault.Dean on Shirley: Jimbo’s my brother who she abandoned and left to die.Phil Mitchell: [Shirley] let you down.Dean: She didn’t let us down, Phil. She abandoned us. I was a kid, my brother was ill and she walked out the door. Kevin: Shirley wasn’t around long enough to be a memory, let alone missed.Kevin to Shirley: Dean was a baby. He don’t remember nothing about you. You, walking out on your kids without a backward glance. Forget about me, but the kids?Dean on Shirley: She must have hated me.Kevin: How could she hate you? You were only two.Dean: She left.Kevin: She left us all, mate.Dean: No, not till I came along.Kevin: No, Dean. It weren’t like that. If she hated anyone, it’s me.Babe Smith: That’s why you walked out on [Dean] — to protect him?Shirley: Yeah. I was protecting him from me. If I’d have stayed, I would have destroyed Carly and him. I was all messed up about Mick and I couldn’t deal with Jimbo.Babe: And I suppose I made you do that, did I — walk out on Jimbo?Shirley: You weren’t there.Babe: I had work. You had grown up, left home.Shirley: That’s what I meant. You weren’t there. Stan Carter to Dean: Your mum, she’s done some stupid, bad things. I know because I done the same.Linda Carter on Shirley: She’s done things you wouldn’t believe.Shirley: You stay away one day, that’s hard. You stay away two days, gets a little bit easier. Then before you know it, a month’s gone past and there’s no coming back.Shirley to Carly and Dean: I meant to come back, but when I came to it, I couldn’t face it and I knew your dad would look after you. The time wasn’t right for me then.Shirley: Packing up, getting out — best thing I ever did.Shirley: I left and went to look for something more exciting.Dawn: And did you find it?Shirley: Damn right I did. And I’ve regretted it ever since.Shirley: I know what it’s like to leave somewhere and think it’s all going to be better somehow, different, but it never is, is it? Because the reasons we left, they were never the right ones.Shirley on her children: They were better off without me. That’s what I reckoned. And I’ve never regretted anything more. I had three kids. I was convinced their lives would be better off without me in the picture. I never waited at the school gates for mine or lamped the first person that broke their hearts or bought them their first legal pint or brushed them off after their first fight.Shirley: I have spent the whole of my life looking for something that I already had. I was too stupid to see it. Second chances, they don’t come along that often.Shirley on her children: I never stopped caring for them.Kevin: You never started, Shirley.Shirley: You didn’t have to turn them [Carly and Dean] against me. That wasn’t very nice.Kevin: Trust me, Shirley, you did that all by yourself. You cut yourself out [of the family portrait].Kevin: I burnt all the photographs [of Shirley]. I’m not particularly proud of it, but there you go.Shirley: All right, I ruined your life, broke your heart.Kevin: Broke my heart? Don’t flatter yourself. You did us all a favour when you left.Pat Evans to Shirley: The sad truth is you ain’t meant a damn to Kevin since the day you walked out.Linda to Shirley: You’re bad luck, always have been, always will be.Shirley on Linda: She’s never liked me. She’s always wanted Mick to herself.Shirley to Linda: Once you got your claws into [Mick], you wanted me out of his life.Linda to Mick: There have been times when I’ve really hated Shirley, but she’s always loved you to bits. Sister or mum, she’s always looked out for you and you’ve always loved her, defended her when no-one else would.Kevin: Do you know how many girls there’s been since my wife walked out on me? None.Denise Fox: It must have been difficult.Kevin: You get by.Kevin: You’re talking to a man who has never successfully sustained a relationship with anyone.Shirley on Kevin: I bet he’s said a lot about me, ain’t he? I bet half of it’s true too. But did he tell you the reason why I left?Dean: No, not really.Kevin on Dean: I didn’t tell him anything about [Shirley], nor [Carly].Kevin on Shirley: I learnt a long time ago she ain’t worth it.Dean: Is that why you never talked about her?Kevin: I thought it would be easier.Dean on a framed magazine picture of a model: Do you remember this - the “Mum" photo?Carly: This is where it all started, eh? The lies.Denise: Kevin stood by Deano and Carly. He brought them up as his own.Shirley: For their sake or for his?Carly: Why didn’t you tell [her and Dean that he wasn’t their real father]?Kevin: There was never a right time.Carly: Easier to lie to us, yeah?Kevin: What was I supposed to do? Your mum had left. I had no one else — a disabled son, you two. What the hell was I supposed to do?Dean: You should have just dumped us. We could have coped with that — no-one lying to us, everything out in the open.Kevin: Don’t you get it? I wanted you, both of you.Deano: But you lied. You lied to the people you said you loved every day of your life. No dad