The nostalgia track got me thinking (bit of a stretch I know!)
When the whole rave culture thing was happening I'd have been in my late teens/early twenties - prime rave going and drug popping time. But no - it completely passed me by! Apart from mainstream radio-play stuff it wasn't on my or my friends radar.
I was in fact helping my girlfriend (future wife) at horse shows most weekends, clay shooting or going to car race meetings. 🙂
We did go out but only to local pubs or at a push a night round the local town. We did go to gigs, but they were rock gigs - Def Leppard, Thunder, Extreme, LA Guns etc. - the finest rock of the era. 🙂
Both of us coming from small villages probably didn't help.
I kind of feel like my parents, who said the 60's weren't all they were cracked up to be, as the culture didn't really reach the small villages they grew up in.
Live Aid. Knew nothing about it until we got back from a holiday in Corfu to all the fuss.
Loved the late 80s early 90s dance scene (largely driving round the m25 in a Ford Escort listening to pirate radio) but due to the traumatic aftermath of first child arriving totally missed the 2012 Olympics. Didn't even see the opening ceremony.
Edit. Also totally missed the Diana mourning thing as lived abroad. Watched from afar bemused.
Berlin wall coming down. We were in Hong Kong at the time and I was 7. I like to think I was old enough to remember it but no. Brother does and he's 3 years older.
Vietnam war ending. I was 11 years old when it ended, I can remember F1 and Barry Sheene from that era but nothing about it. First appreciation was meeting as a cadet an Aussie sergeant major at an artillery course at Larkhill who'd been there, then the series of films in the 80s, then meeting Americans in Moscow (negotiating pipelines) in the 90s who'd fought there.
We're really lucky that the UK didn't get involved in that war.
Princess Di meeting her untimely end.
My wife (well girlfriend at the time) and I were working in Oenpelli (NT Australia) when a local came over to us and took off his hat before crying and telling us our 'queen was dead' We assumed it was Lizzie and as only I was from the Uk and not a royalist didn't give it much thought....luckily missed all the hysteria and nonsense so quite thankful for that.
Scott and Charlenes wedding. Gutted.
Death of the Queen. Sad for her family but, I don't really care.
Princess Di meeting her untimely end.
Me too. Fully immersed for a week or so in rave culture, if you get my drift…
I kind of feel like my parents, who said the 60’s weren’t all they were cracked up to be,
‘The sixties’ was really just David Bailey and a few hundred of his cool friends - lots of people read about it- very very few experienced it.
Pleased to say I anticipated the return of the wider trouser and a more relaxed attitude to hallucinogens by a few years.
Everything comes back in fashion, eventually.
Joe Cocker’s first death
the whole of the 90's. i was elbow deep in shitty nappies and baby sick mostly. and worked nights the whole decade.
work, babies and toddlers, short sleep, work, repeat.
Everything between 2000 and 2010.
I was er, busy.
Some **** on Pistonheads posted that the 80's were a guilt free time of prosperity for all.
I missed that, as all the major employers in North Manchester closed down, people turned to food banks, heroin dealers thrived and communities were destroyed.
Also totally missed the Diana mourning thing as lived abroad. Watched from afar bemused.
I missed most of it, I was on a mountain bike holiday around the Parc du Volcans in France, staying in various gîtes, only one had English people running it and we sat bemused watching the news on their telly. Sitting in a taxi between the station having just got back on Eurostar and heading towards Paddington, seeing all the stuff left around by mourners was enough to make me very glad I’d been away from the hysteria.
lso totally missed the Diana mourning thing
I was in a farmhouse in New Hampshire surrounded by Americans but with a few 'Limeys.' We watched the news somewhat bemused, but mainly excited to see some British TV after a couple of months abroad!
Next morning at Boston airport people were huddling around the TVs - women in tears. We genuinely couldn't believe people were that interested.
I was in LA for the funeral... a mate and I stayed up and watched it on TV with Sam Adams beer as entertainment.
Joe Cocker’s... death
Wait - what?!?
The birth of rave.
I went to Australia in December 89 and Kensington market was comfortably goth black.
Come back 6 months later and it’s all day glo.
I was sad.
I'm with you muffin man.
The rave scene didn't pass me by. I activity avoided it. Thought the 'music' for raves was total shiiite. I still do.
I was white water paddling, skydiving, and going to pubs that sold beer which had flavour and could talk to mates and prospective Mrsssses.
Oh yeas and listening to Extreme, Def Leppard, Iron Maiden, AC/DC, and a lot of other American based rock.
I saw Thunder last year as my 1st real big gig in the post-covid-plague world 🤘. Fabulous.
Princess Di meeting her untimely end.
