1997-2001

I was at university from late summer 97 to early summer 2001. That period was bookended by the two biggest news events of my lifetime - the death of Diana on 31st August 1997 and the attack on the Twin Towers on 11th September 2001.

I know a thousand more truly significant things have happened than the death of Diana, but I still think it is accurate to describe it as, in the UK, one of the two biggest news events. It consumed and set the national mood for a long time. It defines the time. News was different then.

I think it makes sense to see 97-2001 as a distinct "era", notwithstanding the fact that it is a personal era for me. You can describe it as lots of things - a fool's paradise, a transition, a new age. There was a lot going on but also not much going on.

I don't know if it's true of other centuries, but it is striking how much the world really did change around the turn of this century. Not on the dot (thankfully), but, you know, "end of history" was not being laughed out of court in 99 and it was in 2001 ...

I had five dilatory and mostly lethargic years between the end of school and the start of my adult life. It's a little obscene. I worked (actually quite hard) in the autumn of 1996 and then took my trip to Kenya in 1997, which was also, in its way, pretty hard. It was meant to finish on 31st August 1997, but as detailed elsewhere, it was, to my tacit relief, cut six weeks short. So I'd had the summer back in London (and Portsmouth, and Dorset) - drinkin' London Pride, smokin' Marlboro Light. My fellow East African adventurers were returning on 31 August, and one of them was going to stay with me for a couple of days. We lived near Heathrow so my mum and I were going to meet them all at the airport.

So, they emerged blinking from the overnight flight into the weirdest atmosphere the UK has ever had, as I would also have done.

It perhaps helped a little to spend time with these people over the next couple of weeks (there was a "debrief" of sorts in Wales). Not many of them really gave a hoot about Diana. It seemed trivial, man ... I certainly think there was a split in the national consciousness that month, between people consumed by grief and people who thought this was all a bit weird. I think that mood really was important, as it was one of the first times we'd really all seen what each other were like ...

Tonty Bliar was, of course, the well-coiffed spokesperson of the national grieving. I remember thinking "what a creep" and wish I'd stuck with that all the way through. 1997 and 2001 was, also, of course, the period of the first Labour term, a term where they did quite a lot though not enough, and laid the ground for doing more, but not enough. But still, that was, for its flaws, the most welcomed and stable government of my lifetime.

I was pretty lucky at university in that, though I was definitely left-wing by 97, a lot of that was on a "Christian" level (as I'll get to) and I thought in terms of justice, equality, fairness, in quite abstract ways and, then, at famously socialist hotbed the University of St Andrews, I fell in with more clearly political people and by the end had a fairly decent grasp on UK politics. I mean, not brilliant, but not bad.

As mentioned above, it amuses me now to remember I spent my university years in the grip of an existential crisis. I mean, of all the times.... Christian before, very much happily not Christian after, in the furnace of my doubts during. Really fun guy ... so I guess that was another of the great transitions.

Perhaps the greatest transition, the one that truly has mattered the most unfortunately, is technology. I know everyone has a slightly different timeline on this, but in 97, mobiles were rare, e-mail was rare. By 2001, both were commonplace (though i myself didn't get a mobile until 2003). Social media was still a while away, but the business of living our lives online started in that era. In 1997, we all got our news from newspapers, TV and the radio (probably the radio most of all). By 2001, most of us students were reasonably internet-savvy (and then it drove everyone nuts and civilization broke down, hurray...)

It could even be argued that it is  quite a transitional time in sport. It was not really a time of GOATS (to use that horrible term). There were Ronaldo and Zidane, but they were not Messi and C Ronaldo. Sampras, but not Federer, Nadal and Djokovic. Just the start of the age of the Williams sisters. Not yet Bolt. I guess there was Tiger Woods and Michael Jordan, so maybe it doesn't really hold up, but in a lot of sports, there was more of an element of surprise. Records were not being broken quite so much.

It was also a very specific era in music, between the third Oasis album (the death of britpop) and the first Strokes album. Be Here Now. Is This It. Almost exactly four years apart. Some people would tell you nothing happened in between, though it's one of my favourite eras, both because it was the first time I had proper money to spend on music and because it was when I got really into some of the bands I love to this day - SFA, B and S, Beta Band, Wilco. Blur released a very odd album (13), Oasis a very very bad one (SOTSOG), most of the big Britpop bands dipped a little or split, but some of them did some of their best stuff. 

2001 began with Ash's Shining Light, a little gem I have the most enormous fondness for. I remember standing on the scaffolding outside our flat on a sunny winter day listening to it. 2001 in general is one of my favourite years in music ... it felt like something was coming, even before the Strokes. I bought so many albums that year.

Summer 2001 being the very long summer after I finished university and before I started working, and, of course, before 9/11 (the day I interviewed for the job I took),. it has a very particular golden place in my memory. I mean, I arsed around a lot when I was young, but I'm not sure I ever arsed about quite so contentedly as that summer.

So, yes, the end of summer 2001 was truly the end of an era, for me, for everyone.