of mine would have done that.Kevin: I only did it for you, for the both of you. I wanted you to have a life as close to what you should have had. Otherwise, what sort of mess would you have been in? At least I was there, Deano. And you know my name, you know what I look like, the things I say, the clothes I like, my favourite films. You know everything, all of that, and that’s what made you and me into us. But more than that, I was there to love you.Kevin: I brought up my kids myself.Carly to Kevin: You always brought us up to do the right thing.Carly to Kevin: For years you’ve been wanting us to get out your hair.Dean on Kevin: Ever since I remember, he always wanted to be somewhere else. It’s what he always talked about — doing a bunk, adventure, travel.Kevin: Always been something in the way [of travelling the world] — work, kids.Nana Moon on Alfie's attempts to start a new life in America: We've been doing this since the day your mum and dad died, Alfie. Broken windows, missing dogs, that time I sold hooky candles to the vicar — we keep on keeping you here, don't we?Jake Moon: I had all the fun while you were stuck at home, St Alfie as always.Alfie: Meaning?Jake: Meaning you always were the blue-eyed boy, weren’t you? It didn’t matter what you did, did it? You always had the patter, a little joke, a smile, the “who, me?” face. You know what, Alfie? You’re a clown and you always have been.Jake to Alfie: You never used to whine back then. If something needed doing, you — you just got on and did it. You've always done right by Nana and Spence. I mean, you could have just said, "Stuff it," and been out on the razz with your mates every night, but you didn't. Do you know how much that helped me when I was looking out for Danny?Jake to Alfie: You try looking after Danny. Try some of your Alfie Moon charm on some of the scum I had to deal with and see how far it gets you. You have no idea what it was like for me out there.Jake on Danny: The kid you spent your whole life growing up with, bailing out, protecting. He was a freak, a liability. He dragged me down wherever Iwent. He made my life three times harder than it should have been. “Here Jake, let’s do this, let’s do that.” I can hear him now. I’d stare at him as he was winding someone up, someone I’d have to fight, and I’d think, “Why don’t you just go away? Why don’t you just leave me on my own? My life would make so much more sense if you weren’t in it.”AJ Ahmed on his father: If Mum cared about us so much, why didn’t she stand up to him more? Like when I married Aliyah, for example. Why don’t you tell him [Tamwar] how I got this scar? [points to his right eyebrow].Masood Ahmed: OK, Dad was wrong. He’s traditional, you know that.AJ: He knows exactly what buttons to press. I swore I wouldn’t go back until I could look him in the eye like the man I am now and not the boy he made me feel like.AJ on his wife Aliyah: It’s difficult for her, ever since that night.Masood: 1990.AJ to Zainab: What was it you called her again?Zainab: I don’t remember.AJ: Certainly wasn't the kind of language I’d expect from a lady.Zainab: You know what? She provoked me!AJ on married life: Crazy big ideas, all hearts and flowers and dirty sheets — ba ba boom. Then there’s five years of fighting, five years of “I can’t be bothered to fight”, five years of “I’ve forgotten you even live here so who'd you think you’re fighting with?”Zainab: You frittered everything away at the poker table. Masood: I was young. You feel invincible at that age. The guys in the accountancy firm made it look really easy.Zainab: All our savings gone. We almost lost the flat because of your arrogance — remortgaged without my knowledge. I wasn’t even working. I mean how could I? I had a child on the way. You swore to me “Never again”. You gave me your word, Mas. Your word.Zainab to Masood: You promised after we lost everything that you would never [gamble] again. You swore on Syed’s life.AJ to Syed: Last time I saw you, you were this high.Ronnie’s school: Monkfield Secondary School Romford, Class of 1990Ronnie on her schooldays: They weren’t exactly the best years of my life.Terry Raymond: When Louise left me, I had Tiffany and that poxy brother of hers to deal with.Simon Raymond on Terry: He always ignored us when we needed him.Terry on Tiffany: Maybe if I hadn't just thrown money at her, given her more time ... Can't win, can you? Give them money to keep them out of your hair and they hate you for it. Don't give them money, they still hate you for it. What's a dad to do, eh?Terry: It was hard raising two kids on my own and trying to run a business at the same time. I had to make a lot of sacrifices. She couldn't have walked out at a worse time, the middle of a recession.Tiffany: Mum left him and he took it out on us with his fists, with his belt, anything he could get his hands on. Drunk or sober, made no difference.Terry: I tried my best to be a good dad. I know I'm not perfect.Tiffany on Terry's violence: Simon