On trawling through my old (windows) laptop..

searching for a copy of my CV (aherm... last updated in 2004..), I came across another word file I had entitled, "The Decade". It was an unfinished attempt at a round robin missive I was going to send to my nearest and dearest before I moved into my thirties to thank them for all the fun and fulfillment of my 20s! I won't bore you with all of it (too long, even in its unfinished state!), but here's the bit I wrote about how my world at 20 compared with how I saw things on the eve of the big "three O"..

3rd October 2004: Speaking of literally putting pen to actual paper, this quaint, old-fashioned practice is one of the many things that has virtually disappeared from my daily existence over the last decade. Add to that, drinking tap water (or for that matter doing anything with it other than washing the dishes, watering the garden or channelling it through the shower, basin or bath), going further than the end of the garden without a mobile phone, 56k modems, thinking that the getting a fifth TV channel is a big deal, or that interactive TV is the stuff of some sort of Star Trek future (this will only mean something to the Brits among you; the rest of the world got excess channel fatigue decades ago..), the sense of moral outrage that would allow us to see that reality TV is in fact not at all amusing or entertaining, but rather tacky, tasteless, demeaning mind-dulling, dragging us back to the dark ages in Western Europe, when people thought watching public executions and people being mauled by lions was all part of a fun day out, the concept that water is vital to humanity’s existence and therefore, the rights to it, if owned by anyone, should be owned by all, and not carved up and sold off to goodness knows whom for a quick buck, the illusion that our public pensions will keep us off the streets when we are old and that our company pensions plans are inviolable, using public payphones, other than to admire the aesthetic qualities of the interior décor (commonly wall-papered with business cards and leaflets heralding the particular mind-boggling USPs of one sex-industry worker or another..), worrying unduly about the cost of international phone calls, let alone the cost of flying (hallelujah!), the Deutschmark, the Franc and the Lira, having only one energy and communication service provider to choose from, government-funded first degrees, the association of the acronym, “PC” with nothing more harmless than a police constable, or for the techno-minded, the personal computer, rather than the attempt by a shallow, lazy world to replace the need to build relationships based on respect, consideration and genuine willingness to understand with a tick-box, catch-all social code of conduct, that creates a “safe harbour” allowing discrimination to continue unabated under the surface without the unwelcome consequence of legal or other redress, the hope of ever meeting my bank manager (I have banked with an Internet bank for the past 4 years), voting LibDem was considered at best a quirky eccentricity that was humoured in friends… and the list of changes, good and bad, goes on and on.

The world is not however completely unrecognisable, as I see it. The Queen is still the Queen and Prince Charles is still patiently (?) waiting in the wings. British Rail is still getting there and the fares are still inversely proportionate to the level of service, but now you need a forensic expert to figure out to whom you should make a complaint! British cuisine is still an oxymoron and our football fans don’t know how to behave abroad. On the broader front, Madonna is still the unrivalled Queen of pop (sorry Britney, but you just don’t cut it, and Kylie, we love the new you, but Madge is still no. 1!), and the talent of the likes of U2 and Sting continue to enthral millions across the globe. Many of the big multinational brands have stayed with us, Coca Cola, Pepsi, MacDonalds, Mars, Nestle, the Malborough Man (more’s the pity) as have the big NGOs like the Red Cross/Crescent, Oxfam, Greenpeace and Amnesty International. Despite all the doomsayers of the past few years, the UN and all its related institutions are also still standing, shaky though they may be...