by Last night I lay awake thinking about when I’ll see (and hug) my mother again. I feel I have an almost complete relationship with my father just though voice calls and emails, but with Mum it isn’t the same.
This Friday will be the 75th anniversary of VE Day. I remember the 50th anniversary well. I was fifteen, it was a sunny Monday, and we had a barbecue and drinks in the garden. I took Seagers gin from the cabinet at regular intervals, added it to my orange juice, and nobody seemed to notice. I doubt I would have been in much trouble anyway – my parents weren’t big drinkers, but they had fairly relaxed attitudes to their kids getting hold of the stuff. Vera Lynn (still alive today at 103) was rolling out the barrel. It was a happy occasion, and of course so many World War Two veterans were still alive, including my grandparents. My grandfather, a squadron leader during and after the war, already had quite advanced Alzheimer’s by then.
It was a different world in 1995. The internet was this new thing, touted as the information superhighway, with all its cyber-slashes and dots and dashes that normal people still had no need for. Normal people made do with 1471, a handy number you dialled to tell you who called last. (And people still talked about dialling numbers then.)
When I think of ’95, I also think of sport. Costantino Rocca’s 50-foot putt at the Open, Blackburn’s Premier League title and various ups and downs through the divisions, and then Jonah Lomu’s destruction of England in the rugby World Cup. (I remember I switched over from that ridiculous match – it felt like a boxing match that I hoped could be stopped – and instead watched a very long third set at Queen’s Club which Pete Sampras barely survived.) I also think of an essay our English teacher asked us to write, called “The Class of ’95”. We had to imagine a school reunion taking place this year – in 2020. She told us that statistically, one or two of us (out of 25 or so) wouldn’t make it. I didn’t enjoy the essay – the idea of a reunion didn’t appeal at all – though I imagined I’d be living in New Zealand by then. I never would have guessed I’d have moved to NZ and then to Romania. Where even was Romania?
I wonder how Britain would have handled coronavirus in ’95. The government response would surely have been more sober, more dignified. Those were not partisan times. John Major would not have declared 20,000-plus deaths a success – that would have been too obscene. There would have been less information, but less misinformation too. Right now though, living thousands of miles from the rest of my family, I’d take having the superhighway during this pandemic over living in 1995 and not having it.