I was super hung over, wander down the road to find some high calorie scran and loads of A Boards with the headline Diana is Dead, all I could think was "Who the hell is Diana?".
I went to France with school in 87 on a twin town exchange. Got back home to lots of fuss about a young Richard Astley not wanting to give something up
Berlin wall coming down
Yeah, I'd got it in my head to go to Berlin, stand on top of it, but then got waylaid by other things and a few months later people were doing just that.
Maybe there's a joint enterprise thing going on.subconsciously.
7/7 terrorist attacks.
I was on a tiny island in the middle of the White Nile in Uganda when I heard some vague news about it.
No phones/Internet or anything, heard very, very little about what craziness was happening in the rest of the world, so went boating some more.
The whole britpop/Oasis thing. Never really listened to radio much and was in to the whole grunge, Beastie Boys and underground hip-hop thing. Eventually heard folk raving about this British band, gave them a listen and thought they were awful, still do.
Berlin Wall coming down.
I was living on a beach in the Dom Rep and windsurfing/drinking for a fortnight.
29inches
27.5inches
29inches again
I sneezed and missed Liz Truss’s premiership
I was probably a bit young at the time (10 I think) but the miners strike. Living in Sheffield you’d have thought I’d be surrounded by it but I lived in the west of the city so not one of the mining communities.
My future wife on the other hand lived less than half a mile from Orgreave and her dad worked down the pit so it completely occupied her household.
After it finished I do remember talk of Arthur Scargill and subsequently my dad telling me about it (one of his colleagues was the woman in the well known photo of a mounted policeman taking a swipe at her).
The Pipa Alpha disaster was the first time I realised I'd missed some major event. I'd been away on my first big trip as a yoof to the Verdon Gorge climbing for a month after finishing college. Came home and wondered what 'everyone' was talking about.
As far as rave and Brit pop and all that I didn't miss it, I just didn't give a shit about that sort of stuff.
The rave scene didn’t pass me by. I activity avoided it. Thought the ‘music’ for raves was total shiiite. I still do.
TBH me and my m8s had nice cars and didn’t want to park them in some muddy field in the middle of nowhere.
I sneezed and missed Liz Truss’s premiership
I suppose the trouble is that some people will be still feeling it 🙁
I think a lot of the stuff we’ve gone thru recently will be iconic or notorious moments in history that the full impact doesn’t surface until further down the line 🙂
(Doomsplaning)
Food banks in the 80s? I'm not saying there wasn't any but it must have been a very small number compared to today, 7/7 I vaguely remember it being on the tv in the bar of La Boomerang in Les Gets
Food banks in the 80s? Not that I can remember, and I lived in a fairly poor area in the north east on free school dinners for the first half of the 80s.
Miners strike
At the time, as a school kid in the home counties, it was foreign news.
Ten years later I was living in Fallin, near Stirling- home to Polmaise colliery.
Polmaise was the first pit out and the last pit back. It was also the only pit that didn't need a picket line.
A friend was on a climbing holiday in France over September 11th 2001 and had consumed no media so he'd no idea it had happened.
The whole track pumping up a milky penguin with a badger thing or whatever it was, on here 😂
pretty much anything between mid eighties and mid nineties, if it wasn't to do with trash metal or motorbikes then I had no interest
I sneezed and missed Liz Truss’s premiership
im proud to say i never knew what our PM looked like all the time she was in post.
we were on crete at the time and taverna owners were telling us about the change in PM, but as i actively try to avoid the papers and the news, i was only vaguely aware of 2 or 3 faceless (to me) goons vying for position.
when we got home and people were talking about it i realised that i didnt actually know what our prime minister looked like, so it became a bit of a joke and also a bit of a quest to go as long as possible without knowing.
it was a few weeks after she'd gone when i accidentally saw her face on a facebook post.
Miners strike
At the time, as a school kid in the home counties, it was foreign news.
Sad to say this was me. Living relatively comfortably near Peterborough, with parents who'd left mining areas in the 50s and were doing alright for themselves in Thatchers Britain.
A few years later I worked with a guy my own age from Doncaster who was able to explain all I'd missed.
Anything to do with the Royal Family. I really couldn't give two shits.
These are massive events in our country's history, but they pass me by.
I sneezed and missed Liz Truss’s premiership
I suppose the trouble is that some people will be still feeling it 🙁
sorry, I’d run out of tissues.
Most sporting events, e.g. following italia '90 or whenever penalties by hearing roaring from the pubs we were walking between. A thatcher victory when living overseas and trying to ignore it. Other than that not much it would seem, political or cultural, oh, apart from the iconic occasion when Bob Holness first laid down the saxophone solo on Gerry Rafferty’s hit single Baker Street.
I went to NYC a few years ago hoping to visit the Twin Towers, I never knew they had taken them down.
