What was England like in late 1998/early 1999?

[breaksinthedayforyou]

Interested to know.

I am a late 90s baby and can't believe that was now over 25 years ago

One of my earliest memories is going into Woolworths in Poplar. I was in a buggy and remember feeling cold

It randomly occurred to me that 1998, my birth year, is going to sound ancient to my own grandchildren/great grandchildren. Much like my great grandmother shocking my mum years ago by being born 'in the 1800s' 😃

Beer was a pound a pint in the student union. Essays were written and physically dropped in a pigeon hole. I had an ancient Nissan micra that must have been made in the early eighties, it was a box on wheels. I don't remember having a mobile phone, I had to call my parents from a pay phone.

I was in year 9 at secondary school.

We had computers but they weren't a massive part of everyday life. Loads of people didn't know how to use them. I think we were just starting to get mobile phones. I had a blue Nokia and used to spend hours texting with my best friend in the evenings. To form a letter you'd have to press the keys multiple times for the letter you wanted. It took a while if you weren't used to it.

Also I remember listening to Zoe Ball on radio 1 when riding on the school bus to school. The man who drove the bus would hand out sweets like jelly babies and opal fruits which I think later became starburst.

It was mandatory for rear seatbelts to be worn where fitted from 1991, although it was not mandatory to retro-fit them in older cars. Front seat belts have been mandatory since 1983. Infant car seats were not mandatory until 2006.

I never did get the hang of texting on an older style phone, I bought one with a keyboard that popped out in the early 2000s, a lot of people could text at top speed like this but not me.

I agree.

It was great! A big wedding with all the trimmings cost about £2k and you could buy a flat in South London (with a garden) for £60k - I know this as I did both! And you could go to London nightclubs and have cocktails without holding on to it all the time in case some weirdo tried to drug you. Jobs were well paid in comparison to cost of living.
Top of the Pops was on TV 📺 and the music was great!

Amazing. I was in my late teens/early 20s and lived in Manchester.
I was literally out every night loving life. I was j big into clubbing and every Saturday we would pile not someone's car and go off to a big club night.
I danced all night took loads of stuff I shouldn't but had the absolute best time of my life.

Name changed because very outing.

I was 14 in 98, didn't go to school (gypsy) but had a full time job in a factory with my best friend. We was paid cash in little brown envelopes every Friday and every penny was mine to do what ever I wanted. Every Friday night I'd go to our local for the karaoke. Saturdays were shopping days and Sundays were to meet up with our friends all over the country. I had a mobile phone but you could only call and text. Life was so simple there was none of this fakery and influences that you see day in day out now. The 90s were the best and I feel so sad that my own kids will never experience what I had.

To quote Wordsworth on the 1790s:

“Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,
But to be young was very heaven!”

Another memory of the 90s- very cheap last minute holidays. If you were prepared to pack your bags and leave the same or the next day you could go to a travel agents and see what was available (often holidays that people had cancelled last minute). I had friends who got a 5* all inclusive holiday for next to nothing. Lots of places also did really cheap 'allocation on arrival' deals where you were just told the country and minimum hotel level then got whatever was available on the day. Apparently DH family did this a few times- his parents would book it in the morning and pack their bags and collect DH from school early to go to the airport (with no nasty letters of fines from the school). You could also look on cefax for cheap holiday deals. There were no holiday review websites so you just booked based on a description and if you were lucky a few photos in a brochure

I used to enjoy leafing through holiday brochures in my lunch break.

@sockarefootwear We did that in 1999 when we had just finished our finals and went to the nearest Thomas Cook and asked for them if we could have the next holiday to Greece that very weekend. We got 7 nights in Kos for under £200 each - flights and accomodation.

What was even more lucky (from our perspective anyway) was it was accomodation on arrival and instead of the rather awful looking large 18-30 style complex most other young people on our flight were put in, we were allocated an apartment in a very small block with no pool or bar but literally just by the sea. The rep was mortified and insisted we could come up and use the bigger apartment facilities if we wanted to. However we were thrilled with our quiet little apartment and spent a lot of time swimming in the sea, roaming around looking for local archaeology (Classics geeks) and getting the local bus in to Kos town.

I was 13/14 in 98/99. The upcoming millennium seemed like an exciting concept - I remember reading that purple and silver were going to be The Colours of the 00s. I was a shy and bookish kid so not up to any hijinks, very unfashionable, was mostly looking ahead to doing A Levels and going to university. In my rural market town the peak activity was going to a harvester type restaurant or the newly arrived pizza hut, and something like let's go superbowl.

I think I had a basic brick phone for emergencies, and there was an Orange deal with five free text messages a day, but it was mostly switched off in my bag. Internet was dial up and it would take a minute to slowly load a photo on a web page. I had a daily newspaper round when I was 13 and got paid £13 a week for that. Later switched to the once a week local free paper and got about £4 for doing the 100 or so papers plus more for leaflet inserts.

Slightly later, in 2000 itself, we did a school trip from North Devon to the millennium dome. The main thing I remember is there was a McDonalds and I had my first ever McFlurry! (that was a new thing back then).

@Ginmonkeyagain ha- means H had a similar experience in 1997 when we went on a coach holiday to krakow! (Those were the days). We were early to mid 30s- we got put in a lovely little apartment block centre of town, tidy, clean, cute bar- rest of party in this huge communist type block 5 mikes out (but had a lot of facilities) - rep was mortified and kept saying - I will change you!! Er no thanks

Furniture was inflatable. There was a lot of silver and purple, mirror balls, glitter etc. Mascara was blue, everybody smelled of bodyshop dewberry.
I was about 10-11.
It was GLORIOUS.

That freedom to move to mainland Europe though 😔

Ah, I was 17/18 that year. A level summer and all we did is drink and watch France 98. Music was great. Everything felt a bit more optimistic than it does now as it was the hey day of New Labour.

Ah, playing pool! I loved that then. Lots of pubs had pool tables and there was a pool table bar/pub in Clapham junction where we went a lot.

So many more public pool tables have gone since the pandemic now, as well. Sometimes a goal of ours is to get a holiday cottage that has a games room and play long into the night! Does my 2-hand coordination a lot of good by the end of the week.

There were recessions 2007-2008 and also in 2012. I don’t feel the country have fully recovered from these.

I was 16/17, so doing A Levels. Memories include:

The Spice Girls

Britpop bands

Inflatable armchairs

Those pinafore dresses over t shirts and doc marten boots.

White Musk and Dewberry in the body shop

Whigfield Saturday Night

Grease revival, we were obsessed with singing "look at me , I'm Sandra Dee"

Dial up internet and not being able to use landline at same time

Hollyoaks was actually funny then with a good cast

Kookai was the place to shop. Jane
Norman too and Faith for shoes.

Tony Blair was prime minister

I think people took life less seriously then. When did that change ? I think it was 2001 with 9/11.

mobile phones were much more brick like than now. Many people still called them carphones.

Friends was huge.

Meningitis c outbreaks were occurring and vaccines brought in

I did similar with some friends and we ended up in Torremolinos! It was a good laugh.

@TheThingIsYeah I started work in 1997. When I look at what people get upset about now i think they'd probably last about 30 seconds in a 1997 factory. while i think moves to improve inclusion and get rid of prejudice and discrimination are great I do sometimes feel people are no longer as robust as they were. We used to brush things off and get on with it more and we accepted that sometimes things just don't work out as hoped, it doesn't always have to be someone's fault or somehow compensation worthy.