got the worst of it.Terry to Simon: I never could believe you were a son of mine.Simon: Whenever there was any trouble at home, Tiff was always the one who would handle Dad.Tiffany: I mean, I'm a girl and you can't hit a girl, can you?Terry: Tiffany wasn't always a cheap little scrubber. She may have been a bit lippy, but she was all right, a sweet little kid.Terry: When Tiff was [about thirteen], she was always getting into trouble. Little hell cat, she was.Grant Mitchell: What happened?Terry: Hormones. Once she got a taste for it, there was no stopping her. She'd do it with anyone. If they had trousers and their own teeth, she'd have them. Flash a tenner in her face, she'd be flat on her back just like her mum.Grant: Well, maybe if she'd had discipline —Terry: I gave her discipline, all right. She put a foot wrong, I sorted her.Terry: I did everything a father can do for those kids, but they both turned against me.Denise on Owen: It was my choice — having a baby with him. My choice, and if you get to make it, probably the most important choice of your life. Not some one night stand, not some stupid accident I had to deal with. I knew what I was doing, I knew what I wanted. I looked at Owen and I said, “Yes, he’s the one.” I chose.Chelsea: You made a mistake then, didn’t you?Denise: I was pregnant [that] summer. It was horrible. I got all fat, slow.Owen Turner: You stopped smiling.Denise: You went quiet.Owen: That’s what I do. It doesn’t mean I didn’t care.Denise on Owen: He stayed. All those years ago, when I was pregnant with Squiggle, he stayed. Not like [Chelsea’s] dad or mine. He didn’t walk out.Denise: The last proper march I went on was against the poll tax and that made a huge difference.Ian Beale: That wasn’t a march. It was a lot of yobs running riot.Lucy Beale: What’s the poll tax?Denise: It was an unjust tax that Margaret Thatcher used to penalise the poor.Yusef Khan: I was divorced before I married Afia’s mother. It took many years for me to move on, but I did.Afia Khan on her father Yusef: He loved my mum. Masood Ahmed: Yes, only because he couldn’t have Zainab. Your mum was second best.Yusef Khan: I spent my whole life living with what I did [setting the fire]. I wish every day I’d been stronger, strong enough to stand up to my father.Masood to his son Tamwar: 5:05 [pm], the time you were born.Tamwar Masood, mimicking his mother: “Oh Tamwar, that’s not pain. Giving birth to you was pain.”Zainab to Tamwar: Seems like only yesterday you were this wrapped up little bundle, your face all crumpled, and your ears, your ears were huge. Took for ages for you to grow into them.Masood: I loved you, Tam, from the moment I held you in my arms, but being a parent, it’s not easy.Yusef on his daughter: When Afia was born, it was like a tiny bundle of electricity had come into the room. The first time I held her in my arms, my heart almost stopped. The most precious gift a father could be given — though I didn’t have to pay her phone bills at that age!Yusef on his family: It didn’t even matter to them that I became a doctor or that I got married again or even have a beautiful daughter. They still won’t speak to me.Yusef on Shameem, his second wife’s sister: She never really liked me. I was never good enough for her family.Denise: But you’re a doctor.Yusef: A GP, not a consultant.Afia on Shameem: She and Mum were close.Syed Masood: You’ve always said having kids was like a big adventure, the most exciting thing you’ve ever done.Zainab: And I meant it.Syed: Three times you’ve brought a child into this world, looked after them while they were growing up. You’ve given us all the best possible start.Syed, speaking about his sexuality in 2010: You want to help, Dad? Well, go back twenty years because according to my therapist, that’s when all thisstarted. You see, I’m not attracted to men, not really. I’m just searching for the lost masculinity that you and Mum stole from me with her constant smothering and your coldness.Christian Clarke to Zainab: [Syed]’s a good liar because you taught him well.Sonia Jackson: "Look straight down the back of that church and don't look the audience in the face."Dot Branning: Who told you that?Sonia: One of my teachers when we did our nativity play at school. I wanted to be Mary, but Tracy Clegg got the part. She was useless and all.Jim Branning to Sonia: The day you found out about Father Christmas — Robbie told you it was Alan, or that other bloke, or whatever bloke it was your mother was knocking off at the time — you cried, great big tears. You and your gran were upstairs because I was downstairs doing the sprouts, weren't I? But you still opened your presents, didn't you?Roxy on sprouts: I’ve never eaten one in my life.Carol: Billie’s never been to church in his life.Sonia on Christmas presents: When we were kids, it was always pot luck. It didn't matter what we got because we always had a laugh. We knew we were there for each other.</blockquote>

Verification: What month follows July?