To ask what it was like to experience the change from 1999 to 2000?

[2020newstart]

Just that really. I was 10, so don't remember much. But oddly I do remember 9/11 all this talk about the new decade makes me wonder how it was like going from 1999 to 2000? If you're old enough to remember, how was the celebration? It must have been so weird writing the year 2000 on forms when you've been used to writing 19.. since you were born

Well the lead up to it was amazing. Somehow I landed in IT recruitment in 1998, didn’t know my RS400 from my elbow but managed to be mortgage free by 23 years old as a result.

Ah, now that I’ve read the thread I see my slightly flippant tone may not go down too well...

I always struggle writing the year on cheques. It takes me until at least April to get it right instinctively. Then, for some reason, in about October, my instincts start telling me to write the next year's date instead. 2000 was no different, except I was 20 years younger and possibly functioning better.

A huge anti climax for me too. I had more fun last night!

I was 28. It was exciting. It was also a relief that the world didn’t end! I was at a family party and it was a great night just before babies and I mean just as our first child was born 9 months later!

Oh and we have the issue fairly recently of birth dates for parents in a pre printed form at work for birth dates with a year starting 19- which are now out of date as we have lots of parents who are born after 2000. That makes me feel old!

It was dizzying. Literally, because I was a bit pissed. I was 17 and the boy I fancied became my boyfriend that night. I remember the frost on the street sparkling under the street lights.

We broke up about 6 weeks later but it was still a good night

It was massively overhyped - there was a whole big to-do about The New Millennium but nothing felt any different as we rolled over to 1st Jan 2000. The only thing about that time I really remember was that, for the first time in my life, the threat of terrorism had receded - I grew up with news stories full of IRA bombings and always being mindful of the threats that were made, especially at Christmas. Of course, that all changed the following year.

And there was a lot of nonsense about Y2K - I remember a lot of hyperbole about everything from toasters to planes in flight stopping working at midnight. I don’t sound that work went on behind the scenes to mitigate effects, but my toaster functioned as well in 2000 as it did in 1999

I was 10 too - my grandparents woke me and my sister up at 11.45 (I presume parents were both out?) and let us watch the countdown on TV, and I remember my grandad joking that the TV would stop working and the power would go off when the Millennium Bug struck.

I spent the night in Cornwall and watched the millennium dawn on the beach.
It was a memorable occasion with lovely people who I thought would be in my life forever.
We've lost contact now. (One was my ex husband, so understandable).

I really enjoyed the event. Changing a millenium felt like being part of history, but then I always look forward to new years eve in the same way. Out with the old and looking forward to the new: we love it.

It was much like any other new year although we had a slightly bigger party and wore black tie.

I went to a secret rave in a castle in the west of Ireland, which got raided by the Guards (police).

Everyone had to stand around outside for about an hour but then they fecked off and let us carry on 😂

I think they realised we’d be more of a liability running wild around the countryside off our tits, then we would be contained in the castle.

We had weeks/months of people telling us everything was going to stop working due to the millennium bug.

It was just a NYE like any other.

And there were the usual arguments about whether the century started on 1/1/2000 or 1/1/2001 just like people are currently asking whether 2020 or 2021 the start of the next decade....

Not much changes

A friend’s DH made a lot of money in IT fixing millennium bugs. I remember him getting a Porsche!

They Made it sound like it was the world was going to end and everything was going to stop: all the clocks, all the trains, all the ambulance, etc. In fact absolutely nothing happened at all.

I went to a great New Year's Eve party and the countdown with the fireworks on Blackheath common was fun but it wasn't a major life event.
It's all a bit arbitrary the idea that any one minute is any more special than the next.

The millennium bug was anti-climatic because of good planning and a lot of hard work to identify and fix all the issues so that the problems foreseen never happened. It was a triumph and it's saddening that people don't realise that it wasn't a hoax or over stated because the solution worked so well.

Oh, and the fiasco that was The Millennium Dome - that was deeply amusing. A monument to folly that culminated in a disastrous NYE party where people couldn’t get in because of “an administrative error”!

So glad that someone has posted that the millennial bug wasn't a hoax. My DH was on of the many people who worked very hard to make sure the millennium bug wasn't an issue. The fact that people think it was a hoax is proof of the great job they did.

I was 16 at the time and I went to a friend's who's parents were having a party. It was ace. We drank Bacardi breeders and danced around like idiots. It was fantastic. I think I was the right age for it to be honest. Now I would see it as a normal New year's.

“Millennium Dome” - now that is a blast from the past!

You know how NYE is always a bit of a let down. Well Y2K was the same, only more so. People were talking about what they were going to do for years. In reality, no one did anything. It was too expensive to do anything else as the hype was ridiculous.

I had a few friends round and made posh bangers and mash in the shape of the milennium dome . It didn't turn out very well.

Then we went to central london to see the fireworks (I can't remember there being fireworks before that). They were OK. Then we spent a long time going home.

I loved it. I was 14, went to a house party at my uncles and was allowed to drink Bacardi Breezers We all had fireworks in the garden and midnight and the whole street lit up. I also remember wearing scousers (weird skirt over the trousers that Steps made popular) and a horrendous purple top with sparkles. Also had a headband with 2000 written all over them. My parents were hammered

I think it was the media that kept on about the millennium bug even though work was in place to sort it. I suppose nobody really knew it would work until it did. I’ve never thought it was a hoax.

If so many people were working for so many years to resolve the "millennium bug" then why was there still so much drama around it by the end of 1999? I can see that it's something that hadn't been anticipated, so lots of eg recoding needed doing, but as this was being done, why was there still a panic etc?

On another thread, HCP are recalling being stationed by beds with various equipment you dive in when systems failed at midnight - but clearly, this was never going to happen as, like PP have said, lots of work had been done to prevent this. It was reported on the news etc to make sure that you had a cash stash etc, and there were plenty of people prepping for the anticipated supply chain problems caused by this - again, covered on the news: so why, as it had already been dealt with? Or was it the assumption that there could have been something else that screwed things up? Planes falling out of the sky was part of that - so why not just report that it had been dealt with already, nothing to see here etc? (Genuine question - I wasn't a techie then [I was a journalist ] and I am not a techie now - but minimising panic makes sense in that situation, especially since something was being done already by the people who needed to be doing it)

I remember, apart from the doomsday predictions about the MB, which were widely reported on the BBC etc, there was a lot of millenarianism in general - predictions about the end of the world (based, I think, on Nostradamua and Mother Shipton? Surely that can't be right... ), a rise in doomsday cults generally. It was probably the same at the start of the first millennium

We went to a fabulous family party , the children were aged 4 & 2 and we all danced til, about 2 in the morning

I’d had a filthy flu over Christmas ( and didn’t actually get better til about March) so had lost weight and looked fab in my party dress ! ( apart from the massive cold sore )

Then my mum caught the flu from me ,👎🏻 when we went back to the playgroups it turned out that nearly every family had been affected by the flu ( whether it was one of the children , the parents or grandparents)

That was our Millenium bug
I agree , writing that date on the cheques took a while !