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Randomly accessed memories: 3

I was ironing. We must have been going out, no other reason I would be ironing, but then we were always going out so I've no idea why this night was different.

It was hard to find room to iron in that kitchen. It wasn't a small kitchen but it was messy, cluttered, full of stuff that shouldn't be in a kitchen like a basketball and broken glass (related).

We lived halfway up a very steep hill in a 2up, 2 down house with a second 2up floor. Four of us.

I found room in the kitchen, or most likely I made room, and I was ironing. I had Radio 1 on (probably this) and I heard Wonderwall for the first time. I remember being struck by the powerful starkness of the opening vocals compared to the rest of Oasis's songs. The kitchen was cold and the sound echoed off the hard surfaces. I loved it from the first few seconds. 

Wonderwall was released on the 30th October 1995, 28 years ago yesterday.

Originally I thought this memory must have been from then. Except Wonderwall was on the album (What's the Story) Morning Glory? which we all bought on the day it was released on the 2nd October 1995, so the dates must be slightly off. It was definitely the second year at Uni (1995) and it was definitely in the house on Arboretum Avenue (second and third years) so it must have been September or October. Maybe.

Randomly accessed memories: 2

We were on holiday in Menorca with some friends and their 1yo son, it was their first holiday since the baby had been born. I think we had an apartment with a shared swimming pool. I assume we flew out on the Sunday or the Monday, we hadn't been there long.

On the Tuesday we went out for the day, we had hired a car and we drove around the island looking for stuff to look at, I think, I don't remember this part very well. I remember popping into a bar and asking for directions somewhere and on the TV I could see a building on fire but didn't think anything of it.

We returned to the apartment in the early evening and headed into the town for dinner. As we approached the town square we could hear the bongs of the BBC News at 6. They were unusually loud. I have this recollection of people starting to run, or walking faster towards the big screen. We heard the opening lines of the news, I can't remember exactly but it was something like, 'America Under Attack' and we started running. As we turned the corner we saw a massive TV that one of the bars had rigged up showing footage of the planes going into the Twin Towers. It was 7pm in Spain on Tuesday September 11th 2001 and we'd spent all day completely unaware of this huge worldwide news story. We ate dinner and watched the news in disbelief.

The next morning my friend and I queued round the block of a small newsagent buying every newspaper we could find, just like all the other Brits. There was internet obvs but there weren't smartphones and there weren't good, frequently updated news websites. I'd brought a copy of the Economist with me and for the first time I read the Asia section. In one story there was a nonchalant mention of the Taliban and Al-Qaeda. It already seemed like a more innocent time.

The week before we flew out we'd bought a flat, my first. The deal actually went through on September 10th. As I devoured the newspapers I remember being terrified about mortgage rates and house prices. It felt like a different world now.

Randomly accessed memories: 1

He leaned out of the upstairs window and shouted, "She's gone!".  I should probably write that as "SHE'S GOOONNNEE!!!" because that's more like how it sounded.

At secondary school I had to walk through two other schools to get to the college whether the bus would pick me up. At the entrance to the second of those schools was a big red brick building I always thought looked like a big house. It probably hadn't ever been a house but that's what it looked like to a kid. The rest of the school consisted of "temporary" portacabins, like all comprehensive schools in the 70s and 80s.

 

I had to walk past the big red brick building to go through the car park and then the fields to get to the college where my bus stop was. It was a long walk. I think 45 minutes. It was probably 15.

 

The person shouting was a teacher and he was shouting to another teacher walking near me. After he shouted, "SHE'S GOOONNNEE!!!" the other teacher did one of those tiny mini jump shuffles that middle aged people do and shouted "YESSSS!!!" in reply.

 

I had no idea what they were talking about.

 

I was 15. I was more interested in the news than most kids my age but not every detail of every news bulletin. My parents watched the 6 o'clock news every night and still had newspapers delivered but I had very little knowledge of politics, only the really big stuff would cut through.

 

The day was 28 November 1990 and Margaret Thatcher had just resigned.

 

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I've decided to jot down random memories when they pop into my head. I have nowhere else to put them so they will live here. I'm not starting a newsletter. They won't be in order. They won't have hidden meanings. They will be random.