In 1998, I was 12 and was at boarding school while my dad worked abroad. I had posters of Aaron Carter (RIP), Matthew Perry (RIP) and the Backstreet boys all over my notice board and the obligatory Groovy Chick duvet cover.
We’d rush back from lessons to watch Neighbours and Home and Away before supper and I was introduced to Friends which I think was at the end of series 4/ beginning of series 5 (so at its peak). We’d also watch SMTV on Saturday mornings.
I got my first CD player that year but only had about 3 CDs as they were expensive for an album (£10-£12) and we’d tape other songs off the radio and dance around our dorm. We were obsessed with Baby One More Time and trying to dance like Britney 😂.
I’d communicate with my parents by letter or they’d call the matrons office occasionally. There was a pay phone in the basement but I’d rather spend my pocket money on 10p mixes and Panda Pops so we used the pay phone to make prank calls to Childline 🙈 and ring the talking clock 🤷♀️.
In 1999, my dad took voluntary redundancy and my family returned home so I had to go to the local school where I was bullied relentlessly for having a ‘weird’ accent.
My dad bought my mum her first mobile phone that summer from a stand at an air show. Having been abroad and at boarding school, I’d had no idea such things existed! My mum wasn’t sure she’d use one but my dad told her she could keep it in the car in case of an emergency 😂. At my new school, mobile phones were all the rage and I got my first Nokia 3210 for Christmas that year.
My mum bought a gold mini and would put my little brother’s car seat in the front and then the other 3 of us children would squish into the back with a seat belt round 2 of us and one for the lucky child 😂. If my grandma was travelling with us (in the bigger car), she could never figure out the ‘click’ as she called it so would hold the seat belt in place around her 😂🙈.
Days out included taking Grandma for “a drive” and “going visiting” where we’d go around my Dad’s family’s houses and he’d get out and knock on to see if they were in. If they were, we’d all go in. You couldn’t do that nowadays due to the price of petrol! There was no calling in advance. Primark has just rebranded itself as cheap but fashionable (instead of just cheap!) and it was very exciting to go to the city to visit Primark. I got a pair of baggy combat pants and a teeny vest top which was the coolest thing ever!
We did have a computer in the living room with dial up internet that you had to turn off if someone needed to make a phone call. Phone calls were free for an hour after 6pm, so you’d wait til then and hang up after 59 mins and redial. Computer lessons involved using search engines (Yahoo or Ask Jeeves) to look for whatever you wanted and it opened up a whole new world of information.
It was good, much simpler times except for the school situation.